Boy Scout Troop 244, Kenner, Louisiana, finds it’s hard to imagine going anywhere without planning their trip around geocaching. The troop first tried geocaching in April of 2003. “None of us had done it before, nor did we know anyone who had” says Robert Locke, troop committee chairman.
Backpacking
In March, our advancement chairman, Gregg Bridevaux, had initiated a plan to complete a two-day backpack trip on the Tuxachanie Trail near McHenry, Mississippi. We had already been intending to try out geocaching and checked on the geocaching.com web site to see if there were any geocaches in that area.
We were delighted to discover that there were four caches located along the trail. A quick check enabled us to transfer the exact locations onto our own topographic (topo) maps. Scouts typically use topo maps to learn and practice their orienteering skills.
Next, we plugged the coordinates into a Magellan GPSr that we had borrowed. Finally, we added the coordinates of various trailheads and noteworthy land features to use as reference points for our progress.
Led by our fearless scoutmaster, Jared Schexnaydre, we set out on our mission....we found ourselves faced with our first problem; everybody wanted to swap something. We enjoyed the sweet taste of success when we found the first geocache only five minutes down the trail. It was named “POW” after the trailhead site, which was located at an old World War II camp for German prisoners of war. Interesting locations are what we like and can be what differentiates a good cache from a great one.
There, we found ourselves faced with our first problem; everybody wanted to swap something. We knew we were setting precedent and decided that the senior patrol leader would make the decision about what to swap and that we should replace the swapped item with something of comparable value. Since that time, our policy has been revised very little. Sometimes we take turns making the swap decision and other times the decision is made by whoever finds it.
Down the trail we went, feeling satisfied that we had somehow crossed a threshold into something totally new and different, our baptism into the world of geocaching. We were at the next cache for a short while, when another geocacher using the geocaching handle ZingerMTB, and a companion, joined us in the search.
This cache, placed by someone called Drat19, was more challenging than the first and as we would eventually discover, typical of his style. With all of us searching, we gave the area a thorough scouring.
After the find, we enjoyed some trail talk with team ZingerMTB. They were courteous and passed along the printout of a cache page of a brand new cache, which coincidentally was located at the spot where we would be camping that night. What a timely stroke of luck! We found that one, right after breakfast the next morning.
And so it went. We ended up finding all five caches and learned a lot about the advantages of GPS navigation as we went along. We used the GPS distance measuring capabilities to pace ourselves and plan strategic rest stops. One of our waypoints, on each of the two days, was the half waypoint. In answer to the age-old question, “How much further…” we were able to press a few buttons and give the answer accurately to within about 50 feet.
When we returned home, we set up our own geocaching handle, BSATroop244 and entered our first logs.
Geocaching cycle safari
Our troop dabbled with geocaching over the next few months, developing our technique. Our assistant scoutmaster, Steve Haley, suggested that we have one campout built entirely around geocaching.
A quick scan of the New Orleans area map that we had created, complete with colored pins, indicated an unusual concentration of caches along the lake and in a nearby park where we might be able to spend the night. The result was our September 2003 trip, which we called our “Geocaching Cycle Safari.”
A route was carefully selected to minimize on-street exposure to traffic while linking as many geocaches as we thought we could fit in over a two-day period. We had the parents drop the scouts, their bicycles, and their overnight gear near a local boat launch. The overnight gear was stored in three shuttle vehicles and we left one vehicle at our campsite, which we had reserved three weeks earlier. Our group departed the drop zone, cycling east on a bicycle and jogging path which runs along the scenic south shore of Lake Pontchartrian.
One by one, we found the caches as we went. People with handles like Bamboozle, Bloencustoms, Mausdad, and Oilman had hid them. The hiding places were very imaginative, under rocks, behind trees, inside trees and all in interesting locations.
At one location, we discovered that someone had used a magnetic container to attach it to a steel structure. This was completely new to us and there would be more like it before the end of our trip. We learned not to rule out any cubic inch of space when making a search.
Eventually we left the lakeshore and threaded our way down through the 1,500-acre New Orleans City Park, where we later spent the night at a place called Scout Island. The periodic showers throughout the first day did not deter us as we had managed to find shelter under oak trees, bus stops, and bridges.
Our progress was further slowed by equipment problems, which we overcame with a few tools, some ingenuity, and good old-fashioned teamwork. Still, we managed to keep to the schedule and see some interesting area attractions along the way.
Thanks to the bad weather, we encountered very few people in areas where we likely would have. Their absence contributed to our success. We also have come to find that teenage boys climbing all over outdoor obstacles and poking into every crevasse is not a sight that arouses curiosity, because that is what teenage boys ordinarily do.
...we developed another important policy; whoever first removes it must also replace it. That’s probably good advice for any team of two or more. At one of the caches, a scout wasn’t sure where to put back the container. It turned out that he was not the one who had first removed it. Successive visits to a geocache has shown us that they sometimes are not in the location where we saw them last. Apparently, it happens because it is picked up by one team member, but put back by another. In this case, the return was important because it was originally stuck into position with Velcro. So, we developed another important policy; whoever first removes it must also replace it. That’s probably good advice for any team of two or more.
We had a terrific time and finished the trip only seven minutes beyond the targeted completion time of 2:00 PM on day two. We had successfully located and logged all 21 targeted geocaches as well as having bicycled 35 miles, which fulfilled several of the bicycling merit badge requirements.
Geocaching mega-team
In the months that followed, we spiced up our outings by geocaching along the way. In January 2004, our troop invited Webelos Den 14 of Pack 935 and family members to accompany us on a two-day, 330 mile round trip campout to the USS Alabama in Mobile, Alabama.
Besides the GPSr that we had already been using, assistant scoutmasters Ray Fuenzalida and Jack Dever also produced two more of their own. The result was what we called our “Geocaching Mega-Team,” 36 members strong. Many of them had never geocached before and our 5-cache selection, mostly at rest stops, turned out to be a diverse representative sample of some of the different types. We also had a diverse range of people: men and women, boys and girls, with ages ranging from six to sixty.
Imagine this scene: Eight cars pull into the rest stop, 36 people get out and all migrate toward a remote corner of the area. Curiously, other rest stoppers didn’t seem interested but newcomers to our group certainly were. Remembering our first time and how we were not sure what we were looking for made it a heartwarming spectacle for those of us who now considered ourselves seasoned geocaching veterans. It was absolutely fun to see. And with 36 pairs of eyes searching, the chances of failure were nonexistent. Not surprisingly, we found them all.
We have learned that the variations of this exciting new sport are limited only by our imaginations. We are currently in the process of adding our own troop geocache, something weird, way out and wacky.
It is reassuring to know that some of the things we practice as boy scouts are also common policy at geocaching.com: low environmental impact, pick up litter, buddy system. safety first.
We enjoy knowing that there is a good, clean, healthy sport that can be accomplished anywhere by anyone of any age, and especially by the enthusiastic scouts of Boy Scout Troop 244.