We have a really fun episode this week where I get to learn something that I’ve heard a lot about, but have never really learned a lot about. Tami and Wade Mauland are pioneers in the the world of geocaching in West Bend. Their whole family is passionate about geocaching and they share a lot of fun stories about their experiences.
West Bend’s Cache Ba$h is coming up August 5th and 6th. Tami and Wade also talk to us about what to expect at this year’s bash!
Fuzz Martin 0:09
Hey there hope you’re having a great summer. Thank you for listening to Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz. I am your host, Fuzz Martin. And each week, I invite guests to join me to talk about positive things happening here in Washington County, Wisconsin, and sometimes I even get to learn about things that I’m not totally familiar with. And this is one of those weeks. Tami and Wade Mauland. Join me this week to talk about geocaching and the upcoming West Bend Cache Bash. West Bend is the Geocaching capital of the Midwest. And Tami and Wade have been pioneers and geocaching in our area. And they’re a great Listen, they’ve got a lot of fun stories and I had a lot of fun making this episode. And with that, your 15 minutes on the West Bend Cache Bash with Tami and Wade Mauland on Ffiteen Minutes with Fuzz.
Fuzz Martin 1:12
Tami and Wade thanks for joining me today. So we’re going to talk about West Bend’s Cash Bash 2022 coming up but first I want to talk about the activity of geocaching as a whole. I’m going to admit to you that I know that West Bend is one of the Midwest geocaching capitals. I’ve also never geocache before and I’m very unfamiliar with it so could you please explain to me what it is?
Tami Mauland 1:34
Well, let me just start I have two popular T shirts here and one thing is I use multimillion dollar satellites to find Tupperware in the woods. What’s your hobby and not all who wander are lost? Some are geocaching.
Fuzz Martin 1:50
Alright, very good. So the idea is you use GPS right?
Wade Mauland 1:55
Yeah. Geocaching is location based or location game using GPS satellites. Okay, so out trying to find a geocache usually on public land, okay. And it can range in in various sizes, including being disguised or camouflaged. And various levels of difficulty and terrain. So it can be very simple for a family or somebody who’s physically challenged to go out and find things and it can be very challenging. Depending on where are you.
Fuzz Martin 2:25
So do you have like to get general coordinates as to where something is that works?
Wade Mauland 2:28
Yeah, so you’re using your phone, and it provides coordinates, you can also use a GPS receiver if you’re old school, but it’ll give you coordinates and it’ll take you probably within 30 feet. Okay. Yeah.
Fuzz Martin 2:43
And then sometimes they’re they’re all hidden, I assume, are they buried or the
Wade Mauland 2:48
No, you can’t bury them, but they are located, you know, maybe by a tree or up a tree or
Fuzz Martin 2:55
Oh, you so Tami has some Show and Tell objects here. So this is a rock. And so this is it’s hollow? And yeah, and how do you how do you
Tami Mauland 3:03
That just slides out and then the log book would go in there
Fuzz Martin 3:08
And then you mark down that you were there and okay, do you have like handles or something? Or do you use your actual name? Okay.
Wade Mauland 3:13
Yeah, they have handles, for example. Tami’s handle is Earth Angel.
Fuzz Martin 3:17
All right. So when I got the email invite, I saw Tami (Earth Angel), and I forgot what was your Wade with Professor and professor. And then I was like, what is the
Tami Mauland 3:29
well I got a we got a backup because it was actually weighed, made up our family name of Eco Rangers, okay. And we started geocaching back in 2003. And our kids were four and six. So we’d be just have, you know, the Eco Rangers were going out. And then it’s like, well, who we had then we go back home and log it online. It’s like, well, who found it? You know, it’s like Eco Rangers. Well, which one so then my husband’s like, well, he’s Professor. I’m Earth Angel. Our son was Duelist and he turned it to Great Dane, the older he got and then our daughter was friends. And our daughter was Princess so that’s how it’s always like oh, you know four year old princess of the Eco Rangers founded or six year old duelist and sure Earth Angel so pretty special.
Fuzz Martin 4:14
I have had one experience with geocaching and it was in a may have been I don’t know how big that the area one is. But I was hiking in Newfane in the New Fane trails there and I saw a whole bunch of people running around with their their phones and so there were lots of kids are probably 20 I think yeah, and it was really cool to see I figured they were geocaching just by the nature of them walk or either that or they were playing Pokemon Go right but they were they were all looking for something so I assumed that what is it but that’s that’s really cool and it’s good to have the background on why your Earth Angel and your professor and what the ego Rangers are which is your family too. Yeah. So that’s that’s kind of cool. Thank you for the explanation on that. How does someone get started with geocaching? How did you guys get started with geocaching?
