Geocaching-- funnest thing ever!

If you are into scavenger hunts and figuring out puzzles (sort of)....consider going geocaching. I first heard about it last year when some friends from church started going out looking for caches. People hide caches all over-- there was one down the street at our park and there are several less than a mile from our house! You can go onto this website to see if you have any hidden around your area: http://www.geocaching.com/

Caches come in different shapes and sizes-- some in small altoid containers, mint containers, or even big metal boxes. So today my friend Nancy and I loaded up our kiddos and set out to find 4 different caches in Pleasant Dale. The first one was at our park and we found it right away. The second one was at a cemetery. I had a picture of where the cache was supposed to be. We matched up the picture and the GPS coordinates and looked forever-- but we gave up and didn't not find our second one. So we moved on to cache number #3 on our list. We thought we were in the right area...we looked...we looked some more and couldn't find it, so we moved on. We went to the 4th and final one on our list. This one was supposed to be a fun one for the kids because there was supposed to be Tinkerbell things for girls in there. We parked where we thought it was--according to our GPS finder. We looked and looked and couldn't find it. Ok...here is my blonde moment...make fun of me now....I totally was not reading the GPS coordinates right! I was only reading the West minutes and not the North...duh! No wonder why were not having any luck! So we finally figured out this GPS thing and found the Tinkerbell one. The girls were excited about getting a prize. We went back to our #3 spot, found that right away and didn't make it back to the cemetery. Such a fun, fun activity and I can not wait to do it again! Some tips-- probably wouldn't take my kids out in the country by myself-- not fun getting them in and out of car seats. I think next time I will find a park that has several hidden so they can run around more. They got kind of bored and ancy at times. Nancy and I had a good time though!:)

***Also thanks to my dear husband who set the coordinates in his handy GPS thing so I wouldn't have to worry about it and for teaching me how to use it ahead of time....apparently I wasn't paying attention when he was teaching me!**

Here are some pictures of the girls at our finds!

We found this right away at the park--Jocelyn is holding it

This one was under a bush on someone's private property-- we had permission to be there--filled with lots of kids goodies-- it was a large metal box chained to the bush!We left the kids in the car for this one as it was on a bridge overlooking railroad tracks-- Nancy found this one right away after we figured out our GPS thing.