Here are some tips and ideas for hiding a tribute geocache. If you have ever browsed the geocache listings and noticed the letters IHO and wondered what that stood for, it normally means “In Honor Of”. A geocacher might hide a tribute cache in honor of a fellow geocacher for a lot of reasons:

- a milestone caching achievement

- a thank-you for giving back to the caching community

- a birthday or other event

- a joke or a challenge for that specific caching friend

Another possibility for a Tribute Cache (or an IHO “in honor of” cache) is for a friend or family member who isn’t even a geocacher. We did this recently for Sandy’s Dad’s 75th birthday celebration. Here are a few tips and things to keep in mind if you are interested in hiding a tribute geocache of your own.

First, take some time to think of what you appreciate about this person, or what interests, skills and hobbies they have. It’s really cool to have a theme for the cache that is perfectly tailored to the person you’re honoring. In our case, it was an easy choice. Joe has been a pilot his entire life, and he “lives and breathes” aviation. Our theme was going to be FLIGHT.

Next, you can have fun and get creative with ways to incorporate your theme into your cache. For the cache container, we had an ammo can to use, so Sonny decided to create a camouflage pattern that tied in with our theme. He printed out a couple of pictures of airplanes. We cut them out and traced onto firm cardstock to create our own stencils. Using 2 colors of spray paint and an overlapping technique, Sonny painted a camouflaged masterpiece that was perfect for our theme.

You definitely want to highlight your theme on the cache description page. Add pictures, text, descriptions, etc. - anything you can think of to share about the person you are honoring and explain why the theme is important to them.

The SWAG items that you put in your cache container are the best and easiest way to promote your theme. On the cache description page, you may want to specifically suggest that finders come prepared to swap items that fit in with the theme, and to be even more helpful, perhaps you can give some suggestions. In our case, we enlisted the help of our entire family to bring SWAG items related to the theme to stock the geocache as we hid it. Some of our Flight-related items were: a plastic helicopter, some small planes, a bee, a parachute jumper, a DVD (Flight of the Phoenix), a kleenex pack from Disney's Planes movie, an airplane-related bathtub book, and a specially crafted LEGO airplane.

Finally, you need to hide your geocache. Why not make it a special event? Even if the person you are honoring isn’t a geocacher, they may enjoy a nice hike with some significant people. You could even keep the actual tribute cache idea as a surprise! For our family, we planned a fun outing which was to include a short hike, finding a few geocaches and then sharing a picnic lunch at a park. Our family members have all been geocaching before, but are not really active unless they are with us. When we got to the location to hide the new geocache, we pulled out the special container and surprised Dad with our tribute. What a fun way to honor that special someone in your life, or an awesome achievement or milestone, by hiding a tribute geocache for them!

To hear more about our tribute cache, listen to show 475.