If you haven't heard of Geocaching, let us introduce you to one of our favorite ways to explore as a family.
Geocaching is the world's largest treasure hunting community, and people of all ages around the world participate. Whether we are playing at a local park, or traveling to new states, most likely there is a Geocache waiting to be found.
With our travel lifestyle, Geocaching gets our family outside, wandering around new places. There are millions of geocaches around the world waiting to be discovered. The best place to start is in your own hometown. It is simple and FREE to start.
Geocachers use the Geocaching app and/or a GPS device to navigate to cleverly hidden containers called geocaches. A Geocache at it's most fundamental level is a hidden container, big or tiny, with a log book (or sheet) inside for you to sign with your Geocaching username and the date you found it. Simple as that. Once you've done that you also log that you found it on the app and leave a nice comment about how much fun you had trying to find it or how surprised you were when you finally found it. Or whatever you feel like saying!
Once you fall in love with Geocaching, you will want to upgrade to premium so that you'll have access to even more Geocaches including ones with high difficulty ratings, multi-stage caches that lead you on a series of clues to the final cache, mystery caches that give you a puzzle to solve before you can find the cache and more. And at only $30 per year it's totally worth it.
How to get started
1. Download the Geocaching app from the Apple App store or Google Play
2. Create an account and come up with a cool user name (Ours is ChasingtheWildWonder, make sure to find us!)
3. Find your first Geocache
4 .Share your experience
We recently found our first trackable which added a whole new level of excitement for getting out and finding geocaches. A trackable is a little token or coin that users can place in caches. They have a code on them that allows you to log and track it on the Geocaching website so that you can see where it has been. Once you find one you can choose to leave it there or you can take and place it in another cache, either close by or far away. We found our first one in Texas and plan to take it all the way to Idaho. We tracked it on the website and saw that it started in Germany in 2015 with the goal of traveling around the world. From there it went to Ireland then to New York, California and then back to New York and then to Texas where the last user to have it found it, get this... in 2016!!! After they found it they lost it while moving and thought it was gone forever. But they found it and placed it into the cache just one week prior to us finding it! How cool is that??
Some caches will be big enough to put "tradables" in. Random nick-nacks that you can take in trade for something of equal value. The kids love seeing the treasures left in the containers, and you can even add your own little surprise. It's probably time to order some chasing the wild wonder stickers to leave.
An added level of fun with Geocaching is making sure "muggles" don't see you. Muggles are people in the area that may not know about Geocaching, and the whole point is to keep geocaches a secret so they are not messed with or mistaken for trash or other undesirable items.
It gets even better. You can create your own geocaches for others to find. That is definitely on our list of things to do!!
There is the scoop on Geocaching. Our heart is to share ways you can experience the world around you, create memories, and live this one wild life!! Make sure to let us know and share how your adventures go. We love seeing you explore
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