Our second attempt

This was our second attempt at finding a geocache. My son and boyfriend and I were full of confidence after finding the last cache. We went on a trail near the dam,  This trail is mostly uphill and was quite a climb in 80 degree heat.  We were holding our sides and breathing heavily within ten minutes of our quest.  I was tempted to turn around but my boyfriend stated we came this far so we might as well go all the way.  The compass on my app kept saying we were many meters away.  Finally we made the decision to go off the trail.  Unfortunately the compass was pointing straight down a hill.  Again we pressed on.  We had to pick how we would go down this steep hill. My son and boyfriend picked a steeper descent than I.  I was told by my seven year old to go the flatter way, because the way he was taking was for men!   "The men" watched as I made my descent backwards.  If I was going to fall it was going to be on my behind!  My boyfriend made a smart alakey comment saying "come on honey, get down here so I can kick you!"  This was his way of showing appreciation of being in the woods sweating his butt off!  My son must have took him seriously because he said "that is not helpful at all!" We were all standing on an incline looking around roots of fallen tree while the compass was going crazy.  4 Meters, five meters six meters.. Hey there's a salamander!  We looked the best we could but we were beat!  We admitted defeat and headed back to the car.  In the back of my mind I knew  I would be coming back to find this on my own.  Although we did not find the cache we did have a good hike.

Our first cache!

With my geocahing app in hand  my son and my boyfriend headed back to Stonewall Dam.  My son was excited and grabbed his "swag" that he was going to put in the cache.  He brought two items.  One was a finger puppet dragon, the other was  Mc Donals's toy.  I believe they were the pigs from Shrek.  They had a button in the back and when you pushed it the voice said "pootie poot".  I am not sure what the Shrek pigs were really saying but I am sure some other child would enjoy it.

The first stop was a  success.  with my phone app's compass we were able to find the cache within a few minutes. My son was excited a chose a badger figurine from the canister.  He was dismayed to find the pootie poot pigs did not fit so he put in a finger puppet instead!

With this victory fresh in our mind we drove a minute away to the next stop, a trail by the dam.

First adventure

My son and I decided to go out and try to find our fist geocahe.  Our first adventure was more of hike.  I thought perhaps the clues on the geocaching website would be enough to find the cache. Not so.  Needless to say we made two stops at the Stonewall Jackson dam and did not come up with anything.  We did however see a deer, find a coyote paw print (who am I to disagree with my son?) and some acorns.  Along the way I talked to my son about my dad and the scenery.  Suddenly the fact that we did not find the cache did not seems to matter.  I went home and downloaded the app on my phone from geocaching.com.