Northwest

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What an absolutely perfect day we had for Geocaching on Saturday!  Twelve cachers, some newbies and some more experienced, met at the aptly named Discovery Garden in Mount Vernon, WA.  We learned the basics of Geocaching and even had a chance to practice while searching for an established cache right there in the Garden.  Emma, our youngest cacher, was in on the very first find and excited to see that there were indeed treasures hidden all over town. After learning the basics, we set off in groups on our Geocaching adventure. The Skagit County Airport has a great series of walking trails with interesting caches hidden throughout.  That was our first stop. There we were able to discover lots of larger caches filled with fun little treasures.  Lisa Monson, our newest STAR, had the priviledge of placing our DEN Travel Bug in one of the caches to send it off on its adventure. One very clever cache involved tuning into to a radio frequency at a certain set of coordinates and then listening for clues to the actual location of the cache.  We ended our day in downtown Mount Vernon with the added treat of getting to go to the first day of our Farmer’s Market. Two teams tied for the most caches found, so we went with the closest birthday for the grand prize and everyone else got to choose from some great Discovery Education Schwag.

A new Discovery Channel Themed Cache was also hidden in the area.  Check out Dirty Jobs: Here’s to the Farmers Cache.

Geocaching is such a great hobby.  A great way to get outside, get some excercise, problem solve, learn new things and spend time with family and friends.  Hopefully, this event hooked a few new cachers.  I know that one of our teachers already has plans for a Geocaching event for her students and for her fellow teachers at her school.

If you would like to know more about Geocaching.  Check out Geocaching.com.

Bridget Belardi also has a great resource for teachers on Geocaching on her Wiki.

Thanks DEN for sponsoring this great event.