Tami Mauland 4:59
Wade?
Wade Mauland 4:59
Well, I I was at the YMCA here in town and sitting in the sauna picked up a magazine at the time and there was an article on geocaching. I thought, God, this is great. You know, I used to teach orienteering back in the day, okay, using map and compass to navigate around. And this was like the next step up technologically technologically wise. So anyway, we I went out, bought a GPS receiver at Walmart and we downloaded the coordinates and went out and after walking around and getting somewhat close, Tami founder first you
Tami Mauland 5:32
Okay, well, we always go hiking and Ridge, Ron was our favorite. So he says, he’s like, we’re gonna go hiking and we’re gonna go park on this side. And we’re gonna do this. And I’m like, What do you mean, we’re gonna do this. And then he’s like, I came with ya hiking with the purpose. And they showed me the the Magellan Gold Meridian GPS. And I’m like, oh, that’s kind of exciting. And we could not find it. And the GPS is just spinning around. And we’re like, as he’s like, Well, we’re supposed to also do with CITO, or whether that cash in trash outs were to give back to the communities that let you play in their parks. So I’m picking up the garbage. I’m just walk around in circles pick up garbage awesome. Like, Hey, are we supposed to find like a toolbox or a fishing box? And we’re like, yeah, I said, I found it. I found it. That’s why I gave myself the name Earth Angel. This fell in love with it and was hooked ever since.
Fuzz Martin 6:18
Excellent, though. That’s really cool. So what kind of stuff? Is there usually? Are there things in the geocache? themselves? Okay.
Tami Mauland 6:26
Yeah. Well, for sure. The log book. Yeah.
Wade Mauland 6:28
And there’s a log book that you sign when you find it. Okay. Just to kind of show you’ve been there. And then there’s a lot of what people call swag. So Oh, yeah. Okay, I
Fuzz Martin 6:36
see. So I have a kid’s toys got painted rock here and Ice Age trail pin. And some in this particular one. We’ve got a lot of log book, okay. Yep. A Little Baby shark finger
Tami Mauland 6:49
puppet. And that’s cool.
Wade Mauland 6:51
So usually, if you take something you put something in
Tami Mauland 6:55
of equal value. Okay.
Fuzz Martin 6:57
So a lot of shopping at Oriental Trading Company. Exactly.
Tami Mauland 7:00
Dollar Tree.
Fuzz Martin 7:01
I also have a teacher wife. Yeah. Now.
Wade Mauland 7:07
So it’s really neat. It’s like a treasure hunt. You take the family out, take the kids out, get outside, enjoy the weather. Go somewhere. Probably you’ve never been before and see some really cool stuff and find treasure at the end for the kids.
Fuzz Martin 7:19
What’s the coolest place you guys have ever geocache down?
Tami Mauland 7:23
Yeah, we’ve been all over.
Wade Mauland 7:24
Yeah, we’ve been all over all over states.
Tami Mauland 7:28
We love waterfall hikes hiking. Okay. The waterfalls
Wade Mauland 7:31
one out in Arizona on right by the Arizona naval ship. Okay, Bell, and that was the real one, of course is in Hawaii. Sure. You’re unaware. And so yeah, all over just need spots that we’ve been up on mountains. I mean, they’re everywhere. And it’s always been a great adventure. So
Fuzz Martin 7:55
now, you guys have this Magellan. GPS unit here, but you can use a cell phone? Yeah, yeah.
Wade Mauland 8:03
And that’s primarily what everybody is doing. You sign up, you go to geocaching.com. Okay, get signed up, and can get going right away?
Fuzz Martin 8:14
How do you find coordinates for that you go to geocaching.com.
Wade Mauland 8:19
And you have to go through a process to hide them. Okay. And you shouldn’t hide them until after you found a bunch. So you get a feel for? Oh, sure. Sure. But, yeah, if you, you know, you’re in an area you’ll look around and you can find it’ll take you it’ll pop up and it’ll tell you, you know, oh, sure. miles or feet away and then
Fuzz Martin 8:40
so the nearest one from us right now is one mile away.
Wade Mauland 8:42
No, no. Okay, just, that’s the West band cash bash. Oh, gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, I’m gonna Holloway. But yeah, you can just do a search and find all the different kinds that are close by you. And, for example, right here. Your courthouse. Oh, well, you
Fuzz Martin 9:01
bet across the street from the studio that we’re recording.
Tami Mauland 9:06
That’s a tough one to find though. That’s a hard one though. And you know, like most games, you’re not going to find them all. So you just go back and login you’ll find sometimes it’s been missing or.
