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Are you a muggle? No, not as in Harry Potter’s non-magical people. I’m referring to geocaching. If you’ve never heard of it then you’re what us Geocachers call a muggle. We are instructed to watch out for muggles because, since they unaware of the game, they could potentially take our treasures and dispose of them. So do you want to become a geocacher? Read on to find out more

Geocaching

About a year or so ago a friend told about Geocaching and we just tried it for the first time this week! What amazing fun. Our 3, 4, and 8 year old loved it! They thought it was so cool to find treasures that other people hid. It’s like knowing other people’s secrets. Here are the basic steps of Geocaching.

• Have or borrow a handheld GPS unit
• Find coordinates of a hidden treasure
• Enter them into your unit (you can batch download them if you hook your unit up to your computer)
• Begin searching (by car or foot or a little of both depending on their location)
• Find the treasure (it’s kind of like an easter egg hunt at the end)
• Either log your visit, swap a mini treasure, or, in some cases, just enjoy the view.
• Move to the next treasure

Our First Geocaching Experience

We were heading out to check out a local CSA in a neighboring town. I decided to finally print a few Geocache treasures off the Internet. I found about 5 of them based on the zip code of the CSA. There were lots more than 5, I just picked the first 5 that sounded interesting enough for the kids. Now that we had our coordinates we were ready to set sail - let the game begin.

The photo of this post is an actual gem of a find that one of our treasures led us to. It was this huge replica old town of the small town we visited. They had old replica building genuine inside and out of the original city. There was a garage (with an antique car), a drug store, a cafe, a trading post (pictured), and lots more too. There were even covered picnic areas. The kids had so much fun that day!

A few Interesting Facts

Our neighborhood has 11 treasures hidden (almost no gas bill for these). A local and very rural state park of ours has about 37 hidden treasures - still pretty frugal! Of course you could go crazy since there are more than 700,000 treasures hidden worldwide so it should keep you busy for awhile. 

In the game of geocaching you search for treasures listed in the database that meet your factors of interest. Then enter the coordinates and begin your treasure hunt. Am I making any sense at all?

Cost

If done right, Geocaching as an extremely frugal entertainment.

• The main Geocaching website is free for a basic membership. ($0.00)
• Bring along a picnic lunch and plenty of water to ensure no unnecessary pit stops. 
• Gas is the biggest cost involved. Depending on how far you travel it may be cheap or expensive. We’ll try to tag our hunts around an already planned errand so the gas will be next to nil. Also there are over 300 within a 5 mile radius of our home.