Geocaching

[TEOTWAWKI13]

Does anyone "play" this little outdoor scavenger hunt game? My buddy moved up to Cleveland, TN close to me, and he's big into it, and we took my 2 girls out the other day and they love it. Hopefully, it keeps them off the Wii...but does anyone here do it?

I like it to better my use with the GPS. You go to geocaching.com and register, then go find places near where you are, find the cache, and sign the log book that you found it. Pretty cool stuff. We plan to hide some cache's too.

Anyways, just thought I'd ask.

[Sniper-T]

I thought about it at one time but then put the kibosh on it.

if you're setting up your own, just remember the obvious, you're giving up locations. whether they are favorite camping spots, fishing areas, BOL's, etc. you're creating a map for everyone and their dog to go to wherever you have gone. I've seen some pretty pristine wilderness areas run amok by geocachers and 'spoiled' by leaving their garbage behind.

And if you focus on one particular area (say within an hour from your home, then once you have a couple dozen caches up, you're kinda I giving yourself away.

I do know some people who are pretty serious about it, and it gets them off the couch and into the wilderness, in a good way, so if it works for you and yours... go for it.

Also note, that there are a lot of 'urban' caches as well, so if you just have a couple hours to kill, you could probably find a couple near your local Walmarts and Costco's (Sams)

Great way of teaching Orienteering, if you swap out the GPS for a decent map and compass

[TEOTWAWKI13]

Yeah, I've considered all the down sides, and the urban caches are cool too. I figured the one's we "hid" would be limited and spread out somewhere we'd never visit regularly, like the side of the road somewhere miles from town.

[realist]

It is a good family outing and teaches you kids how to use GPS. If work in a compass then all the better they will be more comfortable in the woods, that is if you are out in the woods. If you are in the city you usually end up in parks, make sure they are always aware of their surrounding by quizzing on their location. May sure that you teach them to never rely on just a GPS. One other area that it teaches them is how to camouflage things, not a bad skill either. I like the idea of teaching them how to cache things.

[Sniper-T]

There really are a plethora of positives too, especially with young'uns... while you're out, you can be looking for tracks, identifying wildlife, flora and fauna, scat, etc

[TEOTWAWKI13]

There really are a plethora of positives too, especially with young'uns... while you're out, you can be looking for tracks, identifying wildlife, flora and fauna, scat, etc

We did just this the last time we were out...showed them a deer path, deer tracks, explained to them moss grows on the north side, etc.

[rentprop1]

all I know is some idiot placed one in a vacant plot of lot across the street from my home , for weeks I kept running people out of the woods wondering what they were doing in there, a teacher brought an entire elementary class out 13 students, so I asked what they were looking for.....after I found out what geocaching was, I joined Ground Speek or whatever the website is that lists where to go and what to look for to added an anonymous note " not to park " on the property that " the homeowner is crazy and will shoot at you ".....haven't seen a person come to look for that damned thing in month...hehe :p

[Sniper-T]

add a generic picture of a shot up car. and they will be done!

[ladyhk13]

We took my son, niece and nephew down to Huntsville for a whole day and had a blast! We used a GPS and gave them a compass. We were in parks, parking lots, ally ways, the woods, a baseball field and I can't even remember where else. It was awesome. The kids loved it and there were a couple that were so hard we didn't even find them. It's a lot of driving around but honestly it was worth it and if you can keep teenagers happy for a whole day, that's saying something. They even got 'off track' while we were in the park and in the woods when they found cool other stuff to look at so it took us longer because they actually got interested in their surroundings. I would take them again for sure. Now if they are under 10 years old I would probably say wait unless you just want to look for one or 2 caches because they'll get bored.

[mollypup]

I've been interested in know what geocaching was all about. I have "Geocashing for Dummies" on my wishlist. I like the idea of learning how to read a compass and becoming comfortable with using it. I'll check out the website and thanks!