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To say that geocaching is relatively new would be grossly incorrect. With over a million caches worldwide, people have been using GPS devices to participate in the treasure-hunt-of-sorts for years. Whether hiking out in the woods or exploring little known places in your city, finding caches is fun and rewarding, though not always easy. You need some equipment, but also navigational skills and critical thinking. Often, heading towards coordinates are not enough. You need to decipher clues to discover where to look next.
Celebrating 100 years, the Boy Scouts of America are tapping in to phenomenon with a geocaching badge as a way to teach and apply the skills mentioned above. (As a side note: apparently Girl Scouts have been doing geocaching badges called Hi-Tech Hide and Seek for quite some time, so I'm not saying the boys are the first to the party...) Organizers are given resources on line to plan a successful outing as well as creating caches. There are also discounts for scouts and organizers to get a premium membership to the geocaching.com website that makes finding caches in your area easy.
Last year, GeekDad writer Greig Chisholm talked about geocaching as a fun family activity and Jenny Williams talked about the no-tech alternative Letterboxing, and little has changed. For geocaching, the equipment has gotten cheaper and there are now more caches than ever. So whether your kids are scouts or not, take the opportunity to see what caches exist in your relative back yards and have some fun outdoors exploring.
