Geocaching - A Fun Family Outdoor Activity That's Not Just for Gadget Geeks

My fishing pole is sitting in the back of a storage closet along with my racket ball equipment, golf clubs, roller blades, kayak and various other items that I bought with every intention of using them often. None of these activities seemed to stick with me…they all got a bit boring and I never got "hooked" on any of them. But for some reason my little GPS system is burning through batteries.

About a month ago I got turned onto geocaching. I heard about it from a freind and immediately went to my trusty computer to look up the details. Everything I read showed geocaching to be a really neat idea and it seemed cheap enough, easy enough and got me outdoors. So, of course, I just HAD to go out and grab a new (but cheap) GPS to try this activity out. I heard my family groan and mumble about more money spent on something that would never be used…save the receipt this time and take it back when you don't use it. I ignored these negative people I mean didn't I recently stick with…oh darn can't remember what it was I stuck with.

OK, so what is geocaching and why is someone like me finally sticking with something? It is basically a treasure hunt with real items that are out there waiting to be found. People all over the world, yes the world, hide caches for this activity. Some have small items in them, some only have a log book to sign, some are merely interesting places/spots to visit, there are environment clean up caches and there are even some that you can do over the Internet. The ones with items sometimes have themes that the items represent…with these, and really all item caches, you are welcome to take an item but you must replace it with something, preferably something with the same theme. For these ones I just went to the dollar store and bought a variety of things..spent a whopping $15.

So how do you get started? Simple, you just buy a GPS and a few trinkets to replace anything you take. I found a GPS for under $100 at WalMart. Then you go to a geocaching site like www.geocaching.com, sign up, look for the location of caches, plug the coordinates into your GPS and you are on your way.

There are several levels of geocaching and I would recommend really paying attention to the levels if you are a beginner as it can get very frustrating if you can't find your first few caches fairly easily. I had wandered around bushes looking for one and got frustrated when my GPS said I was on top of the cache and I didn't see anything…took me a second trip to see it hidden under some moss in a little hole in a tree.

I have a little backpack where I stow my geocaching stuff and in it I keep a notebook, pencil and my dollar store items and add in some snacks and water when I am out "caching". This of course now stays in my vehicle so that I can run by a cache anytime I am near one.

At the very least try this….keep the receipt just in case, but I doubt you will need it.