Fire Hydrant - Rated PG

This TB not in the Spur Me On cache.

Quite an adventure to find this one!

will keep it moving!

Everyone has been talking about Geocaching and how much fun it is to hunt for the cache's. I thought of it as a pirate hunt and presented the idea to my 4-year-old daughter a while ago. She thought about it and said it sounded fun. My husband had an ancient GPS that I was going to sell at the garage sale due to the economic times we are in, but I decided to hang onto it. So this last Sunday after church, it was beautiful weather and we needed a family activity. My husband was tinkering in the computer room and after two hours came out and said how about we try some local coordinants and see what happens. I said it sounded like fun! We told our oldest daughter and her 3-year-old sister we were going on a treasure hunt. They grabbed their tin lunch boxes and put in a toy they'd be willing to part with and I quickly read up on Geocaching etiquette. We grabbed our 10 month old son, some snacks, and water bottles. The girls put on their hiking boots and we jumped in the truck.
My husband activated the GPS and got frustrated because the coordinates were in decimal form and we needed minutes. We were ready to throw in the Geocaching towel and then he learned that we could convert the number. Finally, we had coordinates that we could follow. We were off!
We live in Albertville, MN and a neighboring city is St. Michael, literally a hop, skip and jump from home. We drove and followed the GPS coordinants and the kids were so excited. We watched the screen as we got closer and closer and found a water pond. The GPS said that the cache was in an area that had about a dozen bushes. I was a little doubtful that we would find the cache, due to my husbands conversion of coordinates, but I started looking under each bush. Some bushes were of good size and thought the cache would be burried under one of them in the bark chips...just like burried treasure! I looked and looked and restarted again because I couldn't find anything burried. I was gentle in my approach so I could "lead" my daughters to the right bush and have them actually "find" the cache. I was sweating and had itch weed rash up and down my arms. My husband was checking the GPS and not helping! All of the sudden I spotted about a 12 inch container right in the middle of a bush I had previously checked under. My heart jumped and I said "girls why don't you come and check this spot for the treasure." Giggling and excited their eyes grew big as saucers and then they began to fight over who was going to take off the lid and what they were going to take and leave. My husband was so excited to find the fire hydrant bug and had no doubt we would plant it somewhere on our vacation next week to the North Shore. The whole experience has been great and was the second cache we found on that day. It is a fun and exciting thing for our very "average" family here in Minnesota. Our daughter was very determined to even sign the log with her 4-year-old handwriting and can't wait to do it again. Thank you for the fire information, mom is a nurse by trade and appreciates all preventative information. Our daughters are very versed in "safety patrol" with helmets, seat belts and the fire information was added to their little growing minds.
Love from Minnesota and God Bless!

Minnesota bound