hola, isabel

Since we are only working on half of our usual income around our house right now we were forced to find cheap family entertainment.

Enter geocaching.

It’s the perfect way for my little family to spend time together, in nature, having fun. And the best part is that it’s 100% FREE. (Minus the GPS you’ll need. But we just borrow The King’s dad’s GPS. So yeah, FREE for us!)

We were first introduced to geocaching this summer while camping with some friends. I had heard about it before (from Wil Wheaton’s blog about 8 years ago) but had never tried it or known anyone (personally) who had tried it either.

Do you know what geocaching even is? According to Wikipedia:

Geocaching is an outdoor activity in which the participants use a GPS receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called “geocaches” or “caches”) anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware or ammo box) containing a logbook. Larger containers can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is most often described as a “game of high-tech hide and seek”, sharing many aspects with orienteering, treasure-hunting, and waymarking.

In non-nerd terms geocaching is simply treasure hunting. (Only the treasures aren’t gold and silver. They are more like pins and yo-yos.) Caches are typically (but not always) located outside. So while you’re on a little hike with your family or at a local park you can also be looking for caches. If you find one with trinkets inside, you can take one. But only if you trade it for something else. (We recently bought little parachute guys to trade with.)

(This one was right off the trail we were hiking on.  The passersby were very confused why we were snooping around the tree!)

Believe it or not, geocaching is super duper awesome and so addicting. Immediately after our first geocaching experience we came home and set up our own account at geachacing.com, entered in our zip code to find any geocaches within a two miles range of our house.

There were twelve of them. And we don’t live out in the boonies. We live in The City.

Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica. As of October 28 2009, there are over 930,460 active geocaches over the world.

The King, Babboo and I have walked around our neighborhood finding local geocaches. We’ve visited the parks around out house and found some there. We’ve gone camping and hiked looking for caches as well as going out with friends to do it.

Babboo thinks it’s great.

I’m trying to get my parents to try it out. They love to go ride their 4-wheelers on trails. The trails they go on have got to be filled with different geocaches for them to find. So far my mom’s registered a username at the geocaching.com site and found how many are around her house (seventeen). But they have yet to go out and do one. I know (KNOW!) they will love it.

(Vesper if the queen of finding the geocaches!  Especially the small ones.)

We got our friends Gawain and Vesper (and The Professor) into it too. Next up I want to get my coworkers into it. It would be the perfect thing to do while they are out on the road every other week doing inspections. It would set off their day just right. Plus, they already use GPS to find where they are going. It makes perfect sense that they’d geocache.

(Searching for the cache!)

Now a days I carry a log book in my purse so I can document all the geocaches we find.  Any time we leave the house to go on a hike or to a new park, I ask The King to add some new geocaches for us to find. Heck, we even gone international with our love of geocaching last month in Canada.

Next step, hiding our own geocache.

So tell me, have you done geocaching before? Did you love/hate it? And if you haven’t done it, have I convinced you to try it?

(Sometimes you find other cool things while searching for the geocache.  Enter this beauty!)