What is Geocaching?

It has come to my attention that some people reading my blog don’t know what geocaching is. So without further ado I thought I’d write this post. Here is the definition and our experiences of this activity.

Geocaching is similar to treasure hunting you download coordinates from the dedicated website, find the container outside, sign its log book and record the ones you've found on the computer when you get back home.  

Geocaches come in a range of shapes and sizes from film canisters to ammo cans and more interesting cache containers such as a case originally used for protecting bananas to this jolly character. 

Geocaching originated in America but we've yet to go there as a family. We have found ones in Holland, France and the UK. There are traditional, multi-cache, virtual, letterbox, event, mystery, webcam, earthcache, whereigo and labcaches hidden throughout the world for people to find. Many of these help to teach you about the world in which we live. This one made us consider Puddingstones.

As long as you've got a good torch you can generally go in search of geocaches 24/7. Some geocaches of course need you to locate items that are only available during certain times making them more challenging. There’s a church near us that never seems open so we can’t locate the items necessary to help us search for its associated geocache.

We have been doing the activity for several years and so far have managed to locate around 10,000. Sadly not all our searching has resulted in finds we've had our fair share of did not finds (dnfs) too. The most frustrating times have been when you have done a whole series and there’s one little cache that despite the time and effort we've put into finding it we just haven’t been able to locate it.

As my hubby says geocaching is walking with a purpose you are actually exploring parts of the world and exercising the mind. From time to time you may bump into someone doing the same thing but they may pretend that they are slug watching instead. That’s why geocache meets are great as you get to meet like minded individuals and crack puzzles together.

When did you last get out of the house and explore the great outdoors?