Off the Beaten Path - Geocache. Explore. Travel. Learn. Get fit. Have fun.

Hi. This is the outdoors, travel, history and education site of Alpha6 and KidsRN - explorers, adventurers and geocachers. Those are our geocaching handles. We also use them for letterboxing and are known in certain circles as the Cachemanian Devils.

About our Site

Our vision for Off The Beaten Path is a family friendly site that promotes interest in outdoor activities, curiosity about the world around us and lifelong learning. If you are a parent or teacher looking for ideas to teach and motivate kids, get them outside and have some fun together, this web site has a lot to offer.

We recently added a section for teachers with materials and ideas for the classroom. I was a teacher for 10 years after retiring from the Marines. Since I was a pack rat (like most teachers) and never threw anything away, I've got ten years of stuff sitting on my hard drive and in storage boxes. It's better utilized here. I'll keep adding things until I run out. If it gives one idea to one teacher, it will have been worth it. Be sure to check out the custom built Jeopardy game - fully downloadable along with instructions on how to use it and customize it for use in your classroom.

Be sure to check out our Top 10 lists .

We've got a great Resources page.

Don't miss the Shiloh ghost story, our own geocaching X-file.

You can go anywhere on the site with the Beam Me Up link, our version of the Star Trek transporter room. There's one on each page.

About Us

Alpha6 is a retired recon Marine and former middle school math teacher. KidsRN is a retired pediatric nurse. We're both in our late 50's and live in Minnesota's Twin Cities. We're also comparative newlyweds. In our previous marriages, we raised five kids. The youngest, Bravo Lima, is a geocacher too and is in some of the posted pictures. We enjoy biking, hiking, canoeing, orienteering, letterboxing, history, traveling and, of course - geocaching. We often combine a couple of those for a great outing - anything from a day to several weeks.

This site is a big part of our own lifelong learning. In addition to learning on the road, we do a lot of research during trip planning and even more when we start to write it up. Plus, we've had to learn new technical skills with GPS, laptops, Blackberries and web development. It also provides some great exercise and venues for our latent skills in freelance writing and photography.

Usually our adventures are built around geocaching and its older sibling letterboxing. There's also a little competition we participate in from time to time called geodashing. It's all taken us places we would have never seen otherwise. We've been to ghost towns, caves, mountain tops, waterfalls and more out of the way places than we can recall. Along the way, we've braved grizzly bears, mountain lions, rattlesnakes, buffalo and plague-carrying prairie dogs in addition to being out in some hellacious weather. It's been a hoot. We've geocached in 35 states and have a plan in place to finish all 50 by 2012.

We're also active in orienteering. There's a lot of overlap with geocaching and letterboxing although each one has unique aspects to it. Nevertheless, they complement each other well. We're regulars on the orienteering circuit with the Minnesota Orienteering Club. With the club, we worked as staff volunteers in the Wild Adventure Race series which combines biking, paddling and orienteering. We're trying to work up the nerve to run a short race next year but it looks like something best left to the youngsters.

Regardless of the activity, our favorite part of any trip is stumbling upon great things we didn't know anything about. Maybe it's a small town diner with great food (like the Scandia Cafe in Scandia, MN) or a really beautiful place (like Cooke Lake near Alva, WY) or a small museum with local history (like the Peshtigo Fire Museum in Peshtigo, WI).

The Cachemanian Devils at Cooke Lake, Wyoming.

We've been hitting the trail together for over three years. People think we're crazy but they always have questions. Where did you go? How did you get there? How was it? And the big one - How did you ever find the place? This web site will chronicle all that and more. We hope you'll get some adventure ideas of your own or simply enjoy the views and the news.

There's no armchair traveling here. We've been to every place in this web site and most of the pictures are ours. If we use another photo because it was better, we've attributed the source. We're always adding things so check back often for updates.

It's impossible to write about everything we do or every place we go. So we have picked out places and adventures that live up to our web site name - Off the Beaten Path.

Feedback and suggestions are welcome. Feel free to send us an E-mail or leave a comment on our blog. There's always an open thread for guests to write in.

Enjoy......The Cachemanian Devils

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