Today we loaded up our kids (yes all 5 of them), a GPS, and of course my camera and went on our first geocache adventure. Never heard of it? This term was new to us as well. Apparently they can be found all over the country. People hide little treasure boxes called caches, and then list the GPS coordinates on www.geocache.com for people to look up and go hunt. Once you register on their site you can look up caches closest to you by entering your zip code. We were a little over zealous, and marked 5 different caches that we thought we could cover today. We headed to the first location and proceeded to fail for three hours! Of course since this was our first time it took us over an hour just to figure out how to use the GPS. Hey I never claimed to be tech savvy. What ever happened to the good ole compass. Oh, who am I kidding, I never really knew how to work one of those either. The next 2 hours were spent digging through bushes with pokey thorns, looking under shrubs, turning over rocks, and searching in every nook and cranny imaginable. Trust me I have scrapes from the knee down to prove it. This is about the point where the kids started complaining about being hungry and needing potty breaks, every 30 seconds. The competitive side of me ignored them and kept hunting. I refused to accept defeat, and was willing to go hungry for a job well done. However soon the whining got too loud to block out and we headed to my favorite all american restaurant to refuel on some Big Mac’s. We decided to try an easier cache listings before heading home. I was determined to peel back the lid of a cache before the sun went down on this day if I had to carry all five kids on my back to do so. Now that the kids, and my husband had full bellies I was able to pursued them to humor me one more time. I am so happy I am not a quitter because not only did we find our first cache, but I came across a great new photo shoot location. I can’t believe this little gem was just minutes away from my house and I had no idea. Can you say “way to go geocache master.”   Come on just say it.  Louder!   Give us the Turner shout out we deserve. Fine, maybe we are not the geocache masters, but we had fun, ok I had fun, and they were cute, and we like Big Macs! So if that is not something to shout about then I do not know what is. In fact you should not only shout but your should probably dance while you do it. Here is some photographic documentation of our day:

Walking to our first geocache location.

 

what a fun walk through the park!

 

Of course we had to stop for some pictures because like I said they are cute!

 

Corben was trying not to smile

 

If there is a tree near by Camryn is climbing it.

 

If there is a tree near by Addison is posing in it.

 

Aven was content just to hang out and enjoy the fresh Hawaiian air!

 

Londyn would rather look for rolley polley’s then caches.

 

This is us on our fruitless bush hunting expedition!

 

Finally 4 hours later we find our first cache!  This one was at the second park.

 

check out the future photo ops that I could get here!

lets check out the goods!

 

what fine treasures!You can take an item from the box as long as you replace it with something else.

 

Addison found a family coin from Missouri!

 

Londyn wanted to hold the box before we returned it to it’s location.  Check out the camouflage on this baby!

Well there you have it folks!  The Turner’s go geocaching.  Who wants in on  the next hunt?  Stay tuned to find out if Alyssa Turner becomes the new geocache master!