Toodling Around Thursday. Or, our first geocaching adventure

***Some of you might be looking for my HTML grab button tutorial, but that went up accidentally! So I'm posting for real on Tuesday - I'm really sorry! I'm trying so hard to write more patterns so don't have much time for sewing tutorials... :( but there will be some of those very soon!

Have you heard of Geocaching? It's when you go look for treasures using GPS coordinates and maybe some hints.  Some caches can be really hard to find, or they require you to do a bunch of maths or solve puzzles.  Some of them are super easy.

Our first ever geocaching find!

There are a lot of people who go geocaching, and it's worldwide.  There are little trackable objects, called geocoins, or travel bugs (which are in the form of dog tags, not bugs!) that you can pick up and drop off somewhere else.  Trackables travel the globe, getting 'logged' at each stop. Anyone can plant a cache (as long as you abide by the rules...) and anyone can go find one. Sometimes the cache is in a big box and you can swap for goodies, and sometimes they're really tiny, and you just sign your name.

You can even use your mobile phone! I have an Android phone, and I got the c:geo app for FREE! It's great! We've successfully found 3 out of 5 attempted geocaches - we're new so not so great... but it's been loads of fun looking for them.

We were introduced to geocaching by Simon and Jae.  Jae is really enthusiastic about it, and doesn't seem to mind my stupid newbie questions. She's been trying to get us into it for a long time, and over Easter weekend we finally took the plunge!

Swapping and signing

We went to one that was very close to our house, and it was sooo much fun! It was in a little plastic waterproof box, and had a few little toys and stuff in it, along with a small log book which we signed. Savi was thrilled with her little Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles van (because the word Ninja promotes terrorism, didn't you know that?!).

Savi's little swapped treasure.

If you are trying to lose weight (who isn't?) or you want to get your kids out more to enjoy nature (and wear them out so they sleep early) you should really consider geocaching!
You might as well give it a try - it's one of the only activities left that's still FREE!

© J C Excell, 2011