Discover America Family Adventure

The girls and I are really pumped for one particular portion of the trip:

Geocaching – logging a cache in a new state, and dropping off travel bugs along the way!

Confused yet?  I forget that geocaching has its own lingo, unknown the “muggles” – yeah, that’s not too original, but it’s what the geocaching elite call the newbies…

Let me tell you a little bit about it, and they we can talk about what we are going to do with geocaching on our trip.

It started as a sport/hobby in early 2000 when the military declassified Selective Availability of their GPS system, meaning the rest of us were now able to have the same accuracy in global positioning that the military had.  With that, some guy in the woods of Oregon thought it would be fun to hide a bucket with a bunch of stuff in the woods, and then share the coordinates with others online so they could go find it.  An international game of hide-and-seek, or the art of “using billion dollar satellites to track pieces of Tupperware in the woods”, was born.

Today, there are over 1.7 million geocaches hidden worldwide, on all seven continents, several in various depths of the ocean, and one on the International Spacestation.  We also have much more accurate technology today – at one time you needed a backpack sized device worth thousands of dollars to get GPS coordinates.  When I started geocaching, handheld devices, in dreary black and white, were around $100 – $200.  They required some pretty extensive download and program work to take data from the geocaching website and put it on your device.  Today, you can get a free app on your smartphone, or connect directly with geocaching.com app for around $10.

For our family, geocaching has taken us to a lot of places we never would have thought to adventure to without a cache being there – scenic views, historical markers, natural wonders, and interesting out-of-the-way places populate the caches maps.  On the other hand, you would be amazed at some of the more obvious hiding places you run across every day.  You’ll find geocaches in street signs, parking lot lights, hollowed out trees, just about anywhere you can fit a film roll (the old canisters they used to keep photographic film in?), Tupperware container, or old metal ammo-can – we even found one in a newspaper dispenser outside Busch Stadium!  It really is quite amazing the different places they turn up – you can take a look around your neighborhood by going to www.geocaching.com and entering in your zip code to see what’s nearby.

So far, in about six years of geocaching, we’ve found close to 450 of them in 15 different states – some people have ventured out to find thousands!  Even though we don’t get out to do it that much, I’d like for us to find one in each state over time – that is one of the goals for the trip – to pick up a cache in 8-9 states we haven’t been in before.

The other goal is to drop off a Travel Bug – a trackable trinket that someone else will eventually pick up and move to another geocaching somewhere else, maybe just down the road, maybe on the other side of the world.  Travel bugs can be any kind of item that is given a trackable numbe on the geocaching.com website.  You might find trackable coins, or various items with a travel bug keychain on them, like what we made here.  We’ve put a few out in the geocaching world over the past few years, and have had some travel the distance around the world (+25,000 miles) and have some sitting in geocaching in Europe right now.  It’s fun to see where they go, and very easy to watch, as the website does most of the tracking work.  The girls made these yesterday (special thanks to artist extraordinaire Luke Dunscombe for the original drawings they colored!), I put the geocaching.com travel bug tag on them, logged them in, and now they are ready to go.

So for this trip, we will drop one of these travel bugs in a cache in each state we’ve never been to – they are all named for the state where they will be going; New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, etc.  From there, we see where other people take them.

Sorry about the uber-long post.  There’s a lot to share about the hobby/sport of geocaching.  It’s been a lot of fun for our family, and we are looking forward to doing some new things with it over this trip.  The best way to find out more is to go have a look around geocaching.com – at the very least take a look at the map of caches around your home.  Like I said, you’ll be amazed – they are everywhere.

Wow – hard to believe we only have a few weeks until it is time to go!  We’ve been pretty busy with prep-work for the trip, and we’ll be sharing that here soon.  Geocaching planning (what, you’ve never been Geocaching?!), how to cram your life into 72 cubic ft. for 3 weeks, points of interest while driving 4000 miles.  It’s all coming here soon!

I’m not sure about all of you in the other 49 states, but Indiana has a pretty awesome State Parks system.  I may be just a bit biased, as we get to enjoy one particular park fairly regularly since we live less than 5 miles away.  On the other hand, we make a conscious decision to try to visit as many as possible throughout the year.

For less than $10 at most parks you have more than a day’s worth of activities – miles of hiking trails, swimming pools, lakes to fish or swim in, paved bike trails, Nationally ranked mountain bike trails, picnic areas, classic and remodeled inns with restaurants, scenic views, National Lakeshores, geocaching, nature centers with programming….  and these are just the things of the top of my head.  If you find yourself or the kids “bored” on a given weekend, I am willing to bet you have a State Park or State Recreation Area (SRA) within less than an hours drive.  Or, if you have a bit more time to plan, try trekking across the state to one you haven’t been to yet.  Clifty Falls State Park is a good 4-5 hours from us, but there are things there we couldn’t see at home, and great opportunities to stop along the way.  (If you are traveling around the Indianapolis area, you’ve GOT to stop at Wilson Farm Markets north on US 31 for great ice cream, and all the odd cheese you can sample.  The smoked horseradish makes an awesome grilled cheese!)

For us, the choice to purchase the all-parks pass for $36 every year.  Within a few weekends of hiking, fishing, swimming, etc., it has definitely earned it’s value.

I am curious about other states – what treasures do you have outside the National Parks system?  Or for those in Indiana, what have you found in the State Parks system that we may have missed and should check out?

