Geocaching Part 1 - Planning
I promised awhile back to write a more extensive post about
geocaching with kids. However, I don’t want to overwhelm with a super long
post, so I will be dividing the process up. So here is part 1: planning your
geocaching outing. Spring and Summer can be a great time to try out geocaching
if you’ve never tried it before. We went out today and found three caches. I’m
going to give an account of what we did as an example of how geocaching works.
I’m going to do my best to avoid including any details that might provide hints
about the location of the caches we found so I don’t accidently share any
caching spoilers.
First, I visited
http://geocaching.com
and pulled up the map of the Regional Park we planned to visit, to see what
sorts of geocaches were there. What I consider when planning a geocaching
outing with my kids:
-
The difficulty rating for the cache. While 3 and
4 star difficulty caches are very rewarding for me to find, my kids usually
lose interest in searching well before I do. I stick to 1 and 2 star, maybe 2 ½
when they are caching with me to keep it fun.
-
The terrain rating. For this I stick to a 3 ½ star
rating or under, even on my own because I’m not all that fit. I don’t want to
have to do any climbing or other difficult maneuvers to reach a cache. There
may be a 3 or a 3 ½ I won’t be able to get to, but so far those have been obtainable
for us even if slightly tiring if they are up a steep hill or something
similar.
-
The size of the cache. The kids love the cheep
silly ‘swag’, or treasures that are available for trade inside some geocaches.
Micro caches are often to small to hold any swag. I try to make sure most of
the caches we will be searching for on an outing are ‘small’ or larger.
Sometimes a hide is so clever and fun on its own they enjoy finding it just for
the sake of finding it (as I do) but usually, they want the swag.
-
The hike involved. We are tackling longer hikes
as time goes along and they grow, but I still have to consider a hike length
that will keep things fun for them. Sometimes we will skip the hike all
together and focus on finding ‘urban’ caches. These are ones that are hidden in
parking lots, or neighborhood playgrounds, or sometimes inside local
businesses. We found one on the bookshelf at our library! The downside to urban
caches is that they tend to be small because it is harder to hide a geocache in
a busy area. It can also be harder to search in a high traffic shopping center,
for example, without strangers wondering what you’re up to.
For your first geocaching outing
consider looking for a ‘beginner’ cache. When you visit
http://geocaching.com and under the “Play” tab pick “Hide or Seek a
cache” then enter the area you want to look in, you will be shown a list of
caches in that area. Caches that the hider thinks would be good for a beginner
will be highlighted in green.
Next time I’ll go over what to
take with you on your geocaching outing.
