Geocaching

Have you ever been geocaching? Do you even know what it is? Wikipedia defines it as “an outdoor activity 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.”

Here’s how Dan and Katie did their first geocache about a week ago. For this adventure, I stayed home with Jackson for naptime, but Dan brought family along for the fun. His brother, nephew, and parents went on the search.

Dan looked on the website geocaching.com and searched for a particular local park. He found a great route that included four waypoints with their own riddle or mystery at each station. The answer to that riddle/question/clue gave them a digit to be used in the final GPS coordinates that pinpointed the cache.

Dan said Katie really enjoyed this first geocaching experience. She ran around with her fanny pack, notebook and pencil and helped Dan solve the clues. Finally, they were rewarded with their treasure and found the cache inside a tree stump.

The signed the logbook inside the cache, left some trinkets (and picked two to keep), then buried it back in the stump for others to find.

I’m hoping I get to join the seekers on their next geocache hunt!