Garden of the Gods and Our Newest Plan, Geocaching

Garden of the Gods in the distance, photo from across the road

A few weeks ago, Faith and I headed to a Girl Scout sleepover up in Denver at the Wildlife Experience, which was really cool for the girls.  Besides checking out all the wildlife exhibits and the Imax, the girls got to try a little indoor geocaching idea, to learn more about it.  One of the docents offered to take our girls on their outdoor geocaching course and they all loved it!

It should not surprise anyone that Faith was up in the rocks asap.

Faith and I realized that we had a new family project on our hands.  We dragged Ben out and found our first cache, right outside the main gates of Fort Carson, and exceedingly close to our house.  He was hooked on the idea too, so we grabbed the husband and headed out to Garden of the Gods this past weekend for some geo & earth caching, as well as some beautiful scenic hiking with the puppy-dog.

Doesn't Dante look excited to join in?

Garden of the Gods is just under a half hour from our place on Fort Carson and it is dog-friendly, as is much of Colorado Springs.  Since Dante loves to be with us, we harnessed him up and headed out.  He was quite thrilled and we are now considering that he might be border collie-mountain goat as he was quite confident scaling the rocks.

My children exhibit such caution in life.

We attempted our geocaches at Garden of the Gods, only to discover, after two different "I swear we are in the right spot" coordinates, that the GoG caches are earthcaches.  There's no hidden container, no book to sign, just coordinates and trivia questions.  Once we figured that out, we logged the two we thought we found, then decided to hike for a bit.

Mr. Ben climbing high!

Scaling the big rocks is probably F&B's favorite part of Garden of the Gods, and likely Dante's least favorite.  It's a little embarrassing to have a dog crying because he wants to climb rocks with the kids.  However, we figured the kids wanted to climb, so while we were there, it was a good time to do so.

We do love the red rocks, the whole area is so pretty!

Finally, the kids decided they wanted to find real geocaches too, so we took a break and mapped out 3 nearby ones that were actual caches, then headed out.  One was close to the Garden of the Gods' visitor center, another on a walking trail in a nearby subdivision, and the third in a walking trail behind an office park.

Faith found a cache!

All three were fun to find, but the kids loved how this one was hidden in an old fallen log.  A second one was hanging in a pine tree, wrapped in a dark green tape so it resembled a pinecone bud until you looked closer.  We logged those too, then decided that we are definitely going to do this again.  There are tons of caches in COSprings, not to mention all along our typical travel routes!

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