About 260 more new Geocachers...
July 23, 2011

Just wanted to let you all know that you might be seeing about 240+ additional eager and youthful Geocachers out on the hunt! 

I volunteered and taught 13 classes over 4 days of 16+ Webelos Scouts how to Geocache at the Webelos Extreme Adventure Camp at the Lost Pines Scout Reservation in Bastrop, TX.   They gave me free reign to teach these scouts about Geocaching, so I gave them a little of everything.  I started off with explaining what Geocaching was, explained sizes (nanos, micros, large and undetermined sizes) and then taught them how to use a GPS and how they work (explaining Latitude, Longitude, Satellites, Equator, and Prime Meridian).  I explained muggles, and how to be stealthy and inconspicuous while hunting, why that was important, so as not to bring unwanted attention to themselves to prevent the dreaded bomb-scare or other ill-thought schemes by muggles.  

From there, I took them out to find three privately hidden geocaches that I had placed on the scout reservation and rewarded there finds with a certificate for a free ice cream sandwich at the Trading Post.   We discussed the importance of signing the log and replacing the cache exactly as they found it. We then convened again under a roof, to get out of the 100° temperatures, and I explained the many different types of caches while they enjoyed the cold treat.  

I explained night caches, earth caches, puzzle/mystery caches, and multi-stage caches.  The night-cache example I gave was, "Threat Level Midnight", explaining that night caches are very cool and sometimes involved lasers, infrared, fire-tacks, glow-in-the-dark, and night-vision goggles.  I showed them some of the travel bugs that I had in my possession at the time, explain why they were so very cool.  I told them a quick story about a travel bug that I had found that will bring a fellow Netherlands geocacher and myself together to return a travel bug to him.