Category: Out and About

Geocaching – Part 2 ~ Guest Post

AnnLeave a comment

Vicky Duran is a homeschooling mother from near Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has two children, ages 11 and 4, and is also known to educate other children through homeschooling at her house. Vicky and her family discovered geocaching about a year ago and have a great time exploring parts of their area they had never explored before.  This is part 2 of a 3 part series where Vicky shares about geocaching as an educational family activity.

Read part one here

What is geocaching.com?

The internet site “geocaching.com” is the clearinghouse of sorts for the sport of geocaching. It is where you go to find maps and coordinates of hidden caches. You will have to create a (free) basic account complete with an account name and password. An account name can be a made-up name, which most of them are, or a combination of initials. Some even use their amateur radio call signs. Once your account is created, you can search the website for geocaches near you area. Once you find ones you might be interested in you can check the difficulty of the cache. Using a star system, a rating of Difficulty 1, and Terrain 1 means that it is an extremely easy and probably wheelchair accessible cache. On the other hand, a Difficulty of 5 and a Terrain of 5 means you had better be an expert to be able to fish those caches out. There is also a size rating that will tell you an approximate size of cache you are looking for. The nice thing about the more than 1 million, 92-thousand caches hidden around the world is that there is something out there for everyone.

This is sounding interesting, but my kids… I don’t want them to find something that is inappropriate.

I hear you there! To participate with www.geocaching.com, there are guidelines one must agree to. One of them is that there is to be NO inappropriate material left in the caches. This activity is stressed as a family friendly game and everyone works hard to keep it safe and fun for kids. Other guidelines include asking permission before crossing private property, cache in, trash out (which means pick up trash you see as you are on your adventure)., and if you take an item from a cache, be sure to leave something of equal or greater value.

Ok, this sounds good. But what educational value is there in this?

There is a lot! First of all the coordinates give you a great geography lesson in latitude, longitude, degrees, minutes and seconds (and I’m not talking about time, either.)

A deer photographed while on a geocaching adventure.

Also, many cache hiders hide caches in places they want people to come to; there’s something to see, discover or learn about. Plus, in the year we’ve been caching, we have seen birds, plants, deer and other animals that we would research about when we returned home. You can create your own treasure hunt. For example, to help my boys get ready for a history test, I hid a bunch of questions around my place, noted the coordinates and gave them to the boys. They had to find the questions, answer them and find the next as quickly as possible. They had great fun with that. You can also follow a travel bug as it moves from cache to cache.

Is something you would do on Sabbath?

Really, that is a personal and family choice, so I really don’t want to make the choice for you. However, for MY family we find it to be a very appropriate Sabbath activity.

Travel Bug?! Ugh, what’s that?

Don’t worry, it’s not some creepy crawly thing that bites you. A travel bug is really only a special military-like dog tag with a unique serial number that can be activated through www.geocaching.com. You attach the dog tag to a host (perhaps a Hot Wheels Car or a small stuffed animal, etc.) attach a sturdy card with a goal for the travel bug (if you want to give it a goal), list the travel bug on your geocaching.com account and release it into a cache.

A teddy bear travel bug.

As people pick it up, move from place to place and log the movement, you are notified of your travel bug’s progress through emails.

Interesting. Have you sent out travel bugs?

Yes, we have. We sent out bugs for each of the kids with a goal to make it to a cache near their grandparents’ house in Washington State. It took about six months for one to make it, the other one is currently listed as “unknown location.” The one that made it reached Washington via Montana, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, and Nevada before finally ending up at its goal. It even visited a cache inside the Mall of America! The other travel bug, before it went missing was at the Twins baseball game last fall when they played a one game play-off game that went 15 innings. It was a big story here, and our travel bug was at the game. We even received a picture of it inside the Metrodome! We currently have a third travel bug out that has already visited Mexico.

Tomorrow – Hiding a cache


Geocaching- Part 1 ~ Guest Post

Ann1 Comment

Vicky Duran is a homeschooling mother from near Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has two children, ages 11 and 4, and is also known to educate other children through homeschooling at her house. Vicky and her family discovered geocaching about a year ago and have a great time exploring parts of their area they had never explored before.  This week we will feature a 3-part series where Vicky shares about geocaching as an educational family activity.


Hey there, I keep hearing this word “Geocaching,” but I don’t know what it is, can you tell me?

Geocaching is word that came into existence nine or ten years ago when the military opened up the Global Positioning Satellite system for public/commercial use. Geo comes from “Of the Earth,” and “Caching” means to hide or store away. So we have “to hide away on the earth.” Geocaching started when GPS enthusiast Dave Ulmer hid a navigational target in the woods, and posted the coordinates on a GPS users group online. The idea was simple: Hide a container out in the woods and note the coordinates with a GPS unit. Someone with a GPS unit copied his coordinates down, and then searched for his hidden cache using only his GPS unit. Ulmer’s idea was a hit, and geocaching was born.

Tell me more.

Geocaching is a family-friendly activity with two parts – hiding caches and finding them. Let me explain. With the increasing popularity of GPS units, in particular camping and trail devices, it is easy to hide a container containing small trinkets and a logbook somewhere in the world – generally close to where you live.

It sounds like this might be a pretty expensive activity – you’re talking GPS units and “hiding containers.” How much is all this going to cost?

Ready to go, with GPS unit in hand!

Well, as with any activity, there is some cost to it, but getting started is not as much as you may think. You do need a GPS unit, of course; a kid-oriented Geomate Jr. runs about $70. For something more programmable, a Garmin ETrex is about $99. The price of a unit can go up from there. As far as containers go, you can use an empty peanut butter container or even an empty 35mm film canister. Some people get creative and use empty fire extinguishers, or even a cheap water bottle inside a hollowed-out stump. For fun, some people buy “trick” containers such as fake rocks or even fake outdoor faucets.

Inside the container, would be at minimum a log book of some kind. Larger containers would hold trinkets for trade – often little toys from party favors, from kids’ meals at fast food joints, or things you would find at a dollar store.

That doesn’t sound too bad. But what do you with all of that stuff?

First of all, let’s talk about finding a cache since that is the way many people begin. Let me share what our family did. Like you, I had heard the word “geocaching” kicked around in various conversations and once in the while, the news. My husband and I finally decided to stop at one of our state parks on the way home from a camping trip. There, we checked out a unit and went on our very first geocaching adventure. It was a multi-cache, meaning we had several stops to go to (like a treasure hunt) before we finally found the real cache. Managing the GPS unit was simple as we programmed in the various coordinates….

Wait, that is the second time I have heard coordinates from you. Can you explain that?

Sure, you know about lines of latitude and lines of longitude. That is what I am talking about. A GPS coordinate is a series of numbers that indicate your latitude and longitude down to the minutes and seconds. Dave Ulmer’s first cache was hidden at N 45° 17.460 W 122° 24.800.

I understand. Go on…

Anyway, we finally found the cache located tucked away in a washed up log on a beach at our state park. The cache was an old military ammo box which is very popular in caching. Inside were trinkets of all sorts, most of which were of very little value. There was also a log to sign as proof that we really did find it. Once we signed the log and made a trinket trade, we made sure to rehide the cache exactly as we found it. That was our first experience.

There was one more step. When we got home, we logged our find at www.geocaching.com.

Tomorrow – Hidden caches and Travel bugs