Happy & Safe Travels!

How many parents have NOT heard this before?

What’s your secret?

We just wrapped up a great – if short – whirlwind tour of Indianapolis and our alma mater, Ball State University, with the kids.  I think we compiled 6-7 hours and a few hundred miles over an long weekend.  It was a wonderful time.

Except for one thing.

THAT question.

Of course, in all my wisdom, I had what I thought was a pretty good response, “about an hour” – ok, more in response to “How much looooooooonnngggggeeeeer?”  But it worked in either case.

Rather, it didn’t work.

Because we kept hearing it.  Over and over and over and over and over and over… you get the point.

Of course, I got frustrated at first, but then realized it as mostly my fault.  Being a “funny dad” is not always as good as be a “good dad”.

Funny Dad things of something quick and witty to say, then repeats it after every question while he is distracted by wondering if that police officer on the side of the road is checking his speed.

Good Dad realizes kids appreciate structure, discipline, and knowing what the future holds.  Good Dad knows that we’ll be arriving in 40 minutes, or about one Netflix episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos.  Good Dad knows that you can play math games with the well-positioned clock in the vehicle – “if it is 11:30 am, and we will be arriving in about 45 minutes, what time will be get there,” asks Good Dad.

Good Kid feels heard, understood, and respected when Good Dad offers answers that make sense, versus the same old “about an hour”.  It can be funny for a while, but it doesn’t satisfy anyone.

Are you a Good Dad or a Funny Dad?  Is it possible to be both when you are logging somewhere between 6-48 hours in the car?

You can take some amazing pictures when temperatures clash.  I was able to take these after a 70 degree afternoon turned into a 25 degree night and early morning.  The valuable lesson we were reminded of that morning – NEVER camp near water when you even think the temps might be dropping that low over night – the cold mist that hung in the air did not make for good sleep – for ANY sleep – during the breaking hours of the morning.  But it sure made for some pretty pictures…

With spring starting to show itself here in the Midwest, I got motivated to start planning out the logistics of our trip.  As you can see from the picture, this involved the National Parks Guide, a lot of Mapquest, and the good ole paper map – you may have seen your dad with one of these a few years ago, before GPS was demilitarized and put in our cars.

In planning a trip like this, the goal for us is to be as flexible as possible and to allow for the enjoyably unexpected.  Of course, the reality is we only have a limited amount of time and limited funds, so some planning is helpful.

I thought it might be a good idea to estimate how much we might be feeding to the gas tank.  The current route, abbreviated somewhat from past ideas, is around 4056 miles.  I’m hoping $4.00 per gallon of gas is a high estimate for the summer.  I’m also hoping the family truckster still gets 20 mpg, maybe more, by the time we hit the road.  Putting all that info into the magic numbers machine and we get about $811.2o for gas for the trip…  Still less than flying the family to the house of the mouse, but a nice chunk of change still.  Is it crazy to hope that gas prices drop to $2.00 / gallon in the next few months?

We also changed course and time a little bit.  The original plan had us visiting Navy friends on base in California – it turns out that as we are driving towards them, they will be driving back to the Midwest to take of for 4 years in Japan…  So we nixed the Cali part of the trip and decided to turn back at the Grand Canyon.  That looks like a three-week journey as it stands now.  If we were to do the California National Parks like we had wanted, we easily would have added 1-2 weeks to do justice to visiting Death Valley, Sequoia, King’s Canyon, and Yosemite.  I don’t know about you, but I may be putting my near saint-like parenting patience to the test with five weeks on the road.

Maybe next time.

Because coconuts are better than other nuts… at least on this site.

(Disclaimer: the aforementioned comparison is only in regards to the negative connotation of “nuts…” to the article below in comparison to the much more pleasant and affirming picture of coconuts above.)

We didn’t receive the Lilly Teacher Creativity Grant…

Our Kickstarter project didn’t pan out (was it the video?)

So the trip, book, production, and print costs will all be footed by the Franz Family – unless, of course, our sponsor letters work out.

WHEW!!!  That takes a lot of pressure off us!  Of course, it would have been nice to have a few extra bucks for a newer camera, or an upgrade to this website, or to put racing stripes on the family truckster.

With the increase in self-publishing with companies like CreateSpace, Lulu, Fast Pencil, and dozens of companies like them, it shouldn’t be a problem to get the book put together and distributed.  I am surprised more people aren’t doing it!  Keep your eyes on this site for more details as we prepare for the trip this summer and release the book in the fall.

Disclaimer: the two people pictured here have nothing to do with the title of the blog post.

What’s your caption?  Enter it in the comments section!

Grand Lake, Colorado – the first town after the southern exit out of Rocky Mountain National Park.  A cute little tourist town where we found THE BEST hot sauce I have ever had at The Fat Cat Cafe!  We only had a few hours to stop off on the way to The National Health Services Corps Conference back in the fall of 2011.  I can’t wait to stop off again, grab some more hot sauce, and take some more pictures with a better camera.

I thought it would be fun to start out with some of our previous travel photos – this one from the closest National Park to us, actually a National Lakeshore, Indiana Dunes.  This one was taken with a simple ‘point & shoot’ digital camera.  As we prepare for the big trip, I’m thinking about investing in a ‘bigger & better’ digital SLR camera, of which I know NOTHING about, other than the fact that they take better pictures.  What would you suggest?