Still one more week of school left, so kids at home. A beautiful day yesterday, so we jumped in the car and headed into town to run a few errands. Then we stopped in the grocery store and everyone picked out some items for their lunch. Our destination was twofold. Visit a new place with a geocache and have lunch outside.
There are a series of cricket pitch geocaches not far from us that I have been wanting to check out. As I have normally seen playground equipment by most pitches, it seemed a win-win for all of us. Mom can get her cache, kids can run around the pitch and playground.
Our first stop was the cricket ground in Haslemere. I was especially interested in this area as I had run across a house for sale near there and was curious to see what the immediate area was like. The houses were good, not great. But good for the prices for sure. Behind the houses was the recreation ground. It included the cricket clubhouse and ground (although drawn over with football lines); the local tennis club (which I was impressed by - about 8 nice hard courts and a smaller kids training court as well as a little clubhouse); and finally the playground area.
We found a bench along the grounds and sat out in the sun. The kids ran off to play while I slowly followed and explored the area. A school I had considered for my son was nearby. Penny dachshund was with us and we sat on the grass while the kids played and I read my book. Finally it was time to go. I had already mapped out where the cache was located - back by the car park. We weren't able to get it on the way in as a few muggles in the vicinity. But the area was clear and I took us right to the location.
This cache was a nano magnetic on the back of the metal sign. I put the kids in charge of trying to see if they could find it. Daughter find it nearly immediately and was absolutely thrilled and proud of herself. The nano was small. If you took off the top of your pinky finger at the top knuckle, that was about the size of it. I gently opened it and unwound the log to sign in. We put it back and headed off for the next one.
Although the next cricket cache was only supposed to be about 2 miles away, it seemed to take much longer as we had to go through town. We arrived at another lovely cricket club and the kids immediately spied the playground. I took Penny on a walk as my decoy to find the cache. I ended up not finding the right place for this one. I was using my iPhone instead of a GPS and just couldn't get the exact location down as signal seemed fluky. The clue indicated another sign, but I just couldn't put the sign together with where it was telling me to go. I suspect the coordinates were wrong, or else it was a very poorly placed cache as the only sign in that general area was nearly in someone's driveway - as opposed to placing it around the wooded area by the pitch. I'll have to email the owner and get some help.
So, we left empty-handed from that one and I left wondering if I should have used the Garmin instead. I love just having the iPhone and being able to pull up the cache info and not have to worry about downloading caches into it. I am going to continue with and perhaps try a few more of the apps out there to see if any better success.
Today is the beginning of September so we wave goodbye to summer. We could feel the coolness in the air last night indicating that fall is around the corner. The days are still nice and generally warm, but we're sad it's the end of summer.
Well, the end of 2010. Can't say it was our best year. Nothing bad happened, but a few goals we had did not get achieved - such as buying a house here in UK. So, we go into 2011 with a new set of goals and full of hope.