Do you enjoy Pokemon go as well as geocaching? Do you have a Pokemon Go loving muggle in your life? In this episode I talk about trying to combine the two as a way to get my muggle husband to go with me and share a few ideas to incorporate geocaching while your muggle love ones.
Places and Things Mentioned
– Pokémon Go
– Meta, MO
– Diamond Pet Food
Cache Highlight: “Civic League“
Transcript
Despite my attempts to share geocaching with my husband, he’s still not a fan. Something that he does like to do though is play Pokémon Go. My son likes to do both and so do I. So sometime, when I want to combine geocaching and family time, I try to find places where my son and I can find some geocaches and my husband and us can all play Pokémon Go as well.
For those who may not know, Pokémon Go is an augmented reality mobile game that allows you to search for, find, catch, evolve, and battle different Pokémon and trainer.
The best places I have found for this are parks that offer both Pokémon stops or gyms and geocaches. But not all parks offer a lot of both so some research is needed ahead of time to determine the best places to go. In my experiences, parks, especially larger parks with lots of walking paths and play areas, will have at least a couple of pokestops or gyms so finding a place to play Pokémon go at isn’t very hard but not all parks will have a geocache. Most parks in my area at least have at least one but not all of them do. The ones that do have geocaches may not have the geocache in the same area as the Pokémon go stuff. If you’re having to do much bushwhacking to get to the cache you’re probably not going to be very close to where the Pokémon are.
Another draw back is that, if I’m trying to combine both, I may have to target micro caches. The only draw back to the micro caches is that there is no room for SWAG which is the part my son enjoys most about caching. But if he’s busy playing Pokémon go, he may not care as much about there not being any toys in the cache.
Sometimes, I may have to leave my husband and son to play Pokémon go or on the playground in order for me to look for a cache if it requires more bushwhacking or the cache is farther away from everything. If this is the case, then I make sure we have some family time together first. We’ve been able to successfully combine the two a once or twice but it’s actually harder than I first expected so it’s not something that we do often. The big catch is, once you successfully combine them at a park, you may not be able to do it again at the same location depending on the number of caches there. If there are multiple caches you can easily break it out into two or maybe three trips. If there is only one cache there, then it’s a one and done situation as far doing both there.
A more successful way I have found to combine the two is to decide on a park you want to go play Pokémon go at and then look for a quick park and grab in that area that you can hit on the way to the park or on the way home. This can give you more options if you’re willing to detour a little. It’s actually a good compromise in general for caching with muggles. I find it easier to make a short detour to get a park and grab while we’re out running errands or headed places than it is to plan a day of family caching when our spouse is a muggle and your kid goes back and forth on if he wants to go caching or not.
The cache was called “Civic League”
Cache ID GC13D5D
Difficulty rating 1, Terrain rating 1.5
The description read:
Meta, Missouri is a small rural town that has one of the most civic-minded populations that we’ve ever encountered. Not only does the town have a volunteer fire department, it also has a volunteer ambulance district – one of only two in the state of Missouri! Almost everyone we’ve met is either a firefighter, paramedic, EMT, first responder, blood donor, or involved in some other kind of supporting activity. Some people are involved in several! The fire department, the ambulance district, and other activities are supported by the Meta Civic League.
The cache is on the grounds of the Civic League Hall in Meta, no more than a hundred yards’ walk from parking on the surrounding streets. It is a camouflaged preform container. It has been placed after obtaining permission from the mayor of Meta.
Hint: Tree
There is a little know town in this world called Meta, MO. It is a tinny little map dot about 45 minutes to an hour south of Jefferson City, MO. It is a little town that, if it was to be known for anything, it would be known for having a Dimond Pet Food plant. But it’s not really known. I spent a lot of time there over the years simply because it’s where my grandparents lived. Although grandma and grandpa are no longer around, I still spend time there as my family owns land just outside of town.
My dad was out at the family farm for Thanksgiving weekend. My husband and I loaded up my son and our pets into the car and made the two hours drive to spend the day out there. On the way down, my husband was driving and I was messing around on my phone. I pulled up the geocaching app and for the heck of it, I searched Meta, MO to see where the closest cache to it was located. Imagine my surprise when the closest cache was actually in Meta. I was pretty excited about it. I told my husband and he knew we would have to stop so I could find it. After some debating, we decided to get the cache on the way there.
It was gray and drizzling when we got to town but I was determined to find it anyway. We drove around to the Civic League Hall and parked the car. Because of the weather, we decided it was best of our son to stay in the car with my husband. I followed the app to the indicated spot and right to a tree. I poked around it a bit and found it tucked in a hollowed out knot in the tree. I pulled out the preformed tube, opened it, and poured out water. The container had not been sealed tight and water had gotten into the container. The log was complete mush so I was not able to sign the physical log It was one of those rare times when I happened to be finding a cache without my kit so I didn’t have any paper to replace it with either. So although I had a pin, I had nothing to sign. I did still log it as a find in the app and explained why I couldn’t sign it in my digital log. In the end, even though I couldn’t sign the physical log because of the water damage and the weather was wet and bleak, it was a pretty great find for me just because of all the memories the little town held for me and now it held one more.
Geocache Adventures 