High Tech Treasure Hunting

I read about geocaching a year or so ago and thought it would be fun to try with the kids sometime. For whatever reason, we never got around to it...until yesterday. Our nearby metropark had a "Geocaching for Beginners" class yesterday afternoon, so we decided to try it out.

After attending the class and practicing on a couple caches the instructor had hidden, we set out on our own. We used Ron's TomTom and a gps program on his cell phone and had a blast! What kid doesn't love a treasure hunt?

Our first solo hunt lead us to a cemetery about 2 miles from our house. Danielle navigated us to the right spot, and Tyler found the container. This one only contained a log, so we signed our family's name and replaced the container (after taking pictures).

We found 4 other caches yesterday, all within 5 miles of our house. 3 of the other caches contained trinkets in addition to the log. The kids brought small goodies to trade for goodies in the container. For example, Danielle left a flower ring and took a mini notebook at one find. At another find, Tyler took a mini yo-yo and left a little metal soldier he found in the practice cache at the park. The kids had a lot of fun looking for the containers once we found the right coordinates. The most challenging find for us was a cache that was concealed within the cap of a fence.

Now that we know what we're doing, we're looking forward to trying this on vacation. We had to cancel our plans to visit Gulf Shores, AL due to the oil spill and are going to the Smoky Mountains instead. We thought this would be fun to try on the ride down to break up the trip some. It would also be fun to look for some that may be hidden on some of the trails within the national park. We were surprised there were so many so close to home, too. This will be a fun weekend activity when we are bored and can't think of anything else to do or just want to be outside and explore.