the thrill of the hunt!

For anyone looking for a fun thing to do this summer while traveling try geocaching!
geocaching.com
It's a modern day version of treasure hunting.  
It combines todays technology with the fun spirit of treasure hunting.  
It costs nothing to sign up! 
We recently had a long trip to Grandpa's cabin and it made traveling with the kids so much fun!
What it is -  there are over  a billion of these little treasure caches hidden all over the world.  There are 5 million cachers and they have hidden their caches all over.  
You would be amazed how many are right near where you are right now!  Who knew?!!

The technology piece is in using a GPS (or your phone) to find them.  
You are given the coordinates and a couple clues and then it is up to you to find them!
Part of the fun is you have to do this without being seen by muggles (geocachers have their whole own language - muggles are non geocachers- the rest of the world that is unaware of this whole thing!)
They range in size, from tiny (pill box) to large (tupperware container).  

We plotted our trip and had about a dozen caches to find along our 3 1/2 hour trip to grandpa's cabin.  
We found all but 2!
When you find the cache you can take something from it as long as you replace it with something.  
Most are filled with all kinds of trinkets that my kids loved.  
We brought along our own stash of trinkets, foreign coins etc to replace what we took.  

Each cache has a little log book that you sign to show you found it,  as well as you can log them in on line too.
We had so much fun!  
Whether its antiquing or geocaching - its all about the thrill of the hunt!!

The other nice thing is you stop and appreciate the beauty of places along the way.  
We stopped at places we never would have known about (or stopped at) had it not been for this.  
Most are places fellow cachers live near and think others would enjoy seeing.  
Little unknown parks, cemetaries, historical places, natural wonders. 

These are a couple of pictures of our discoveries along the way.
(I apologize for the quality of these pics they are from my iphone, i forgot my camera!)