Geocaching

Over the weekend I discovered the fun of geocaching (treasure hunt with a GPS). A friend from church is a great geo-cacher and has even done it while moving cross country to break up the monotony. She agreed to lead a geo-caching adventure for our youth group.
We headed to a local, heavily-wooded park where there were three caches. I didn't personally work the GPS but I did climb hills hanging on to tree roots, climb on top of a lot of logs, and wade through flora and fauna looking for "clues." We found our first "log" at 10:30ish and it had already been located and signed by two other groups that morning. We also ran into a couple who "owned" two of the caches and asked if we were having fun and if their caches were too hard or too easy to find.

We had planned on only doing three but everyone was having such a great time that we tried a fourth. This one was a little more of a stretch as it was on a busy corridor next to a major intersection and we had people looking in water run-off drains. There was a dead rat that played into the adventure too. We didn't have any luck with that one and people decided that eating lunch was a bigger priority.

If you need a small group event, or just want cheap entertainment, geocaching is something to consider. There are more than 700,000 active geocaches out there and you just type your zip code (or a location where you want to look) and go for it.
Next time we're going to Mt. Rainier to look for virtual geocaches (since it is illegal to leave things at National Parks.)