Brianna's Geocoin Goes Park Hopping

I've found out that the type of caching I do depends on which members of Team Hick@Heart go with me. If it's just me and the boy, we go get some really tough ones like "King of This Hill". If the girl is going along I like to cache in a style I call park hopping. The girl is only 3 and most geotrails are no fun for her. Most parks in the area we live have at least one cache in them. This makes it perfect to bounce from park to park and let the kids play while I grab a smiley. We have found lots of great play areas this way and that's the way we went caching today.

We started today's trip at a cache near home. I saw Brianna's Geocoin in the cache and thought it would be nice to take her coin along on our adventure today. Brianna's Geocoin was released by a 4 year old girl in Mississippi to celebrate her family's 50th find and Brianna's Birthday. Interesting that this coin was originally released on my birthday, 11/27/2004. I'm not sure if that is her actual birthday but we will go ahead and assume that she is a very gifted young lady to have a birthday like that! I guess that now makes her 7 and makes me old. So, here is the trip Brianna's Geocoin made with our family today.

Our first park hop was at Kent Hintergardt park in Temecula. This park is named for a fallen hero. Kent Hintergardt was a Riverside County Sheriff's Deputy, killed in the line of duty on May 9, 1993. The park has a Boy's and Girl's club and is apparently very popular. The 50 or so kids at this park left no room for the kids to play. I dashed over to the cache, noticed someone had already found it today, signed the log and we were off to the next park.

This next play area had a very small playground and was designed for toddlers. I knew the boy, age 6, would tire of this park quickly so I had to cache in a hurry. I found the second of two caches in this park and was surprised to find a full size ammo can! It was under a large rock that I had to roll over to reach. After signing the log and closing up the can, I reached to put the rock back and it was covered in ants. THOUSANDS of ants. Looks like that cache is on an anthill, Capitan Obvious! There were no ants on me so I headed back to the kiddie park and we were off again.

We stopped at another Temecula community park and this one had some shade. It got up to 85 degrees today and we were warm. That's right, 85 degrees in February in Southern California. That's why my mortgage is so high! We ate some lunch and I searched and searched but was forced to post a big old DNF on this one. There was a nice view of the snow on the nearby mountains and we made sure to snap some pictures.

Our last stop was at the Murrieta Pond Park. We stopped and got a picture of Brianna's Geocoin on a statue dedicated to Mr. Guenther, founder of Murrieta Mineral hot Springs. The hot springs are no longer accessible to the public as the property is owned by the Calvary Bible College. HOLY HOT SPRINGS! the ducks in this pond are obviously used to people bringing food because they all started swimming towards us as we reached the waters edge. We found the nearby cache, checked out the ducks, snapped a few more pictures and it was time to head home. The ducks followed us out of the park.




We had a great time taking Brianna's Geocoin to a bunch of local parks. This is a great way to geocache with young kids. If the parks near you don't have at least one geocache each, I would suggest putting one in them and make fun trips for other families. We made 5 finds one DNF and will be dropping Brianna's Geocoin off so it can go on other adventures.