My dad and I have not always been close. There was a time when I was a kid that our lives revolved solely around the next game, the next practice, and the next championship. When we didn't have anything to talk about, we always had baseball.  Once my playing career was over, it seemed as though we had run out of things to talk about. Sure we could talk, but there was never any real connection. 

Getting married and moving several states away only heightened the absence of a relationship. In fact, it took me 5 years to come home and visit after I moved away. I spent 20 years in Indiana and was in no hurry to return. Eventually though, I did return for a family reunion in 2005. It was at that family reunion that my dad noticed my GPS. He is not very tech savvy, so I had to explain to him what it was. After telling him about what I was using it for, it was like a light flipped on in his head. He seemed genuinely excited about the new game I was telling him about. He was so excited about it that he woke me up the following morning at six a.m. to ask me if I wanted to go look for some geocaches. Although tired and just a bit hung over, I was happy to take him out for his first hunt.

We ended up doing four that day. I remember the first one because it was ammo can in the back of the woods behind a Revolutionary War era cemetery. We searched in the woods for about five minutes when I happened to notice it in a dead tree log. I didn't say anything because I wanted him to find it, which eventually he did.

My dad has never really been an excitable person. He's the quiet type with not much emotion, hard to read most of the time.

Not this day.

The enthusiasm with which he went after those caches was fun to see. It was nice being able to share this new hobby with him. Four years later he still geocaches with the same passion as he did his first time out. When I visit each year, we always try to spend at least two days out in the field.

This summer, my dad and I will be taking our first geocaching trip together out west. We both want to visit some of the historic sites like Mt. Rushmore, Wounded Knee, and the Little Bighorn battlefield. We will be caching in South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming.

I have a feeling we won't run out of things to talk about.

By Parzival

Parzival is a contributing author to The Online Geocacher. Parzival, AKA Greg, grew up a Hoosier in South Bend, Indiana. He would like everyone to know that contrary to popular belief, there is indeed more to Indiana than just corn and basketball. He attended Indiana University and majored in History. When not geocaching, he can usually be found in a stream somewhere attempting to fool trout with dry flies and bead head nymphs. He has a wife who also geocaches under the name GoldenDomer and a 6 month old daughter named Kaitlyn.

Comments(2):

1. Thats great! I had the same issue with my dad, when ever I would visit him we really had never anything to talk about, then I started to Geocache, the next time I visited I talked about geocaching, and he became interseted in what geocaching was all about, I had my trail GPSr, so I searched for some in his area and we went and hunted them down. So eventually I downloaded the CacheNavigator on his Blackberry and we would cache every where we went! Now he caches on his own free time, and when ever we visit we cache together!

   Friday, December 25, 2009 Christopher

2. What a great story!

   This would make a great movie. I wish my family was into caching like this. My 10 year old son and teen-age daughter like caching, but to get them to go with dad is like pulling teeth. My wife likes it but she's not into the outdoor hiking adventures that I love about the game. My in-laws and family think I'm wasting my time. I'm so alone in this game. Still, I love the serenity of it.

   Tuesday, January 05, 2010 Robert