/ Eric Schudiske /

Table Top Trove GCMYYZ GEOCACHE OF THE WEEK – December 19, 2011

The top of Table Top Trove

A cable car delivers geocachers to one of the most visited geocaches in Africa. Table Top Trove (GCMYYZ) was hidden in 2005 by Richter Family. Geocachers with more time and a thirst for mountain climbing adventure have made the 500 meter (1640 foot) ascent by foot.

The cache owner recently posted this note on the cache page, “Out and about on the mountain with my dog. Wow! Fantastic memories! I placed this cache over 6 years ago and it has been ticking over on it’s own ever since with no maintenance visits required. Cache doing well. The memories of spending every weekend up here climbing in a by-gone era came flooding back with a smile.”

The cache location shares those smiles. The difficulty two, terrain two geocache has been logged by more than 500 geocachers. The geocachers have arrived from more than a dozen countries. They share their thanks for the geocache in their logs. One writes, “A wonderful winter’s day up on table mountain. No wind, no rain, and no clouds! I had a fantastic time exploring. Many thanks from Sweden!”

View from the Table Top Trove cable car

Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the globe. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on the Latitude 47 blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com. If you’ d like to nominate a Geocache of the Week, send an email with your name, comments, the name of the geocache and the GC code to pr@groundspeak.com.

 

/ Eric Schudiske

Signal Baby – My Geocaching Wish List Music Video

It’s the holiday season and some geocachers are pulling out all the stops to ask for geocaching gear. Check out this version of the “Signal Baby” song. Thanks to geocacher and volunteer reviewer, honeychile, for writing and singing the “Signal Baby” song and producing the video. Tell us, what’s on your geocaching wish list this year?

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/ Eric Schudiske /

New Teacher Tools: Geocaching and Education

Louie Bliss and Foxfire working the Geocaching Booth

Teachers say geocaching can be a powerful learning tool that involves critical thinking, hands-on learning and active engagement.

Over the past few years, geocaching has become more commonly used in the world of education. Now Geocaching.com offers more help to teachers who incorporate geocaching in the classroom. Geocaching.com just released a  Geocaching and Education page to provide educators with a range of useful resources. Geocaching.com employees, known as Lackeys, are also attending education conventions to spread the word about geocaching in the classroom.

Teachers have traditionally created their own material to incorporate geocaching into geography, math, science, history, English, and physical education curricula. The passion to use the activity in school has become so great that we over at Groundspeak are now actively partnering with teachers to better support geocaching and education.

Just this past week, Lackeys smelly_kelly, Foxfire, Louie Bliss, Katie-b, and bethany_b attended the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Convention in Seattle, Washington. The conference featured more than 50 booths and hosted more than 3,000 attendees. The Geocaching.com booth proved to be a great success as geocachers and non-cachers alike stopped by to learn about the activity and how it can be used as a teaching tool.

Geocaching and Education

Those working the booth were pleased with the number of teachers already using geocaching in their classrooms. It was equally encouraging to see how many teachers plan on incorporating geocaching into future lessons.

According to Lackey Louie Bliss, “people were really impressed that we have a brand new section dedicated to Geocaching and Education. Most people had heard of geocaching and done it themselves, but many had never thought to teach it to students. They walked away really excited to try it.”

Lackey’s found that both students and teachers are using geocaching to teach a variety of subjects. “We had a number of science teachers discuss how they plan to co-teach with social studies or geography teachers,” said Louie Bliss.

smelly_kelly and Louie Bliss with a 10-foot astronaut

Check out the education forums if you are interested in posting questions, ideas, sharing curriculum, and more. The forums are a fabulous way for teachers to learn from one another and for Groundspeak to learn from teachers.

Resources available on the Geocaching and Education page include educational screencasts, geocaching videos, a link to the Intro to Geocaching PowerPoint Presentation, and a link to the education forums.

 

/ Eric Schudiske /

Groundspeak Weekly Newsletter – December 14, 2011

Double the Geocaching Fun This Year

Purchase a Magellan eXplorist GC this holiday season and Magellan will toss in a FREE Trackable.

The eXplorist GC is 100% dedicated to geocaching adventures. The device has a detailed and accurate preloaded worldwide map, easy to navigate menus, and rich graphics. It’s paperless geocaching-friendly and comes preloaded with some of the most popular geocaches in the world. And it’s a great deal at $149.99.

To receive your free Trackable, the eXplorist GC must be ordered through Magellan. Hurry. Trackable supplies are limited.

This offer is only valid in the US and Canada.

/ Eric Schudiske /

49 and Holding the Cache – A Gold Miner’s Delight GC202RG GEOCACHE OF THE WEEK – December 12, 2011

 

Pella, Iowa - Near '49 and Holding the Cache'

The iconic village of Pella, Iowa in the United States boasts a quaint downtown, a working wind mill and the geocache with the most Favorite Points  in the entire state. ’49 and Holding the Cache – A Gold Miner’s Delight’ (GC202RG) has more than 100 Favorite Points. jstrout & cjandbj created and placed the cache in 2009. The special instructions on the difficulty 2.5, terrain 1 geocache page are written as a poem:

A GOLD MINER’S DELIGHT
NO NEED FOR A SHOVEL
NO NEED FOR A MULE
NO NEED FOR ANY SPECIAL TOOL
A NICE ALL WEATHER PARK AND GRAB

The creative cache draws adventure seekers from around the region. Geocachers often choose ’49 and Hold the Cache’ to celebrate milestone finds. Cachers log about the challenge of the hide and the unique cache container.

Celebrating milestones at the geocache

A geocacher who logged this cache writes, “To say this is the best geocache I’ve ever seen would be an understatement. This is mind-bogglingly fantastic! The creativity, work, money, craftsmanship, and awesomeness that has been put into this cache is just plain amazing… I’ve seen and made a few pretty darn cool caches, but this one takes the cake.”

Check out this Geocaching.com Presents video to see inside the cache. The video was shot with cache owner permission. You can see the “49 and Holding Cache” at 1:00 into the video.

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Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the globe. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on the Latitude 47 blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com. If you’ d like to nominate a Geocache of the Week, send an email with your name, comments, the name of the geocache and the GC code to pr@groundspeak.com.