Geocaching and Education

Welcome back to another installment into this geocaching adventure. I know I was really excited about the iNaturalist app... and I still am, but I have found another amazing app that will aid in your adventures. I understand that geocaching is a "treasure hunt" for pre-hidden treasures, but nature also provides with uncountable amounts of treasures. You just have to get up and go find them. The new app is called Seek by iNaturalist. In this app you can take pictures of an animal, plant, or fungi and it will identify what you are looking at! This was a lot of fun on our hike! From here on out I will be armed with both apps to find and identify all kinds of cool stuff... but like in the video... ( I hope it works) if you get a question wrong, you have to get stronger! I hope this new app motivates you to get up and go find it! Thanks for stopping by, me and my strong Ranger are off on another adventure!

Andy

Educational Geocaching in the Rio Bosque Wetlands

Welcome back to Geocaching and educational adventures in El Paso Texas! I usually try to find a new app to assist in geocaching and tie it into educating my young child in the world around him (or his archenemy... the number line!) but I do not feel like I gave iNaturalist enough attention or credit last time. So we took it out to a new spot we found! And this location is a real treasure all in itself! The Rio Bosque Wetlands is a marsh in the middle of the Chihuahan Desert! It is formed from the Rio Grande River and is a nature reserve. It was a great change from the usual mountainous desert terrain we get to explore. If you remeber the app allows people to pin a location of an animal, insect, or plant that they find. As well as name it and add a photo of it. So off we went to find new animals and learn what we could about waht we found. These are but a few photos of what we saw and found. In the first photo we found and followed the Desert Stink Beetle. The second is a marshy tributary, that is so out of place here in El Paso. Third, is a giant North Amercain Bullfrog. This bad boy was bigger then my hand! The fourth picture is a lesson on "Cat Tails", seeing, feeling, aaand smelling what you are learning about makes great connections to the subject. The final picture is what happens when you miss a simple question, you learn it through physical exercise! Got to love pull ups on tree limbs! I would have taken a screen shot of the app screen to show you all how many pins were at the wetlands, but it was filled to the gills with critter locations! All in all I believe this is my favorite app that I have found in this Blog adventure. It leads us to so many natural treasures, which is what I think this is all about. I highly recomend the iNaturalist app and for everyone to get up, go outside and go find it. (it makes you feel young!)   

Andy