Have you ever been Geocaching? Or even heard of it? Well, if you haven’t and are looking for something fun for your family to do together during the summer, you might want to check it out.
“Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called “geocaches” or “caches”) anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware or ammo box) containing a logbook and “treasure,” usually toys or trinkets of little value”.–Wikipedia
When we took a trip over Spring Break, we were able to go geocaching with some family members who have a GPS unit and had been before. We loved it.
All you need is a GPS unit, the internet, some small treasures (it is based on a take something/leave something trading system ), a pen, and some good walking shoes.
Before you begin your treasure hunt, you will need to log on to the official Geocaching website which can be found here. Then you need to identify what area you are going to be and see if there are any caches for you to hunt. We found several within walking distance from where we were based.
After determining which hunts you will go on you simply enter the coordinates into your GPS system and head out to find your treasure. Some caches are really small and are quite challenging to find. Like this one we finally discovered up in a tree. This particular one had no treasure but we did sign our names as a token of our great hunting skills and found many others listed who were also sucessful.
Some caches are alot more kid friendly. The kids were overjoyed when we found some full of fun trinkets and treasures. They each took one and left something different behind.
We did a LOT of walking that day and I can not remember hearing once about how tired someone was! We had a great time and only had one major mishap on our whole adventure!
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Letti says
Our family has done this a few times and we love it. YOu have found some pretty cool stuff. Our best find was under a metal fence pole it took us a while to find it but it was sure fun.
HaHa. It is really fun. I need that picture of Nick's shoe!
This looks like a blast. I wonder if they have any in my little area…
Hi, I just found your blog. It's awesome. We do letterboxing which is similar to geocaching but without a gps. It's been fun and we do it as a family.
I know this is a little late but I just found your blog, we love geocaching and our GPS recently died and we were thrilled to find an application for the iphone, that does the same thing and only costs about $10.
Just found this post!
My sister did a fake geocaching thing for a 5th grade trip and then my dad decided to try it with the GPS he just got for free. Turns out that its perfect for this kind of thing. We've been caching for about a year and were able to share it with a friend to enjoy with his family the last few months of his life, and just entered a travel bug race in my city! Such a crazy fun thing for the family! :)
We discovered geocaching recently and love it. We have both found caches and planted a few. It’s a great family activity and always generates conversation.