Jenny Goes Geocaching: Earth Cache

We interrupt this series of interviews to bring you this ground-breaking post about earth caches. Well actually it's pretty ordinary but seeing as it is my first earth cache, I guess I can make a big deal about it.
Last weekend, before the rain, I took a trip to one of my favorite geocaching spots-the Bucksport area. I had seen a few new caches pop up from a trusted cacher and wanted to head down to reach my next milestone of 300 finds.

Find #300

Every time I've been to Bucksport, I ignore the earth cache icon that pops up on my c:geo app. I had never done one up until this point but for some reason I always assumed they were a lot of work. I don't know what was different about that day but I decided to log my first earth cache. I think I was motivated by the fact that I could clear out a little space on the geocaching map.

An earth cache is not a container but rather a place with special geological attributes. The page for an earth cache will give information about the formation or phenomenon and then ask you to complete a task-usually take a picture or answer a question about what you're seeing. I hadn't done anything geology related since college when I took "Rocks for Jocks." It turned out that this apparently easy class was rather difficult for me and I would have failed had I not attended an extra-credit field trip. Thankfully, this earth cache was much easier than my geology class.

Once I got to the formation, I had to take a picture of myself with my GPS in front of the Ordovician Penobscot Formation. Strange name, right? Well if you read the details about the roadcut, you'll learn a little bit more about this oddity.

Maine has a large number of earth caches and, next year, will be hosting the first International EarthCache event. It'll be held near Portland on September 2, 2012. This is big news for cachers as this will be a great venue to learn more about earth caches, mingle with cachers, and trade and purchase swag. What a unique opportunity for any level geocacher to learn more or to share experiences with others. I'd say I'll be more on the learning end rather than the teaching end for this Mega event!