Geocaching

In the past few months, we have gotten back into geocaching [wikipedia] as a family activity. It has turned into an outdoor activity that we can do wherever we are around town. The girls enjoy getting the descriptions and hints and then hunting for the caches. They particularly like the caches with loot that they can exchange.

We have also tried combining biking with geocaching which makes both activities more enjoyable, since biking makes the transportation part of hunting easier and geocaching gives purpose to our exercise. We have even recruited cousin Toby to join us in our Biking + Geocaching events.

When we first dabbled in geocaching about five years ago, we used a big black and white GPS unit and had to print out the geocache info ahead of time, which made it difficult to be a “spur of the moment” activity. In the intervening years, GPS and data technology has advanced to the point that paperless geocaching is readily accomplished.

Now, our Windows Mobile-based phones are equipped with GPS and mapping software via Google Maps. Couple that with a nifty geocaching software called GCz, we are able to download geocache entries and even do a simple search of caches nearby our current GPS location, wherever we are.

Here’s a geocaching.com badge link of what we have found so far:

We still need to work up to hiding our own caches. That will be the next level in our geocaching adventure.

Let us know if you ever want to go hunting with us. Who knows, there might be a cache right near where you are now.