Geocaching

I have been wanting to start geocaching with the kids for awhile now, because it seemed like such a fun way to spend time together, and my kids love the idea of hunting for treasures! Geocaching is when you type in the coordinates from the Geocaching website into your GPS, and it takes you to a place where there is usually a box hidden somewhere with random prizes, and a log book for you to leave a message and the date you found it. First, we had to buy a GPS

We chose 2 locations on the website. The first one took us to a trail behind Alpine that we never knew existed. Once we parked, we got out and started hiking up the mountain.

The views were beautiful!!

The kids were so excited because we spotted lizards all along the trail, and we actually saw one jump vertically onto another rock! I had no idea they could jump straight up like that. It was like watching a cat! Weird

We finally reached the vicinity of the cache box, but could tell that it was off the trail, so we had to hike up the side of the mountain through the woods. The website had an encrypted hint that the kids had to solve that read "under tree branch" so when we got up there, we knew to look under fallen tree branches. Then Kade started yelling, "I found it! I found it!" It was an old army box.

We opened it up and there was a letter inside explaining how the game works, and a bunch of little prizes. Kade picked out trick gum and Abby found a dollar. We also signed the log book.

She was VERY excited about that dollar :)

After the kids chose their prizes, we had to replace them with something, so we left a Toy Story jump rope, a word puzzle book, and then headed back down the mountain. In all, the trail took us 2 hours roundtrip! It was pretty far up, and pretty steep so we were all starving! After grabbing some dinner, we headed off to our second destination. This one was close to the point of the mountain off the Jordan trail.

The name of this cache on the website was, "That's the Dam point" because it was located by the dam conservation off the Jordan River.

Gotta love the gloves :) Unfortunately, this one didn't have anything worth keeping, so we just signed the log book, and put it back where we found it.

We had so much fun exploring different places and working together as a team to find the cache boxes! There are so many to look for!! Some have prizes, others have clues that lead you to other boxes, and some are just odd locations that you may have never seen before, but at the end of the day, it was just nice being together. I think we have found a new family hobby :))