Our First Geocaching Adventure

[CrazyMom5480]

During the party for the Summer Fun with your Kids group, musicgirl77 made a post about free summer fun.  I'm always up for free stuff, so I looked at the post.  Her post told about geocaching.  I had heard of it before but never really looked into it.  She mentioned the site http://www.geocaching.com/, so I went there and looked at their information.

I played on there for a while before talking to DH about it.  I couldn't believe how many caches were hidden within one or two miles of my house!  I don't know anyone else who does this geocaching thing, so it was really surprising.  DH ended up getting a Magellan Triton 400 (handheld GPS) as his Father's Day gift.

He ended up having to work a double shift today, so it was just me and the kids on our first treasure hunt.  We chose one that was supposed to be pretty easy to find.  It actually was!  The clue said to look in the weeds for the cache.  I spotted it pretty quickly, but the kids thought there was nothing there.  The "weeds" were ivy, and the area was small and safe.  I told them to look through to see if they could find it.  It took a few seconds, but they found it

They were so excited!  We dug into the cache.  There was a notebook for us to sign our names and tell about what we found.  There were lots of little trinkets.  With these caches, you are allowed to take something out of it if you leave something in its place.  There were so many things in there that the kids could not make up their minds on what they would want, so we didn't trade this time.

It was very interesting.  Aside from the initial investment of the GPS, the only money we'll spend on this is on gas if we choose to drive to locations.  It is fun that our whole family will be able to enjoy.  Many of these hunts involve hiking in our area.  Not only will the kids have fun, they'll get to be outdoors enjoying nature, and they'll be worn out by the time we get home!

I really recommend trying this to everyone.  You may even know someone who would let you borrow a GPS if you just want to know if you would like it.  We had planned on going to McDonald's after we found this first cache.  As we were putting the cache back in its place, my three year old son said, "Can we go find another one now?"  To get him to forget about McDonald's takes something really exciting.  (We don't often go there, so it really is a treat.)  I think next weekend we may have to pack a picnic lunch and make a whole day of this.

Here they are enjoying their find.Of course, they can't both have their eyes open for the same picture.