Geocaching with Friends

Geocaching is an activity many people enjoy. You hide a little goodie at a specific location and others come to try to find it using GPS (and hints) and identify it. They may leave some token swag there with yours or replace your swag with their own. This is an interesting tale from one of our visitors, Ann, who would like to share her family's first venture into geocaching.

My best friend and her family invited our family to join them for a family adventure day. She said that all we had to do was plan to spend the day with their family, dress in clothing that was comfortable for outdoor activity and prepare to have fun. Upon describing the event to my husband, he agreed - with some trepidation. He likely also figured that the worst case is that we would get to spend time with our friends and the kids could play. I confirmed the outing with my friend.

I prepared ahead of time and during the week to ensure that my son had has favorite "adventure" clothes washed and ready to go. It is this pant and top set that we found online. He says he calls them his adventure clothes because when he wears them, he is invisible (they have camouflage on them) and of course, when you are invisible and outside, you are on an adventure.

The adventure day finally arrived. We started asking more questions as we loaded up into our friend's family van and started the drive. My friend's husband simply explained that we were going treasure hunting. Visions of metal detectors or panning for gold by a rushing river stream crept into my head. Our friends were always off participating in all kinds of family adventures and treasure hunts. As it turned out our friends introduced us to geocaching. It is the perfect family adventure. Think of it like modern day treasure hunting with GPS coordinates that mark the spot.

They had plans that took us to three different caches, it took between 20 minutes to 45 minutes to find the cache at each place. Their GPS does not have pinpoint accuracy so we needed to follow the hints for each cache. The 'treasures' were a little disappointing after thinking of finding gold and silver, but it was truly fun and the kids enjoyed it all.

One cache had a small blue feather, a fortune cookie paper, a rhinestone button. I learned that the treasures are called "Swag" and no one expects things of value, it is strictly small, unusual objects that are unique in some way. At some caches, you can take something as a souvenir as long as you leave something different. The swag is stored in a plastic or even a metal box to keep it all together and dry. The fun is the finding.

As the day came to a close, I also recalled that my friend had mentioned they had recently begun urban treasure hunting as a way to acquire real treasures for pennies on the dollar and wondered what that was all about. When I asked, she said that she could loan me her book and we would be doing that on our next adventure day.

There are lots of places to learn more about this hide-and-seek adventure, Wikipedia has a good article and often you can find a local club. Some States offer locations through their Department of Natural Resources, Iowa's Geocaching site is a good example. Geocaching can be a great way to get in a little exercise, do some hiking, use your brains a bit and have some outdoor fun.

If you haven't got a good handheld GPS - or if yours is just not that accurate, it might be time to look at the huge selection of GPS equipment at Amazon. You can read expert reviews for GPS while you're there. Find out the things that matter before you buy.