Wade Mauland 9:15
In that last cache owner the geocache owner know that? Come and check on it. Yeah, make sure it’s
Fuzz Martin 9:21
either you couldn’t find it or somebody may have Yeah, taken out or somebody walked away and probably not, might not have been a geocache or even so, what are the age ranges for people that participate in this as
Tami Mauland 9:35
well? My family we have four generations of geocachers my stepfather and I geocache we are going to a birthday party in Illinois. And we had to stop so 92 year old and then my niece, her youngest is two now and she was geocaching with us every year if we get big group our family gets together for the cash bash. We’ll make it an annual thing. So we got these little kids in the woods and we’re Give them piggyback rides, and just so much fun. These kids look forward to this every year and it’s good family bonding.
Fuzz Martin 10:07
Yeah. And I see that you have newspaper articles from when your kids were very young, right? Yeah, yeah. And so you guys been doing this for a while.
Tami Mauland 10:14
We started when our kids were four and six. And I was just thinking and reminiscing over the years. And I remember, you know, and then the kids get the teenage years and it’s not that big of a deal. But then when my son got his temps, he’s like, Mom, I gotta do so many behind the wheel hours. I’m like, Oh, good. You’re taking me do caching. And then I’m sure it’s all the ones that were tall he had to actually get out of the car and get over for me on the tree or wherever they were thought that was a happy memory of mine.
Fuzz Martin 10:42
Oh, that’s that’s excellent. It sounds like a good family bonding experience because you’re out all searching and and you said it’s it’s passion trash out, right? Yes. So that means you’re you’re helping clean up whatever. Yeah, that’s a good area you’re in Hunter.
Tami Mauland 11:00
Yeah, that’s really important to give back and people really appreciate that that and we do that even when we’re not even geocaching for walking our neighborhood and then we’ll i Do you know, yeah, the garbage. I do want to say I just Googled this too and then geocaching when we first came out in 2000, and Oregon, it was called geo stashing. Okay. Geocaching was started by a group of people who were interested in technology and geography. Oh, cool. Yeah. That
Fuzz Martin 11:27
is very late night. We
Tami Mauland 11:29
went out to the very first cash. Yeah, man found it.
Wade Mauland 11:33
In Washington near Seattle. Oh, really?
Fuzz Martin 11:36
Okay. So the original
Tami Mauland 11:38
cash cash. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. They have a big marker there right now. Are that
Fuzz Martin 11:44
cool? That’s really cool. Yeah. West Bend’s Cache Bash is coming August 5th and 6th. I think it’s the 14th event.
Tami Mauland 11:53
14th annual. We missed because a COVID. I think everybody missed that year
Fuzz Martin 11:57
so then we just call it annual. Yeah, I think everybody has been doing that. Otherwise, it gets the math. Right. Forget. So you’re both on the planning committee. What can people expect at this year’s cash bash?
Tami Mauland 12:09
Well, the theme is fun and games and the hiders we just all when we came up with that theme, everybody’s like, well, I want Twister. I want just I want Pokemon I want this, you know, so there’s going to be so it’s gonna be all fun and games. And a lot of people are getting really creative with their heights, and they’re doing like, kind of like more gadget caches. And my family does a lot of those breakout rooms, those escape rooms, you know, we’re locked in for an hour. And so a lot of these geocaches are kind of like one step like that. Just so much fun. And what we’re trying something new this year, because a lot of people have their families. So we’re having the first 15 on the list are all family friendly. Okay, not gonna make you hike real really far into the woods where there’s poison ivy and thorns and ticks and all that stuff. So that’s really neat for the families to be able to do that. Well, well we’ll have some hard ones too. You shown some really neat locations. So how West Bend is beautiful for homelessness. We have bike trails and the hiking trail and Ice Age trail and Eisenbahn and
Fuzz Martin 13:11
is that what makes West Bend or what has made West Bend so popular with geocaching? Is it just the Geocaching community here or is it is there something that makes people want to come here?
Tami Mauland 13:22
I think a mix of everything. I mean, the community is
Wade Mauland 13:25
really positive towards geocaching. There’s a lot of people up here who do cash and you know the city has really gotten behind it. Sure. And obviously there’s a lot of great parks here. Yeah, a lot of things to the high geocaches. Yeah. And for sure, find them.
