I have found a reason to need a Smart Phone…

…Geocaching!  I have looked a while ago at doing it but last Wednesday we had a Bank Holiday and so decided to have a go!  In case you don’t know, it is a Hi Tech  Treasure Hunt.  A step up from Letterboxing on Dartmoor.  So, you go on the website, find where there are caches (boxes) hidden in your area, download the GPS coordinates onto your Smart Phone and off you go to seek treasure!  So there lies my need for a Smart Phone.  Matt can get it all on his Blackberry but I don’t feel quite in control!  And actually you do also need a map. So I take screen shot of the treasure location and spend ages making a Word document with all the info on.  Probably a waste of time really – except the map.   

Looking at the "Map" for our first cache.

There are so many geocaches round us.  So on Wednesday we decided to do a trip along the Hachinger Bach which is the small stream which runs just below us in the valley.  I made the children a treasure map and they were so excited! So off we went on our bikes to find the first cache which was slightly disappointing for them as it was a tiny canister with only a logbook in.  So Matt cycled home to get a pen.  We carried on and had a lovely time finding (or not finding in the case of an elusive one near us which we went and had a good look again on Friday for, but to no avail!).  We ended up at the Beer Garden but couldn’t find the one there either but I think it was very small and we weren’t looking properly.  We’ll find it another time.  And the Beer Garden was packed!  But there was face painting and pony rides and a fine time was had by all.  Alex was amazing on his laufrad and whizzed along for 5km altogether.  He’d have biked all the way but we’d have been out till midnight. 

Fun at the beer garden.  Butterfly face with her friend Kate

And Alex and Mia had pony rides too.

So, after our success and good fun on Wednesday, we decided to go again to today and do some of the ones in the forest.  We had a very successful day and what was nice was that we normally just speed through the forest from A-B and don’t really think it is that interesting but actually there are some nice little spots as we were led up different tracks and had to walk into very rotten undergrowth to hunt for a cache.  Katie loved it as she was a particularly good finder today.  And in the bigger boxes there is sometimes treasure to swap.  The treasure is not very exciting unless you are small as it is mostly kinder egg type toys but the children enjoyed it.  We ended up at the playground at Sauerlach which is only 7km away from us and Katie had fun playing while Alex slept and Matt went and found another cache just nearby.  Then we biked back and found one last one just before we got home.

More searching

Found it!

Off we go again!

And nearly home

And nearly home

Just pick a few flowers before the last stretch.

We have had such a fun day today and it is a great activity to do with children too.  Particularly the easier to find ones, and it’s free.  My only concern is, is that I’m going to become a geocache nerd as I had to log all the info into the computer when I got home and I can see myself spending a lot of time looking at the map to find ones in the vicinity of any of our day trips that we can search for.  Good fun though and children thoroughly grubby and tired too.