I went out with my older son on December 27th to try to find a couple of nearby caches.  We live near Lilburn, GA, and last year the city put in a “greenway” along the train track and creek that was otherwise unused land.  They made a wonderful biking/running/walking path about a mile long going out from the center of town.

Since the kids like to bike down there, I though we’d look there first.  Now, I figured that starting your geocaching hobby with a 5-stage cache was probably not the easiest way to start, but I decided that it would just be fun for the kids to find out that there have been things hidden along the trail they’ve used so often.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that typically the first stages of a multi-stage cache (all but the last stage) are typically “micros”.  We were looking for something much bigger.

But first, a few definitions.  A “multi-stage” cache is one where the location on the geocaching website is just to the first stage.  That stage should provide a location for the second stage, and so on.  Sometimes it’s just a simple latitude and longitude, but I’ve read about some where you have to solve puzzles to find the next stage.

A typical cache is something that can withstand a bit of weather; a metal ammunition box, a Tupperware container, etc.  However, a “micro” is something small, which may contain only a log book to sign, or, in the case of a multi-stage cache, just big enough to hold the next location clue.  (And I’ve heard “nanos” referred to; extremely small, I suppose.)

We tried looking around where the GPS was telling us, but to no avail.

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We gave up and decided to do the cache that was in beautiful downtown Lilburn.  I picked up the extra hint from the web page, but not even that helped us.  Again, no luck.

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We gave up, and thought we’d come back the next day with more kids.