Geocaching

Geocaching is basically a high tech 'Hide and Seek' game using your GPS system and accessing a geocaching website like www.geocaching.com. There you will find coordinates (in latitude and longitude form) for sites all over the world where someone has left a little treasure for you to find! You can narrow the hunt down to your zip code or plot a trip far beyond those limits if you like.

And let me tell you, it is soooo fun!

There were LOTS of places in and around Wharton to explore, so I copied some coordinates and told the boys we were going on a treasure hunt!

The first place we were lead to was our town's cemetery. We hunted and hunted but couldn't find the cache. It was a little weird looking around in a cemetery and we soon abandoned the hunt. It felt like we were somehow being disrespectful to the dead, so we prayed a 'Hail Mary' for the souls there and left for our next destination.

Our second destination was also in town. We scoured and hunted and eventually John Paul came running from a clump of bushes yelling, "I found it! I found it!"

We huddled around as Kyle unlocked the box, it was really exciting! The boys DOVE into the box and found small treasures, Doug got the log book and thumbed through it - there must have been at least fifty people before us that had signed it. It was really cool to read all the notes left by others as well as the letter left by the person that had originally hid the cache.

The box was full of goodies and the boys took: a gold Matchbox car, a Kidz Bop CD, and a hackie sack. The rules of the game are that if you take something from the cache you must leave something in it's place. The boys came prepared and left a marble, a Lego man, and some sea shells.

We locked the box up tight and JP took it back to where he found it.

Our last destination was a small town about ten minutes down the road. Ryan's eagle eye spotted this small cache in the crack of some rocks.

No treats were inside this cache, but there was a LONG list of folks that had been there! We wrote in our name and the date and placed it back among the rocks.

Besides getting coordinates from Geocaching.com you can also track the trinkets you leave behind, make your own geocaches for others to find, and read great stories about geocaching from around the world! It's free to sign up and the app is free for your iPhone.
So get outside and start exploring!
You might even find treasure in your own back yard!