Have You Ever Gone Geocaching?

D is going to be turning 11 soon. And we have been brain storming outdoor birthday party ideas. And we discovered that one of our county parks offers a geocaching birthday party. Geocaching? 

Turns out geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a Global Positioning System receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", at specific locations marked by coordinates all over the world.

Yup, that make total sense. Off to find a youtube video because we were a still confused. We found this video with a cute kid dumbing it down for us. 

Step 1. Download the app and create an account at geocaching.com

Step 2. Find a geocaching location near you. So over the weekend we decided to try it out. Turns out there are a whole bunch near us.. I mean who knew this was thing!

Step 3. Pick the one you want to do and the map opens up.. all you got to do is follow it. We drove as far as we could drive and then we walked the rest of the way. There is a clue or riddle sometimes to help you find it. The first one we did was called 'The Birdhouse' so obviously once we were just a couple of feet away the boys started to look for a birdhouse.

Step 4.  Once the bird house was found you open it or in this case remove the bag from inside it. Now I'm not sure if the bird house is the geocache or the stuff inside it is. Anyway.. inside were two zip lock bags. One contained a pencil and a log that you date and sign. The other contained a bag of small tokens. The idea is that you take something and leave something. So for the first geocache D removed a little red car and left behind a bouncy ball.

Step 5. You mark the geocache found on the app.. can leave a thanks to the person who hid it and that is about it. 

Since we had some more time we did a second one. 

This one was a little trickier to find. The gps location pin pointed to a house across the street and we felt uncomfortable snooping around someone's private property. Plus, as the name suggests, there was no railing in sight. So we went across the street where there was a railing. Eventually it was found, the goodies inside were a bit meagre so H graciously decided not to take anything and still left a small Catboy figurine. 

Conclusion, the boys enjoyed it. It took them away from their screens and spend sometime outdoors. While it is not something D wants to do for his birthday, he does want to continue doing it. I like that it has no geographical boundaries.. so you can do it wherever, whenever. You can adjust the level of difficulty making it more challenging for adults. 

Have you ever gone geocaching?

       

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