Guest Post: Frugal Fun- Geocaching

Meagan is the author of the blog Frugal Fun & Fortune, where she writes about saving money, giving to others, delicious Vegetarian recipes, simple living, and her life adventures. Her greatest passions include chasing after God wholeheartedly, social justice, being a good wife to her sweet hub, books, and music. Visit her blog to have FUN while saving money!

Sometimes it takes a little bit of creativity to come up with fun activities for the family, especially ones that are inexpensive! I don’t have kids yet, but my hubby and I are outdoor adventurers and we both LOVE having fun! We are on an extremely tight budget, with almost no wiggle room for extra expenses.

In addition to our walks through the park, homemade pizza and library movie nights at home, days at the beach, and cups of shared coffee at Barnes & Noble…There is one REALLY fun and unique activity that we enjoy.

It is called Geocaching!

Here are some tidbits about geocaching:

• Fun for ALL ages!
• VERY family friendly
• It’s FREE (GPS not included)!
• It’s adventurous.
• It gets you outdoors.
• It’s for people who love nature.
• It’s for people who love exploring old cities OR new cities!
• You can even do it right in your own neighborhood.
• You can walk or drive.
• You can get exercise while doing it.
• It’s educational.
• It’s for people who love science.
• It’s for people who love history.
• It creates a sense of community!
• It’s a total BLAST!

  

So what in the world IS geocaching, anyways?

Basically, it is a worldwide (yes, you heard me correctly) treasure hunt. People just like me and you hide and hunt for caches all over the globe. There might be 50 hidden caches within 5 miles of your very own neighborhood, and you’ve never even known it! They are literally EVERYWHERE.

If you decide to jump into geocaching, you are basically on a treasure hunt for these caches! The awesome thing is that you can geocache on a Saturday when you’re looking for something fun to do. Or, you could geocache while you’re on vacation in Europe!

Some people geocache all. the. time. It is their prime hobby, and they are obsessed with it. Others (like me and my husband) just do it from time to time when we’re looking for something fun and adventurous to do! You can decide how involved you want to get with the game.

How does geocaching work?

To get started, simply head over to the official geocaching website. Sign up for a free membership, and search for caches in your area.

Each individual cache page gives you GPS coordinates, which you must plug into your GPS. This helps you track down where a cache is. This is the only downfall to geocaching – you MUST have a GPS. This is the part that is not-so-frugal. But I know that a lot of people have GPS units in today’s world. They are located in cars, as applications on phones, etc. You could probably snag a cheap one on Ebay or Amazon. But the great news is that once you’ve invested in a GPS, you have unlimited fun right at your fingertips!

Most cache pages also give you a hint that you have to decode. These hints help once you have found the location of the cache, but can not seem to find the cache itself. The GPS gets you to the general location, but sometimes they can be very difficult to find. Some are very camouflaged. The hints DEFINITELY help!

You basically plug the coordinates of the caches into your GPS, go on your hunt for the caches, and have fun! When you return home from geocaching, and have access to a computer again, you log in under your user name and check off all of the caches that you found that day. It keeps track of them in your account.

Diversity of geocaching:

• There are many types of caches, but I would start out with the traditional caches. These are physical caches that you find. They come in many different sizes. Micro caches are tiny, and just big enough to fit a small log that you sign your name on. Then the sizes go up from there. The bigger caches have items in them that you can trade for – just fun things. For example, you might bring some stickers to trade with some baseball cards, etc. Regardless, though, you always sign your name on the log!

• Each cache has a difficulty level, which rates how hard it is to find.

• Each cache has a terrain level, which tells you how long it takes or how difficult it is to reach the cache. A high terrain rating might mean that you have to walk a couple miles into the woods to find your cache. Or it might be that you have to walk up some stairs to get to it. Or, it could mean that it’s right in front of your face, but you’re going to have to battle with some bushes to reach it.

• Each cache will also have pictures on the side of the screen that give you additional information, such as: wheelchair friendly, kid-friendly, parking available/unavailable, scenic view, takes less than 1 hour, bicycle friendly, the list goes on!

• Like I said earlier, caches are located all over the place. So for the nature-loving person, you might pick the caches that are at parks, near the beach, or in open areas. For the history buff, you might enjoy the caches that involve the history of an old city, etc.

• You will see people from all over the world that have signed the logs of the caches you find. Just recently, we went geocaching in St. Augustine with some friends. When we went to sign the log on one of the caches, the signature above us said, “Greetings from Germany!” Pretty cool, huh?

So if all of that sounds like fun, what are you waiting for? Go sign up! You can watch the video on their home page for an “in a nutshell” demonstration of geocaching. You also might want to check out some of the resources that help explain some of the basics, frequently asked questions, and lingo (for example: “muggles” means non-geocachers in the area that might see you).

Happy Geocaching!!!

Tagged as: Freebie