I’ve been trying to walk every day and today’s weather made it “oh so easy”. It was a gorgeous, cool September day. I am fortunate enough to live near Glenwood Gardens and I often head there for a nice walk.
As I was pulling up I decided to check my Geocache app to see if there were any Geocaches located in Glenwood Gardens. Lo and behold – there are NUMEROUS caches at Glenwood Gardens. Who knew?!
If you’re not familiar with Geocaching, I rediscovered this hobby a few months ago and wrote all about it here: Beginner’s Guide to Geocaching
I use the Cachly app (around $5) and love it. I fired it up on my iPhone and it brought up a number of possibilities around me. I read the brief descriptions on each geocache and decided on a cache that was a multi-part cache. That was a new concept for me. The description told me to find three clues before I went to the final location. For this cache I had to follow the instructions (located in the cache description) to find some numbers located on three different park signs. Then the numbers were put together to reveal a combination for the lock that was at the final destination. The final destination was found using the phone’s GPS (just like you’d find a regular geocache).
Steve Jobs should be happy as I was really geeking out on the trail today – I listened to a Podcast while I walked, used the “notes” section to keep track of my code (for the combination lock) and, of course, kept my phone handy to keep an eye on my location in order to find the geocache at the end. AND I took some pics with said phone and uploaded to the 365 Cincinnati Facebook page while I worked on that lock. What did I ever do without an iPhone? 🙂
I don’t want to give away any details on the hunt as I would highly encourage you to do this one yourself. It’s an easy one to do if you follow directions well. And the park itself is one of Hamilton County Park District’s prettiest parks (in my opinion anyway). AND this is a GREAT one for kids. Look what’s inside this box…
There’s a wide array of trinkets and goodies in the box. Bring something to leave and you can take something from the box. There are all kinds of great kid toys in there. And be sure to bring a pen so you can sign the log (this one is a small spiral notebook). The pencil in the box didn’t work so I couldn’t sign it … so someone bring a pen with you to leave in the box.
Here’s the exact hunt I did: Glenwood Gardens Multi-Part Geocache
Are you a geocacher? Let us know in the comments below…
I’ve been wanting to do this – I think my husband would love it. You sold me! Is there a free app that you can do it with to try it out?
Thanks!
There are free apps but they don’t appear to be all that well received. That’s why I went with the $10 version. It does everything I want at this point. I figure it will give me hours of enjoyment for just $10.
I’ve been geocaching for over 2 years and I’ve done the geocache mentioned in the article. It’s a great hobby that gets you out and about and it can be done nearly anywhere. I guarantee you that wherever you go in this world there will be a geocache nearby. It can really be as easy or as complicated as you want and my kids find it exciting too. I currently use an offline app called Geosphere on my jailbroken iPod touch with a GPS puck but I started out with a cheap hand-held Garmin.