Geocaching 101 at Second Baytown Church

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A couple of weeks ago, while teaching a geocaching 101 event with education booth at the Baytown Nurture Nature Festival, I met the children’s minister at Second Baytown Church, Ruth Charlson.

 She told me they were using a version of geocaching in her church to illustrate Biblical principles and wondered if I could come and explain the game.  I agreed and wouldn’t you know it, two geocaching friends, husband and wife team Joe and Jennifer Porter attend church there and showed up at both classes to explain their personal experiences.

 

My first group was a whole covey of eight and nine year kiddos and to my absolute amazement, they listened to everything I said.  I fully expected them to be fidgety and distracted, but when I held up my Gold doubloon geocoin and talked about pirate treasure and pieces of eight, you could have heard a pin drop.  You could see their brain-gears spinning as I talked about swag…  Swag is a term used by geocachers and what pirates would call booty.

 The golden rule of geocaching is, if you take something from the cache, you leave something of equal or greater value.  So, if after finding a geocache and signing the logbook, you may decide to leave a dollar bill, or a cool looking key chain, also valued at one dollar.  The next geocacher finds the cache, signs the log and wants the dollar bill, but all they have is a marble and a patriotic pin that cost two dollars.  Which do they leave?  The patriotic pin and then they may drop in the marble for fun.

My second class and I hope she forgives me as I cannot remember the class teachers name, were older kids and they were just as attentive.  I had a good time, as did my friends, Joe and Jennifer and hopefully the kiddos will join this fun game, get off the couch and the X-box and get outside in our parks and find some geocaches.

For more information on geocaching and a few tips and funny videos, go to my page located here and the official geocaching.com web site.

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