Trail Mix

A few weeks ago, Torran decided to enter in on a contest featured on one of his favorite geocaching podcasts, the GeoSnippits Reboot Podcast. The podcast features the husband and wife team of Amy ‘HeadHardHatress’ and Andy ‘HeadHardHat’. Their shows usually feature tips, trick and basics of geocaching. Every week they have a contest for some neat geocaching prizes provided to them by awesome caching stores; such as GXProxy, and Coin and Pins.com. In Episode 180 of the GeoSnippits Reboot podcast Amy and Andy announced that Torran was the winner for the week. Shortly after, a package full of all sort of goodies arrived at our door. The package included a whistle, carabiner clip, pathtag holder and a trackable trek tag provided by GXProxy. Also, included in the package was an official GeoSnippets trackable patch. This patch is pretty awesome. Not only can you turn whatever you attach it to into a trackable, but it glows in the dark. If you get a chance, check out the winning ep

Back in May of this year, we decided to go for a family drive to the Parawon Gap. The Parawon Gap is a physical natural break in the  mountains formed by an ancient stream. It allows easy access to the other side of the mountains and is ripe in history and native american petroglyphs.  The area has been made into a nice stopping place with parking, picnic area and paved pathways from one side of the gap to the other. Petroglyphs are highlighted all along the walkway which made it easy for us to take our son TNT Lando along with us.  After exploring the location and on our way back to the car. we decided to power up the cell phone and check to see if there was a geocache around. Sure enough not far off the beaten path there was a cache. Torran had wanted to put the stroller to the test, so he guided it towards ground zero and found the cache easily.  This was a very nice, easy paced adventure for us, especially with a newborn. If your looking for a

On the morning of March 19, 2016 Torran set out with Joe Teton, Zer0 and Ranger Dale to explore the Shinob Kibe trail down by Washington, Utah.  The trail was a good hike up the Shinob Kibe mesa which climbs about 650 feet. The pathway up was clear but had slick areas where loose stones could cause one to become off balance. Combining that with steep slopes made for a cautious climb up the side of the mesa. Even halfway up the views became spectacular. Along the way, Joe Teton pointed out the various geological features which gave us a new perspective and appreciation for this hike. In the days of old, natives would use this natural wonder as a place of refuge. Evidence of this was pointed out to us by Joe Teton who has spent many years studying various aspects of Southern Utah.  Once we had reached the plateau, the hike became much easier and we were able to find the Shinob Kibe Cache quite easily. The views from the summit were amaz

In March and April of 2016, we introduced our two month old son to Geocaching. As you can tell from the pictures he was completely enthralled with the adventure. His first few cache finds included one in St. George and another one that Torran had placed out many years ago. Little does TNT_Lando realize that this is only the beginning. There will be and already has been many adventures ahead. Happy Caching!

With the new year underway and our life starting to get settled since our move, Tatterhood and I decided to tag along with Joe Teton and Anyatoo on one of their regular tours to the Valley of Fire. The Valley of Fire is located to the northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. The weather when we went was rainy and only a few weeks later there was a super bloom that took place in a lot of these places. Despite the weather, the temperature was nice... seriously how could I complain knowing that normally we're under 3 feet of snow back in Canada. This was the first time that Tatterhood and I had gone to the Valley of Fire so it was pretty amazing to see. As a bonus there turned out to be quite a number of virtual geocaches (that's where there isn't a physical cache, you just take a photo and answer a question or two about the area). All of them took us to some amazing views or some historically interesting locations. The petroglyphs were really interesting as wel

In March of 2015, we were invited by our niece and nephew to go to Disneyland with them. Figuring it would be a once in a lifetime journey, we booked flights and a hotel. We departed on March 15th, flying from Edmonton to Las Angeles where Tatterhood's dad, Joe Teton, met us at the airport and drove us over to the beach where everyone was hanging out. We spent several hours relaxing before heading to our hotel in Anaheim.  The next day, we took a shuttle over to Disneyland. It was decided that we would spend the first day at the California Adventures side of the park. The very first ride we got taken on was the Tower of Terror. Walking up to the tower and standing in line, Torran loved all the Art Deco architecture that surrounded him. So much so, he had to borrow a camera to take pictures of it all for his Minecraft ideas. The ride was pretty intense for our first ride. Torran was in a mild state of shock afterwards, becoming as white as a ghost. After a few swigs of cola

Welcome back to another TB Spotlight where we take a closer look at Travel Bugs we've discovered during our Geocaching adventures. This week we look at a travel bug that we found on our drive home to Alberta from Michigan on July 27th of 2014. It was located in a cache in Minnesota called 2 Above, Louis Below which was a pretty neat cache that we drove up to down by the St. Louis River. In this cache we found the ' Catch Me A Fish ' travel bug and decided to bring it along with us on our journey home. 'Catch Me A Fish' was released back on July 7th of 2013 by its owner Dada Joka . According to Dada Joka, this travel bug was created by his son, who is an avid fisherman. The current goal is for the bug to travel to as many fishing communities as possible and at each new state or country that another lure is added to the chain, minus the hooks. As you can see there were several additional hooks attached when we caught this bug. On April 7th of 2015, a

Welcome back! In an effort to share the many adventures we've had since this blog went on hiatus, we've decided to create a series of posts dedicated to our 2014 and 2015  adventures and geocaching trips.  As was mentioned in a previous post, one of the requirements for immigrating to the United States was a medical. In order for me (Torran) to get that medical, we had to have an American Certified doctor do the examination. This doesn't seem like a big deal, however, in Canada there were only five approved doctors. All of them except one were located in eastern Canada. The one not down east was located in Surrey, British Columbia, which is the province to the west of Alberta.  On May 3, 2015 we landed at the Vancouver International Airport and rented a Jeep Patriot to drive over to the Holiday Inn Hotel in Cloverdale. It was a nice little community and we were able to find the hotel with no issue. After check in, we headed to the larger community of Langley for dinn