Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Geocache: Intersection

In my most recent attempt to lose weight and become more active, I decided that I would do some geocaching.  My aunt mentioned that there were walking trails around where we live and I thought to myself "Hillary, there might be geocaches on those trails that will get you out of the house and moving."  In order for exercise to really work for me, I need some sort of goal and a geocache seemed like the perfect thing to walk to.

This is my first geocache in a long time and I was really excited to find that there is an app for my phone that I can use to help me find them.  In the past, I used a GPS that I had borrowed from my physics teacher.  The app is pretty cute.  
I found the first screen extremely funny.  The other illustrations were amusing as well, but this was the best one.  As if I would walk off the edge of a cliff! Well.. I am accident prone, so maybe I should be taking this warning more seriously.

Clip of me starting out.  

Here is me walking towards the geocache.  I wasn't quite sure if I was allowed to be where I was.  It kind of looked like a back alley, not a street.  On the map it showed that I would turn down a street and walk towards the trail, but there was no street name that matched that on the map.  I took my chances and went down there anyway.  It wasn't creepy or anything.  And I wouldn't say "cute," probably more... non-urban.  Since I've moved to San Antonio I have really only been in city area, so this was a nice change of pace from what I normally see around town.  



I saw a total of fifteen people on my walk there and back, and every single person looked at my pencil.  Would I look less quizzical if I wore a fanny pack?  If you think about it though, a pencil wouldn't be a horrible weapon.  I could potentially stab an attacker.  Maybe that's why they thought I was carrying around a pencil, for protection.



Guys, I found it!!  It wasn't too hard to find.  I'm glad I chose this one as my first.  It was an easy one to just get started off with and get my feet wet.  And there was a Harry Potter reference!  That was exciting to see :)  Thank you Funkeymonkeys for a great first geocache!


11th Grade Geochache

          In my eleventh grade physics class we were given an extra credit assignment to find three geocaches and make a powerpoint presentation about it.  I teamed up with my friend Andrew and had so much fun on this project.  Recently I saw a youtube video from Bryarly Bishop [click here for video] and decided to pull up my old geocache project and take a look at it.  Laughter ensued.  I made a youtube video with the clips that we had filmed for our presentation [click for video] which you can watch, but I decided to make a blog showing and explaining all of the powerpoint slides to you.  Enjoy!!


This is the first slide of our presentation.  As you can see, that's me on the left and my friend Andrew on the right.  I guess we were really excited about geocaching.  That is the only explanation I have for our expressions. Although, I look more frightened than excited.  


 This is the usual definition slide.. But if you ever feel like geocaching yourself, you can go to geocaching.com to find geocaches near you.  They also have an app that you can get on your smart phone.  The intro app is free and gives you three geocaches to find.  After that you have to pay $9.99 for more, but you can just use the website for free.  It's just easier with a smartphone or gps system.


This was on Sara Jane road.  It was the first one we went to and it took us forever to find it.  We were thinking that it had been moved or washed away with a storm, but we just weren't looking hard enough.  I think the most difficult thing about geocaching is not knowing what the container looks like, but that also makes it fun.  As you can see, I found this first one!!


Here is just a collage of pictures we took while searching and after finding it.  I think Andrew got a little muddy and started freaking out thinking we were going to have to get dirty to find it.  We were a little disappointed to find that our friends (whom we were treating like competitors) had already found it earlier that day.    


This was my favorite to find.  It was off in a wooded area and I went in alone to find it.  I believe it was called Golf Cart because it was by a place that sold golf carts.  In the video we made the class made fun of Andrew for sending in a girl to find the geocache after he said he wouldn't go in because of "snakes and stickers."  Truthfully, I liked going and finding it for myself.  


This is just a picture of me holding the geocache.  I think Andrew took it as I was going back into the area to place it back where I found it.  As we were driving around, having fun, we saw the hummer limo and Andrew loved it so he took a picture of it and we put it into our presentation.  It's not relevant in any way, but that didn't matter to us.  


This last one, which should have been the easiest, was the most difficult.  I was more nervous looking for it because someone had put it on their fence and I didn't like looking around on private property in the middle of a neighborhood.  I felt like we were going to get into trouble or something.  We were so excited to see that our friends hadn't gotten to this one yet and we had beat them to it.  Come to find out, they never even bothered to look for this one, they went to another one on the opposite side of town.


Overall I had a great time!  It was tons of fun and I got extra credit for it.  This last slide has Andrew and my dad trying to figure out how to work the GPS in the morning before we headed off on our little adventure.  After looking over the video and powerpoint, I've decided that I will go geocaching on my own here in San Antonio.  I think it will be fun!  There is a trail about a half mile away from where I live and I assume that there will be lost of geocaches out there.  It will get me out of the house and exercising.  I'll blog about those adventures later!!