Finding Treasure

We discovered the fun activity of Geocaching a few years ago, but up to this point our kids haven't all been quite old enough to really get into it. Well, we found out on Saturday that we have finally reached the point in the kids ages where we can all go out and participate and have a blast looking for "treasure."

When you go geocaching you need a GPS, but it is really fun and easy if you are lucky enough to have one of these. Then you can just look and see what things are around where ever you are and it has a built in GPS that you can use.

Saturday was supposed to be our first really nice Saturday of the year and we wanted to be out enjoying the sunshine before the storm hit. We went out early and did a bit of off-road driving out in the fields and dirt roads around Grantsville. We didn't really have to go off-road with most of them, but it made it more exciting for the kids. By doing a lot of driving between caches it made it nice to be able to listen to General Conference on the radio.

In the morning we took the dog with us and he got muddy and wet and we all had a great time. Around lunch time we headed back home to get a quick bite to eat. The kids didn't want to stop, they were having so much fun. So, we left the dog this time and did some caches around the city. This time I remembered my camera and actually got some pictures.

Here is everyone looking for the hidden cache. This was a small one. They come in all different sizes from a cooler size down to a "micro" cache where there is only a log to write your name on when you pull it out with tweezers.

They found it under some rocks at the corner of this wall.
Here are some very happy faces looking at the treasures left in a cache under a "Christmas Tree" behind Walmart. When you find a cache you write your name and the date you found it. Then if there are items in the container you can take something and leave something else (same value) for future people to find. That is the hardest thing to explain to the kids. We didn't have treasures to trade in the morning and the kids wanted to take things and leave like an old spent shotgun shell instead. When we came home for lunch we had the kids gather up things that they could trade with.

We ended up having to stop because of strong wind and rain, but we had a great time and the kids keep asking us when we get to go again. We will definitely be using the geocaching app a lot this summer. You should try it where you live, you will be amazed at all the caches right around you.