Geocaching with Kids - A Great Reason to Go Outside

The weather has been super and we've been trying to go outside more, but we keep battling with the kids' desires to be on electronics inside. How can we get them excited to go outside? I stumbled across the mention of geocaching and decided this was the perfect time to explore it more.

Geocaches are hidden little treasures, with the locations shown online for free at geocaching.com (or in an app, which you have to pay for). You simply put the coordinates into your GPS or smart phone, and then go search for the geocache. Once you find it, you can write your name on the list, and if it's big enough, leave a trinket and take one of equal or less value. You can also electronically log your visit on the website or app to keep track of which geocaches you've visited.

When we checked online, we found a few geocaches near us so we went and looked for one. It was so much fun, we invited some friends to go with us to go back to it.

 The kids ready to bike to the geocache. The older ones were raring to go and soon were way ahead.

 The younger ones were so cute on their training wheels. The road was just steep enough that it was a little hard for them, but we told them they were getting stronger.

 The older kids had already found the geocache when the moms and younger kids had arrived, but then we took the time to sign into the log and get a snack.

 Then the older kids raced off to the next adventure (the playground).

 The next day Desert Boy was eager to search for another nearby geocache.

 This one was hidden a little differently. Desert Boy is already getting better with the GPS--of course it's a small, electronic gadget, which means kids will be natural with them. You should have seen his face when he realized there were games on the GPS!

One added attraction of geocaching is that signing into the logs may help his penmanship!

Desert Boy is also keeping a log of the geocaches he has visited. He likes it well enough that he is very excited to go check out two geocaches today. The map shows that there are several on the way to towns in every direction, so as we start visiting those, I think it will make the trip to town shorter, as every time we pass one, the kids will remember visiting that geocache. And in the towns, there are so many geocaches that it will be hard to decide which one to visit first!

Have you tried geocaching? What's been your favorite geocache? And if you haven't, here's the link if you're interested.