Seeley Lake Elementary student participants in the geocaching activity have just found the cache and are exploring the treasure it contains.
Michele Holmes, who led the geocaching excursion, teaches computer classes at Seeley Lake Elementary and is also the school librarian. Here she poses beside her bike, wearing one of the school's GPS units around her neck. She holds a book about geocaching which she purchased for the school library.
Dakota Wood points to the poster he made describing what geocaching is and explaining how to participate in the treasure hunting game. Geocaching enjoys international popularity. According to the website geocaching.com on April 25, Seeley Lake has 28 sites within a searchable radius. Missoula has 538 cache sites within a 10-mile radius.
SEELEY LAKE – Another 21st Century Grant-funded activity for Seeley Lake Elementary (SLE) students and their parents was declared a success by the participants. Saturday, April 16, SLE teacher Michele Holmes led a small group of bikers on a geocaching outing.
Geocaching is an outdoor treasure hunt game using maps, compasses or Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates.
Holmes, who has enjoyed geocaching with her family for more than 10 years, said it always made hiking trips more fun for her kids if they could find a cache at the end or along the way.
According to information provided on the poster made by SLE eighth-grader Dakota Wood, geocaching is a good thing to do "If you are on your way home from a vacation or bored in your hometown." The poster, on display in the SLE Outside store, says there are 68 caches in the Seeley Lake area.
Holmes introduced the participants to ways of accessing information about local cache sites. Holmes said the three Garmin GPS units the school recently purchased came pre-loaded with cache site information. For smart phone users, free geocaching apps are downloadable.
On the geocaching.com website, Holmes showed the group where to find the GPS coordinates of each cache, a brief physical description of the cache area, an assessment of the difficulty or mode of transportation (hiking, biking, canoeing, etc.) needed and the difficulty of finding the cache itself.
For their first outing, the SLE group biked to a cache named "At the Seeley Creek Trailhead." It was listed as easy and within biking range of downtown Seeley Lake. The cache description explained the trailhead was a key entryway to a whole range of summer and winter activities and ended, "To go with the theme of this key to winter sports, the cache, in a plastic box about the size used to hold 3x5 recipe cards, contains an assortment of keychains."
Holmes pointed out that caches are often well-hidden so it is helpful to know the size and kind of receptacle the treasure is stored in. Treasures usually have little monetary value but the rule is, if you remove an object, you must replace it with something of roughly equal value. Ideally the replacement should coordinate with the cache theme, if there is one. Holmes said this keeps the cache fun for the next people who find it.
Because some caches are difficult to find, Holmes explained, an encrypted hint usually follows the description. An easy decryption key is available next to it.
Armed with information about the site, and after a quick refresher on bike safety rules, the group set off. Second-grade participant Kilty Hanson said the ride was good, not too far.
About searching for the cache Hanson said, "We had a hard time looking for it because it was hidden (under wood) and it was like the color of it."
Wood spied the cache first and the others quickly gathered around it. Among the trinkets in the box was a sandal keychain which one of the students chose. The group replaced it with another keychain that Holmes had brought for that purpose.
Another rule of geocaching is to record your name and the date in the logbook kept in the cache container. The group did so and then Holmes gave each student a small booklet she had made. Labeled My Outside Adventure, the booklets had room for the students to write the date and a description of the event plus extra pages to record future geocaching sites they discover or other memorable outdoor activities they participate in.
After a picnic lunch, the group decided to look for another cache located farther in on the Seeley Creek Trails. Named the "Minuteman Cache," it contained small army figures and other trinkets. Wood said he walked right over the cache without seeing it, but one of the other participants discovered it. Again an item was removed and another put in its place.
Hanson expressed disappointment because the ammo box container mentioned in the description had been stolen and the contents left in a plastic bag. She said she was going to go back later with her dad and bring a better container.
All the participants said the day was a lot of fun. Hanson and Wood agreed it was more fun doing it with a group.
Wood said, "It's easier to find the cache because there are more people to look for it." He added, "It's kind of a race to beat everyone else to it."
Holmes said the students expressed a lot of interest in doing more caching and also in hiding caches for others to find. They talked about what would make a good location and what kinds of things they might want to put in a cache. She said she could see geocaching being an on-going activity, perhaps even evolving into a geocaching club.
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