Pedernales Falls State Park

Early Saturday morning, we headed out to Pedernales Falls State Park about 35 miles west of Austin. There are many caches throughout the park, we choose a few easy ones (although we still didn't find a couple) for the kid's first trip to the park. There is a Boy Scout Troop series that we worked on just a bit. In the photos below, Alex is using his walking stick to point to the first cache. The next one is Alex walking along the trail. The stroller didn't go all the way along the trail, so Arrion pushed it back to the van and Ben took the geocaching lead for the first time. The picture of him shows one of his first caches. He was very excited. Arrion and Kaylee picked the boys up at the end of the trail. We headed on down the road, parked, and ventured to check out the swimming area. After walking down a steep hill, we found the river! Unfortunately, we had to go back up the hill. It was a fun morning. Lunch at Riley's BBQ in Dripping Springs. Yum!

April Cache

Alex and I ventured out on April 12 to Circle Metro Park which is just around the corner from us and found two caches. Both were really fun finds. One located in a tree and one in a small hole in a little rock wall. There are many more caches in this park that we'll need to visit!

First Family Outing

Today, Ben had the day off, so we decided to do some family geocaching. I selected an area in Circle C that's part of Metropolitan Park. The caches were on the east side of Escarpment. We put Kaylee in the Jeep stroller and headed down the trail.

...I Didn't Say Banana

Our first stop was a microcache just off the main trail. Ben and Kaylee did some light bushwacking in tall grass. The spot had several trees, bushes, and brush. After a few minutes, Arrion spotted the cache hanging in a tree. Really not that difficult to spot. Alex is holding the cache above with Kaylee, her first cache.

The Tree

After finding the Banana cache, we headed back down the trail to find "The Tree". Unfortunately, we really came at it from the wrong direction. At one point, Ben took Kaylee out of the stroller as we climbed up an embankment of the creek (dry) to get to the other side. We found the "right" way in and started the hunt. Along the way, we found a half eaten deer, that had about half it's skin still on it. After seeing the bones, I don't think the bones at the Coby Cache from a few weeks ago was a deer. The deer bones were relatively small. Those other bones were huge! More like a cow or something? Maybe a dinosaur! (OK - not really) Anyway, we found this cache at the base of a tree hidden under some rocks. A nice amount of swag! Alex took a matchbox car and we left a Little Green Alien (LGA from Toy Story). Ben and Kaylee had to hang back, too many low hanging branches for Kaylee and the stroller. We had a great time for our first family geocaching trip.

Another Saturday Caching with Alex

Alex and I spent another Saturday afternoon searching for caches. We had 6 on our list and at the end of the day, found 4.

Out in Left Field

The first one we had already been searching for last week (at Kiker Elementary), still did not find and might have to bring more seasoned geocachers to help us search the next time. Maybe Happy Hopper.

What Moosie Girl Loves About South Austin

We returned to another one we didn't find last week and found it quickly. It was much funner at 70 degrees as opposed to 40. A cute little green treasure box. Alex was getting pretty excited about finding more

SEND-heR-A Rockin' Groove

Another quick stop, called a park and grab, although I do get worried about quickly putting my hand into holes around rocks. Never know what you'll find... spiders, scorpions, etc. Anyway, Alex was continuing to get more and more excited. Enough with the urban geocaches, we needed to find a trail in the woods!

*******************************************
Our next stop took us to a secluded park in the middle of Shady Hollow (in south Austin). A really nice trail through the woods. I counted at least 7 gigantic Live Oaks, that had to be at least 100 years old. Most of them had remnants of old ladders and tree houses. What a great place to explore as a kid, especially if you live in the neighborhood. We had three caches to find.

Coby's Cache

A great cache for kids, located right off the trail. I would have to say, it felt a little fantasy like. Alex and I had recently watched the Bridge to Terabithia. This location reminded me of the fort they found in the woods. While I opened, logged our visit, and checked out the Swag, Alex wanted to climb the tree. We took a bunch of photos and moved on.

Coby's Micro Cache

We headed on down the trail and the GPS pointed us to a very old cedar, lots of thickets, cactus, and other pointy plants. We bushwacked our way in and Alex was even brave enough to check out some spots only he could reach. Unfortunately, we didn't find the tiny cache. However, Alex did find a shiny new golf ball, so he felt we were victorious. We decided to move on and come back another time.

Coby's Micro 2 Cache

Our last cache of the day. From the instructions, it was going to be the toughest find. After bushwacking a bit off the main trail, we found the general location and began to look. Found it hidden in a tree, can't believe I saw it! If I were any shorter, I would not have seen it.

***************************

Our last cache was only a few 100 feet from the van! How convenient. We had a great time and look forward to going on another adventure soon.

Facebook friends can check out more photos on my profile.

Dick Nichols Park Caches

Last Sunday afternoon, I was able to do some geocaching on my own. I targeted Dick Nichols Park, which is not too far from our neighborhood. I actually started with a cache near Kiker elementary school, it's called Theo. A quick spot, hidden next to a large live oak tree.

When I arrived at the park, I decided I would work a series that had 7 caches. I actually started backwards and found the last three... Got Logged? Go Get Logged. Lean n' Log. They were fun to find, but the swag was pretty disappointing. I think they must have been around a long time. Old containers in need of some serious maintenance and upgrade.

I did one other at the park called Cedar Fever Reloaded. It was a large cache with some decent Swag. I'll need to return to the park to finish the series and find several other caches located in the area. It was getting dark so I ran out of time.

Crocodile Rock on the way to Potbelly lunch

We usually go out to lunch on Sundays and today was Potbelly day. I had seen this cache on the map, so I looked it up before we left. (Alex was also cranky, so it brightened his mood.)

It's a microcache, but was super easy to find, right across the parking lot from Potbelly.

You can see "Crocodile Rock" in the photo. Alex holds the cache.

First Cache Found - Bear Lake Zoo in Austin

Today we found our first cache. Although it was pretty chilly out today (40s/50s), I was very anxious to try out my new GPS device.

Alex and I ventured out to find (what I hoped to be) a simple cache, appropriate for small kids. I selected Bear Lake Zoo from the geocaching.com site. A nice description was provided and I was convinced this would be a great first cache.

After a short hike of about 450 feet from our parking spot, we found the cache. It's located in an undeveloped woody area of the Meridian subdivision, near a small lake. A new elementary school is set to be built nearby.

Alex selected a large rubber ball to keep from the cache, we left a green frog and wrote in the journal.