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

Hi and welcome. This is the travel, outdoors, history and geocaching site of Alpha6 and KidsRN - explorers, adventurers and geocachers. Those are our geocaching handles. We also use them for letterboxing and are known in orienteering circles as the Cachemanian Devils. That's us on the left.

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. Our vehicle for that is geocaching and all that goes with it.

What is geocaching?

The best description we've heard of geocaching is using satellites and computers to find pill bottles in the middle of nowhere. Geocachers are part geek, part sleuth and part explorer. Geocaches are everywhere. You drive by dozens of them every day. They're on your street, in your parks, in the parking lot of the mall and in the wildest wilderness. You can do drive-bys and get 50 in a day. Or you can do back-country geocaching and spend all day getting just one or two. We've done both and everything in between.

You would be hard-pressed to find another activity which is as positive, fun and family friendly as geocaching. My 82 year old mother and our one year old grandson have both been out with us. One thing you can be sure of - geocaching will develop skills and take you places you would have never known about otherwise. If you're new to the game, your first stop is www.geocaching.com.

To help get you started, be sure to check out our Top 10 lists .

We've also got a great Resources page.

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

About Us

Big Springs geocache site near Guttenberg, IA.

Geocache site near Guttenberg, Iowa. This was actually the top of a four level, spring fed waterfall in a steep gorge. The only way to get up here was to climb the three lower falls. We had no idea what we were getting into when we started, but we weren't giving up. Geocaches can be very physically challenging or a walk in the park. This one, called the Big Springs Cache, was both.

Alpha6 is a retired recon Marine and former math teacher. KidsRN is a retired pediatric nurse. We live in Minnesota most of the year but are on the road quite a bit and started snowbirding two years ago. 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.

Our adventures have taken us 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 the end of 2012. This past winter, we had a geocaching "Kodak moment" in Alabama - our first underwater geocache. No sharks though.

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 diner with great food (like the Beartooth BBQ in West Yellowstone, MT) or a really beautiful out-of-the-way place (like Cooke Lake near Alva, WY) or a small museum with some amazing local history (like the Peshtigo Fire Museum in Peshtigo, WI).

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 and smart phones. We've also taught ourselves to built websites and write web pages. Alpha6 has become quite the geek with HTML, CSS and WYSIWYG editors.

We've been hitting the trail together for over five 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. We're always adding things so check back often for updates. You'll find them in the New! Just added! links section to the left.

Navigating the site

You can go anywhere on the site with the Sitemap link. There's one on each page.

Anything on the site that's underlined is a hyperlink. Most are blue but there are some other colors.

If a link opens in the same window, there is a link menu on the left side of the page which will take you around the site or you can just use the browser's back arrow. Some pages open in new windows. If so, you can toggle between windows or just close it when you're done and you'll be back where you started.

The lengthier pages are divided into sections. There is a Table of Contents on the left hand side of these pages. Each entry is hyper-linked to that specific section of the page, so you can scan the topics and go straight to one that interests you. The links in the Table of Contents are maroon. The HOME key will take you back to the top of the page and the Table of Contents. Of course, we hope you'll read them all.

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 comment in our guestbook.

Enjoy......The Cachemanian Devils