Saturday, January 30, 2010

Geocache Adventure

The Boy® was out of school Friday due to conferences, so we had a Man's Day. We slept in, ate breakfast in our underwear.....taking great pride in scratching our bellies....and then we went bowling.

Upon returning from bowling, we went on our first Geocache adventure. Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment. This was right up the little Webelos alley.

For Christmas, the Boy® had received Apisphere's Geomate Jr Handheld GPS Geocacher. Very easy to use, this unit comes preloaded with approximately 250,000geocache locations covering all 50 U.S. states. Simply go outside, turn it on and follow the arrow and distance to your closest geocache. Hit the "Next" button and the Geomate.jr will take you to the next closest geocache.



Frankly, I was stunned by how accurate this thing was. Our first couple of attempts came up empty. Only then did I notice that the size of the geocache we were searching for was rated very low. This meant that basically we were looking for a needle in a haystack. And the haystack was covered with snow.

We then got lucky. There was a geocache nearby that was a size 4. This meant it would be a large container. We were off. The results, can be seen in the video below.



If you have a youngin', I highly recommend this little device. Whether you are taking a road trip, visiting the relatives, camping, or just taking a stroll through the local park, the Geomate.jr is always ready to go and is perfect for that spontaneous outdoor adventure with friends or the family.

1 comment:

MHMarks said...

hah, i got into that with a couple of friends in hs, pretty fun. There are some the size of a hearing aid batteries with just a strip of paper inside to put initials on. its crazy. Looks like ya'll had fun