Geocaching

A couple of weekends ago our family had the opportunity to go on a Geocaching scavenger hunt... Well, the rest of the family went trekking through the woods as I sat in the nature center of at Blacklick Park. I just didn't think taking off for a 4 mile hike through the woods would have been the best decision for someone almost 8 months pregnant. Let me tell you about the wait. I was forced to sit either inside or out and take in the horrible view while park rangers forced drinks and chocolate into my hands. It was nearly unbearable.

So, what is geocaching? According to Wikipedia, "is an outdoor recreational activity... in which the participants use a GlobalPositioningSystem (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world."

The metro parks system has a set of hand held GPS systems that it shares amongst it's 18 parks. These little ditties are used about once each season per park to conduct scavenger hunts which are open to the public. The geocaches in this week's scavenger hunt were plastic zipper bags with stickers and/or little trinkets like a plastic ring. You can find a list of each parks' schedule here.

If you don't live close to a Columbus metro park there are several organizations out there that also have these little hunts and also ones that just randomly have little treasures for anyone to pick up at any time. You can grab one of these hand held systems for anywhere between $60 and $6,000 off amazon or just pick up an app for your smart phone. One of the fellow participants downloaded a free app while everyone was waiting to get started. He siad it was accurate enough to find the little treasures.

Here are a few pictures I snapped at the nature center before everyone headed out.