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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!

Yesterday my wife Sandra and I went out to do a couple of geocaches. It is the middle of the winter here and we have had record snow falls. This makes caching interesting in a couple of ways:

1. Caches get buried -  we had someone report a DNF on one of our caches yesterday just because of the massive snow - luckily they found two others hidden by us and still had a good day out.

2. Snow makes for good geotrails - We did a cache yesterday that was hidden by the person who introduced us to caching. I knew the area pretty good and drove right up to it. From the car I could see a trail leading to a potential cache location. Leaving the GPSr in the car we walked the trail and found the cache - the geotrail kinda took the fun out of this one

This is our first winter doing Geocaching. There are some obvious differences for us who live in the great white north (also known as Canada) - there is snow. With snow come snow tracks - footprints that sometimes can lead directly to the cache. This can be an advantage for the finder or possibly boring - the snow hints sometimes make it just too easy.

I have seen it a lot in the logs of our caches recently:

GC17K55: Nice little winter geo-trail to follow! - So grateful for large footprints in the snow!

GC17Q5J: It looks like somebody shoveled a path to the cache…

GC16Z1T: Must have been there a few min after Avanar, I followed the tracks in the snow.

While snow-caching can be easier in some ways - hiding a cache that is winter friendly might pose a few challenge. I posted a question in some local Geocaching forums to get some good hints on hiding winter-friendly caches. This is what I learned:

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We have been really enjoying Geocaching since we started in June. Lately we have been getting into the other half of the game - the hide!

Our first attempts went really smooth - they were published quickly - people seemed to find them easy enough and we had some great reviews about our placements and our write-ups. We didn’t have a single DNF (did not find) yet at all! Well - that was the first five hides anyway…

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I (Andy) had gone out Geocaching with a friend and i was hooked. I had to figure out how to get my ands on a GPS. After talking it over with my wife (Sandra) for a bit we figured we could get one and try this Geocaching stuff if we didn’t go overboard and spen hundreds of dollars - after all - we had never really tried this yet.

I didn’t know much about the at the time - knew a few brand names and the basic features I needed for Geocaching. I had glanced through the buying guide on the Geocaching web site - I was ready to shop!

After surfing the web to try to find some online I ended up surfing through to eBay - why not try I figured. I am not a big eBay user but heck why not. After a quick search I found a unit that looked just perfect. It was a brand name I recognized - Magellan - and the price (at the time of bidding) was great. I placed my bid. I got out bid but decided to go up a bit more - I was now the highest bidder! Within a few minutes I won the bid!

After paying for it - shipping and all - it came to $105.11 - not bad at all. The Magellan Explorist 200 was at my home in two days - the third day we were out Geocaching and had our first find! We did 5 the first night as a family - we are now hooked!