Wade Mauland 13:42
So yeah, we have Wisconsin Geocaching Association, and they they’re part of the cast bash as well. And they do a lot of stuff with promoting it. They do offer a beginner class. I think they have one this year, Friday and Saturday. And so you know, they we just want to keep giving back and keep building it and keeping it fresh. So there’s 66 new heights. There’s there’s also like, I think someone said was like, well 100 geocaches within 10 miles of West Bank, you know, so you’ll never run out of caches, you know, and it is something for all ages for all abilities. Last year, we ran into some two little grannies in the woods and you’re supposed to do climb a tree it’s called an evil monkey hide because evil monkey climbed a tree left up there and then there’s two grannies like the ones like Harvard He broke my hip last year in Texas. So then my husband Wade and Mike friend of ours, they both climb the tree and through the cast down. They were trying to throw it back up to them took about 10 tries. But you know, it’s just it’s just fun. And you know, it’s such we feel like we have like an extended family all over the United States that we meet from through geocaching. And it’s just it’s just so much fun after to see everybody especially after a year or not with COVID and we didn’t get to see everybody and just was really warming to reunite with everybody.
Fuzz Martin 14:58
Now there are people that come from All over the world. Yes, Ben. Yes, right. Yeah.
Tami Mauland 15:03
And we and West Bend Cache Bash is a mega event that means you have at least 500 people plus all teams coming. And my husband I we travel off United States and all these other mega events and now while we’re my cash basher, and they’re like, oh my god West Bend. You guys have the best mega event everywhere. You know, everybody’s tells me what a great time to have. But I’m still gonna get there but it’s always positive about how well organized it is how with great job that Chamber does. And it’s just so exciting that people like Oh, I know West Bend you guys this and this and all about geocaching. And it’s so cool.
Fuzz Martin 15:40
I Yeah. And I every time you know, Craig Farrell, when he was at the Chamber was extremely into this.
Tami Mauland 15:46
Oh, yeah. That was this was his baby. He was our father. So and
Fuzz Martin 15:49
he’s he’s talked so much about it. And every year I’m like, oh, I should probably learn. But I do have you know, I have a seven year old and she’s into adventure and science. And I think that hiking and stuff like that. We go on out all the tribe or the Ice Age all the time. Yeah. I think she would really enjoy this. So we’ll probably probably check that out soon.
Wade Mauland 16:11
So let us know if you need any help or any have any questions.
Tami Mauland 16:14
And that that’s how the cashpass came to be my friend Laurel, who was a geocacher. Her and I worked at Badger middle school. And she went to the chamber to see if she could put a geocache under the front porch. Oh, sure. And Craig had known about geocaching. And you know, being the business person that is he knew that I you know, this would be a great thing to do. So then, between Laurel and Craig, and they got me on board so that pretty much the three of us got the got the cast bass going and keeping it going.
Fuzz Martin 16:41
Yeah, well, and now again, people are coming to West Bend and staying in the hotels and eating at restaurants and shopping at stores and supporting these different local businesses are filling up
Tami Mauland 16:51
their gas tanks. Yeah, the campgrounds are full hotels are full. And then if they can’t find them all, they come back the next weekend or come back in winter. You know, we’re we’re four seasons, people, people, we made a name for ourselves.
Fuzz Martin 17:03
And this is something that you don’t have to do during an event. Right? You can just go out right anytime. Anytime. Yeah. So well, Tammy and wait, this is like extremely, a lot of great information. You’re very obviously passionate about it. And I appreciate you guys. enlightening me on that and our listeners to the show. And again the West Bend cash Bash is August 5 and sixth. Is there a place where people can learn more information about it?
Wade Mauland 17:29
Well, if you go to geocaching.com they have all the information about you know the game and what to
Tami Mauland 17:35
do and if you contact the chamber West Bend Area Chamber they’ll they’ll help you if you
Fuzz Martin 17:39
type in Cache Bash. I’m pretty sure it comes up in Google right away if you type in West Bend Cache Bash but yeah,
Tami Mauland 17:44
they’re just call and then Tony does a remarkable job now and Nicole she’s carrying the torch now. Yep. For Greg. So both Nicole and Tony. We didn’t we didn’t lose a beat or drop a beat up whatever the thing is. We want to keep it going. Yeah.
Fuzz Martin 17:59
Didn’t know find a cash. So well. Thank you again for coming in. And good luck at this year’s cash bash. And thanks for putting this together.
Fuzz Martin 18:08
You’re welcome. Thank you. Pleasure to meet you.
Fuzz Martin 18:12
Thanks again to Tami and Wade Mauland for joining me on this week’s episode of Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz again. West Benz cash Bash is coming up August 5th and 6th. Check out the West Bend Area Chamber of Commerce website for more details on that event. I’ll drop a link to that in the episode’s show notes. But you can go by clicking on the description of this particular podcast episode. Can you believe it? It’s already been 51 weeks of this show. The 52nd week comes up next week because that’s how time works. And it’ll be the close out of season one and Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz I do appreciate you listening. You can find more about the show @fifteenwithfuzz on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And you can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Good Pods or wherever you listen to your podcast episodes. We’ll talk to you next week right here on Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.
