Geocaching - what is it?!

What is Geocaching?

Geocaching is a worldwide game of hiding and seeking treasure. A geocacher can place a geocache in the world, pinpoint its location using GPS technology and then share the geocache’s existence and location online. Anyone with a GPS unit can then try to locate the geocache.

We were introduced to geocaching a few years ago and have done it on numerous occasions with friends and family. It is a great way to get fresh air, exercise, quality time with other cachers and treasure of course! Below is a picture of the first cache we went to while my parents were down, we did 4 in total. Uncle Kevin and Grace joined us on this one. This was an especially cool cache because our babysitter, Andrea, is one of the people who placed this cache in the woods for us to find. It had been visited previously that day even, so a popular spot I guess. Devin took some marbles, fitting as that was the caches title and Jasmine took a purple dragonfly toy. We left a swiper and cookie monster figure for someone else to find when they dig the treasure up. This cache is located about a 8 minute walk from our house and did require a bit of searching in the woods to find it!
The one below is actually a minicache that was stumbled upon by accident. Gramma thought the decoding clue said under a rock, but it actually said under a pine. Grampa was searching under all the rocks and he found a tiny little container actually embedded in the rock. They drilled a hole into the rock and stuffed the container. Not much would fit in there for treasures, but Devin was happy to take a tiny wheel (which would have been from a toy car) and we left a hair elastic for a little girl.

Below Grampa is helping Devin traverse the creek. Once Grampa went over, Devin just had to follow. They needed walking sticks to help them balance across, as there was at least a foot of water deep on each side. He made it no problem!

This is Devin posing with Gramma and Grampa after finally finding this one. For this one you had to solve a riddle first and then add the number to get the new coordinates, but the first time we messed up the math and weren't in the right location. The second time we went was much better. Devin took a toy gun from this one, most of the toys inside were unfortunately moldy, as it had gotten wet. Jasmine was at school still, so she didn't get to partake in these adventures.

Below Grampa is searching through the ammunition box we found at another location. We tried to persuade Devin to take an army man, but instead he took a bracelet! What a kid, at least in was camoflauge. This one was a pain to find. First you had to go to a memorial and record numbers and then add those numbers to the coordinates. We headed in the right direction, but he said it was a short walk... and he lied, it was quite a bit further away AND he said the treasure was under a pine and it was a spruce. Geez!

Here is Devin the Trooper dredging his way through tall weeds and grass to make his way back to the car. He did 3 geocaches in one afternoon and was mighty tired by the end, but had fun with all his toys in between caches. Fun, fun!

Like I said a fun excuse to get outside, get some exercise, solves some puzzles and earn some treasure! At each site you get to sign a log book and say where you are from and when you return home you log onto the website and let people know about your adventure - pretty cool!

Mom and dad actually put their own cache out in Shaunavon - can't wait to go looking for that when we go home next summer! They are in the process of building a second one already. I guess we will have to do one so that we can make them go find ours next time they are here! Now, we just need a theme, a container, a location and ... TREASURE!