Have you ever gone treasure hunting? I mean for reals? Like really searching for treasure? My family and I do it all the time and a friend of mine at work suggested I should write a blog about it. Why didn’t I think of that sooner? Of course I need to write a blog about treasure hunting!
So technically, I guess it’s called Geo Caching but when you’re toting around a 2 , 5 and 7 year old (and a husband), it’s called “Treasure Hunting”. You go to www.geocaching.com and enter your address and it will pull up all the “treasures” in your area. The way it works is that other players go and bury or hide their treasures and then write down the latitude and longitude coordinates from their GPS. Then they create a new treasure at the website where people like me can input the coordinates and find them. Then you just follow your GPS and search the area to find the booty. Lots of us already have the Garmin GPS in our cars. Most of them have a handy feature where you can change it from “automobile” to “pedestrian” and that works really well, you’re all set to go! You can also find a cheap handheld GPS on craigslist sometimes as low as $20!
The rule is that if you take treasure you must leave treasure in it’s place. Sometimes if you’re really lucky, you’ll find a “travel bug”. You take these and move them on to the next treasure spot you find. You can log on the website, input the number and see where it’s been and where it’s going. In this hummer’s case, he’s trying to make it to Iraq. He started in Canada and we’ll be dropping him off in a treasure spot near the military base in our state when we got there in a few weeks.
It’s amazing all the interesting places we’ve found treasure. Some of the hiding places have made us laugh out loud at their creativity. The kids love it, Vic and I get out hiking and enjoying the beautiful scenery and it’s another reason to get everyone outside and active. I love it!
