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A recent article in brandoninfo.com tells a story which is becoming more and more common - using Geocaching for education purposes. In this case elementry schools in Brandon South Dakota are using Geocaching to learn about GPSr’s and an understanding of latitude and longitude and the basics of geographical coordinates.

The students have been learning how to use a GPS to find treasures or caches. To find established geocaches hidden by fellow geocachers, an understanding of latitude and longitude and the basics of geographical coordinates were learned first. The students then learned how to use a GPS to mark waypoints and how to enter the coordinates into a GPS. Students then had to find caches hidden by their teacher on the school grounds.

I think Geocaching is a great teaching tool - I have seen it myself in outings with my kids. Being outdoors with a specific task in mind leads to many teachable moments.

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Over the last two weeks we have been able to experience our first Earthcahes. Our first one was on a trip to Prince Edward Island (PEI) and our second (last night) was a bit north of our home.

So what is an Earthcache?

An EarthCache is a special place that people can visit to learn about a unique geoscience feature or aspect of our Earth. EarthCaches include a set of educational notes and the details about where to find the location (latitude and longitude). Visitors to EarthCaches can see how our planet has been shaped by geological processes, how we manage the resources and how scientists gather evidence to learn about the Earth. (from Geocaching.com)
(more at www.earthcache.org)

Our first earthcache taught us about the red dirt found on PEI - there is a high concentration of iron oxide in the soil which rusts and turns the sand and soil red - very cool! Our second one brought us to this amazing sand dune close to our house - well about an hour away - it was very close to my Aunt’s house though. This dune was on the bank of a river near Wasaga Beach in Ontario. It was an amazing site to see. The amuzing part of this cache is that my Aunt - who lives about 4 minutes from the wonder - had no idea this was there!

So what is so great about Earthcaches?

Well there is no cache box to find - no log to sign - they can’t hold trackables - there is no trading going on - so what’s the point?!?!

Well Earthcaches are designed to bring you to some amazing part of the earth and help you learn. This is one of the reasons we go geocaching - we love to see really cool places - earthcaches definately help you find these places.

So if you have never tried an earthcache go ahead and look for one close to you and check it out - you will learn something and you may just have fun doing it!

ok - So it has been a really busy but great summer. I have not been updating the blog here for some time but I hope to get back to it! Here are some geo-highlights from the summer…

• We had our first “muggle” experience - that’s right - someone snagged on of our caches. We were able to replace the container with a slightly smaller one and moved it a couple of feet away.
• We had to archive one of our caches as the tree it was hidden in was chopped down - right to the ground - gonzo! We were able to retrieve the cache as it was just tossed down the bank of a hill. We are still trying to decide what to do there.
• We took our annual trip up to the family cottage and made a trek out to a fabulous cache very near our cottage. We attempted this cache last year but got messed up with some technology issues Everything went fine this year though! I will try to post some pictures here later as it was a beautiful spot on a quiet lake - awesome!
• My wife surprised me with a trip to Prince Edward Island (PEI) - Canada’s smallest province. We went there right after the cottage and enjoyed some great time away from the kids. We were able to do a good number of caches on the island which brought us to some amazing places and some amazing views!

Well I hope to get into some more details about our adventures - but for now that’s the update!

I have always been a big fan of Scooters — I currently own a moped but I am considering getting a scooter instead. When a friend sent me a link to this scooter I knew right away it would be the perfect Geocaching scooter!

This scooter has it all! Of course it has a Garmin GPS - that will get you close to the cache. It also has a full computer under the seat with a 8″ touch screen monitor mounted up front — log your finds on route! The big antenna on the back is a 30db gain antenna giving you up to 3 mile wireless range! If that isn’t good enough the computer has a wireless cell internet card.

There is so much more to this sweet ride - swing by and have a look for yourself…

Milestones are great! —they give you both something to work towards and something to celebrate. We have been Geocaching for about ten months now — we haven’t gone too nuts with wanting to get a large number of caches done — we did however want to get to 200 caches before the end of the year.

For some people 200 is not that much and for others it seems crazy — for us I think it was a good goal!

Last Saturday (April 26, 2008) we successfully accomplished our 200th cache! The cache (Scanlon Creek Passport Office — GCV51K) was a great Letterbox Hybrid placed by The Mighty Canadian Juicepig in 2006. We chose this cache because it looked like a great adventure (and it wasn’t an LPC ;)). We had recently done another great cache by Juicepig (GC1AMC5) and was ready for a great adventure.

To complete this cache we had to find 6 points through out the conservation area were there were hole punch plaques — once we found these we could punch a hole in the paper and compare the pattern with the decipher code printed on the cache page. The patterns lined up with numbers. Once we found all six punch plaques we were able to determine the coordinates for the starting point of this Letterbox.

Once we got to the starting point we followed clues to get to the final cache location. We had a little trouble at first but were able to figure it out. Once at the location we found the cache pretty easily.

It was great to push towards the goal of having 200 caches by the end of our first year — and it was even greater to celebrate this milestone together as a family!

Hey maybe we should call this in to the Podcacher show? « yah… a shameless plug with great hopes of publicity

It was time for our family to get away — time for a road trip! We often go on shorter trips to the cottage or to family that is a few hours away — but this was our first “big” road trip that would take more than one day on the road.

March break was coming up and the desire to get away was very strong. Plans to visit some old friends that moved to Montreal fell through and we were left scrambling for a place to go. My brother Dave and his family ware traveling down to Hilton Head SC and Savannah GA and invited us to join them. We jumped at the chance — both to spend time with them and to get away to a warmer climate!

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