Bongoland

This morning I took James geocaching to a botanical gardens about 20 minutes away. I had heard about this place a few times, but was reminded about it by my friend Leah. It is a really cool place, and it has tons of history! First it was a sugar mill plantation in the 1800's and there are still ruins and equipment preserved on the property.

 

 Then it was converted into a sort-of amusement park in the 1940's called Bongoland, with huge stone dinosaurs, a caged baboon named Bongo, and a train that took you around on a tour. It shut down after only a few years due to lack of interest, I guess those kind of amusement parks weren't in style back then! Luckily the dinosaurs are still standing.

A giant ground sloth:

 Walking on the dino foot prints:

 T-rex:

 Stegosaurus:

 Triceratops:

Now it has been adopted by a local nonprofit group as a botanical garden and it is gorgeous!! There are all these little side gardens, like an Asian garden, an herb garden, a "natural chapel" with walls of bamboo and trees, and even a human sundial. My favorite is this gorgeous tree they call a "confederate tree" because supposedly confederate soldiers camped under it during the civil war:

James and I had so much fun exploring, but we didn't end up finding the geocache. There was a wedding going on (who has a wedding at 10 in the morning on a Tuesday??) and I didn't want to interrupt with my weird looking under and over rocks geocache search :) In a way it is good, because it means we have a reason to go back soon!

Key West 2012: Geocaching

This year we went to the Keys much more prepared for some geocaching! I preloaded our gps with all of the caches on Key West, then I printed a map with each cache marked on it along with all of the sites we planned to visit. That way, we could just check the map to see if a geocache is close by when we were out and about. I also compiled a document with all of the cache descriptions and hints, just in case Anthony's geocaching app wasn't working on his phone (it can be unreliable).

When we first got to Key West, our friends were still an hour away and since we can't check into our rental place without them we decided to do some geocaching! We found a parking spot near the first one and luckily two more were close by. As we were walking, we passed by the courthouse that had these awesome trees in front:

We tried to get a picture with all of us looking the same direction. Not really successful :)

Heading toward the geocache.



We made it to the geocache coordinates at the end/beginning of US 1, now we just had to find it. The hint told us that it was on a telephone pole, but every single telephone pole on the street turned up nothing. 

I was ready to give up and was starting to think that maybe someone moved it when my mom noticed that there were two US1 mile marker zero signs. We had only checked one side of the street, and there was an interesting looking telephone pole across the street....

We decided to give it a shot. We got to the telephone pole and I still wasn't seeing anything. I didn't want to look too closely because it looked like the other side of the pole was on private property, but my mom is braver than me and went to investigate. Sure enough, there it was!! Here we are signing the log:

The second cache was a few blocks down the road. Anthony got a little nervous when I started following the gps to this large electrical building at the base of a radio tower and he was sure we were in the wrong spot. A few minutes later, Anthony spotted the cache underneath the front steps to the building nestled among a bunch of cables. Now my mom and Anthony had both found one, it was time for me to make a find!

The third one was yet a few more blocks down the road at a historic church. The description and clues were pretty telling, so I knew exactly where it was. I walked up to the sign and looked behind it and sure enough, there was a large wooden box attached. I opened the lid and there was the cache!

The fourth cache we found was at the entrance to the eco discovery center we visited at the end of the week. It was pretty obvious (at least to me) where it was hidden :)

           

Signing the log:

Trying to put it back so that it isn't showing:

Later that day after visiting the Butterfly conservatory, we walked over to a spot that had two virtual geocaches. Virtual geocaches are places that are interesting or informative and don't have physical things to find, you just have to prove you visited either by a photo or by emailing the owner answers to questions. While we were walking, my mom took this photo of a banana tree in someone's yard. I want a banana tree!!

Here we are taking a picture at the Southernmost point in the US. It is 90 miles to Cuba from that marker. When we got there, there was a seriously long line to take a picture by the buoy. It was so hot, we decided we didn't care if other people were in our picture, let's just take it and go! The other virtual geocache at this spot was one about erosion and tides, so I got to use this picture for two different caches. Awesome!

Wordless Wednesday

Geocache #2

Early this morning James and I set out on our second geocaching adventure! Anthony was getting ready for work, so he decided to take pictures of our set up :)

Not liking it for some reason, trying to calm him down.

I didn't have to use a GPS for this one, the descriptions were pretty helpful and I was fairly certain I knew exactly where to look once I got there. I read that there were a lot of ducks in the duck pond I was walking to, so I made sure to put some bread in my bag for them.

I found it!

The fake duck had a bottom that slid out to reveal a secret compartment

As I was signing the log, a few ducks rushed over to see what I had for them.

This cache was 1.7 miles away from my house, so 3.4 miles round trip. I thought it would be no problem, I used to routinely walk 3.2 miles on my lunch break but man was I tired towards the end!

Interesting things I noticed/learned on my walk:
* There are at least 4 military veterans on the street I live on. Most of them have a flag pole in their yard with an American flag and then a military flag (POW, marines, etc...). Two of them live right next door and across the street!

* I wandered by a garage sale on my way back and started looking through a stack of books an old woman had for sale. She was at least 65, and here are a few sample titles of the books: "Sex over age 50", "A guide to getting it on", "A passion filled marriage"....so funny! and awkward...

* For some reason, you get a lot of strange looks when you power walk by, wearing a baby. I don't think we are that weird, but with a large majority of our neighbors being retired seniors maybe it is just a new thing to them? Were there no baby wearing moms back in the day?

Anthony's First Geocache

Yesterday for our evening walk, I decided to take Anthony to find his first geocache! This one was listed as being pretty tricky, so I hadn't attempted it by myself. Luckily, Anthony was able to download a geocache app on his phone that listed all of the information from the geocache website and turned your phone into a compass that pointed the way to go. Cool!

Anthony loves how we look whenever James and I get ready for a walk. He thinks it is so funny!

We've learned to tuck a burp cloth in the wrap because this kid loves to spew!

The GPS kept leading us right to this barricade. We knew that the cache was listed as really cleverly hidden and camouflaged, so Anthony suggested looking behind the reflectors. I started to look around and noticed that this reflector looked a little different from the rest....

 It's a magnet!!

 If you look closely you can see that there is a slit on the back with a place for the log for you to sign. I was so proud that I got to sign this one!

I know you can tell that I am loving geocaching since the last few posts were about it, but I can't get over how much fun it is! Especially when you make a find like that one, you feel so accomplished! We see so many interesting things that we never would have seen before when we go on our adventures. Yesterday we got to see the cutest basset hound puppy taking a walk close to where we found the cache. Plus I am getting tons of exercise!

Geocaching

I have really been wanting to get outside and start walking more often, but being who I am I can't just go walk. I need a goal, an activity, something to accomplish otherwise I get bored to tears. So, James and I decided to go geocaching! Anthony had never heard of it before, so if you are like him and don't know what it is, geocaching is an outdoor "treasure-hunting" game where people hide containers at different coordinates and then post the location and clues online. You use a GPS to find the coordinates and then search for the cache. Inside you will usually find a logbook where you write your name and the date when you found it and sometimes there will be a collection of small trinkets to collect. You are free to take one as long as you leave another one in its place. I looked online and there are 9 different ones within 2 miles of our house and today we found our very first one!

Trying to get a picture of the two of us.

Build-a-bear hat still fits!

Today was our first outing with James in a moby-style wrap. So comfortable!

 

We found it!!

Push the turtle aside to reveal the treasures

Look at how many people have found this! It has been going since 2009.

So much fun! I can't wait to find our next one. I think we will try one that is supposed to be by a duck pond next...