We try to make time to do something fun as a family each Friday of the summer. Sometimes, our plans fall through. Other times, the demands of regular life push in, giving us just an hour or two to get away. When that happens, our family turns to a tried and true activity: geocaching.
If you haven’t heard of it, geocaching is a modern-day treasure hunt. Using a hand-held GPS (Global Positioning System) device, geocachers locate a waypoint using latitude and longitude coordinates. (Many smart phones have similar functions). Players then search for a hidden “cache,” a small container holding a log book and, sometimes, tiny treasures known as “swag.”
If you have access to a computer, finding a cache is easy at sites like geocaching.com. Users can sign up for this free service, plug in their zip code or any desired location, and a map pops up marked with caches in that vicinity. A search of Hamburg, Pennsylvania, for example, yields 389 results.
As you use this site (or others like it), watch for lingo: hitchhikers and travel bugs are small items meant to travel from cache to cache; letterboxing is when the owner of a cache includes clues you must solve at the waypoint to find the container; muggles are nongeocachers who look puzzled watching you try to find the hidden site. It’s also a good idea to cull hints about a cache (difficulty of terrain, size of container) as well as subtle hints left in a comment area by those who have searched before you.
On a recent Friday, our family squeezed in a quick geocache adventure between work responsibilities and the need to prepare for an imminent camping trip. While eating lunch, we plugged our home zip code into the website and decided to try two geocaches: The Great Outdoors and Cabela’s Hat Trick, both located near the giant outdoors retailer in Tilden Township.
We tackled The Great Outdoors first. This was a puzzle cache, meaning that once at the waypoint, we had to solve six questions, plug these numeric answers into a second set of coordinates, and then find the cache. My husband served as the record keeper, reading the clues and sending the kids to find the answers by counting sign posts or the number of letters in a specific word. We also had an encrypted hint available from the website. Most of the clues were easy, but a few had us stumped. I even tried to “call a friend,” asking a more experienced geocacher for help. (His hint – look at the light poles – didn’t yield results.) We tried several options, plugging in numbers and wandering the area, but after about an hour decided to leave this geocache for another day. In geocache lingo, that’s a “DNF” for “did not find.”
Fortunately, we had time to pursue our second hunt, the Hat Trick. This was a more traditional cache, and we quickly zeroed in on the site, finding the hidden container and logging our find. Note: make sure to return to geocaching.com and log your find there, as well. You can share your thoughts about the hunt and give the cache’s owner any positives or negatives you encountered. Just make sure to follow site etiquette and never reveal the actual location.
Happy with our Fun Friday adventure, we piled back in the hot car and headed to a nearby store for ice cream. It was a perfect end to a brief family adventure. As we enjoyed the treat, we discussed other geocaches we’d like to try.
While we did not find the first geocache, we did find several square, q-code stickers labled “Munzee.” Turns out, these are part of another virtual treasure hunt that allows users to rack up points and rewards using smart phones. We made a note to check these out on future adventures. We’d also like to try Waymarking, a similar sport which emphasizes unique locations over the treasure-hunt aspect of tracking down coordinates. For more information, visit munzee.com or waymarking.com.
