Cache-ing In

Happy Saturday readers!

It seem hard to believe, but the start of school is only a couple of weeks away here in Seattle.  How exactly did that happen?  It always seems like once we are just getting into our Summertime rhythm here, September happens and messes it all up.  I guess that is because the real Summer weather here in the Emerald City usually doesn't kick in until sometime in mid to late July, so almost all the Summer themed events are crammed into an 8 week stretch.

We were actually lucky here this year though, since there was a stretch from Lukas' birthday in late June, to the first week in August where there was no measurable rain.  Yes, in Seattle.  Believe it folks.  Anyway that did help to stretch our Summer to a more reasonable window this year.

Despite all of the exceedingly fun things we have been doing this Summer - Hiking, Biking, Festivals, parties, concerts and the like, there has been one thing I have personally been wanting to do for some time now, especially with Lukas turning six years old recently.  We finally got a chance to do that thing today.

Geocaching.

I had previously created an account at the website geocaching.com, but that is as far as it got because I didn't have a GPS device and I was under the mistaken assumption the app I would need in order to use my iPhone would require an operating system of 4 or greater, while mine is an IOS3.  But once I saw online this morning that today was International Geocaching Day, I decided that it was time.

After a couple of extra Google queries I realized that, while not ideal, I could still load the app on my iPhone 3 and it would work well enough to get us started.

So I did just that. It was a quick and easy load, but a little pricey as far as apps go, ringing in at $9.99.

Later, while out for a walk through the neighborhood with the kids -and after we stopped for snack - we decided it was time to pull out the phone and see if there were any cache's in the area.   As it turned out there was one listed not far away!  The hunt was on.

About 10 minutes later, after wandering the streets with smart phone in hand,  Victory! was ours.  Lukas had found the LIAYF family's very first Geocache.  And he was rightfully excited.  Heck the idea of a treasure hunt is still appealing to me, at 45.  I can only imaging what was going through his six year old mind.

After logging into the enclosed book, logging our find on the website, and picking a small treasure to take with us, we enclosed another small item for the next treasure hunter to find.  And with that, we were hooked on a brand new hobby.

I'm not sure how many geocaches we will be finding in the weeks to come, but by looking on the app, and on the geocaching.com website there are countless opportunities for fun waiting for us just outside our door.  Plus, we are already making plans to hide out very own treasure cache in the near future.   Maybe one of you will even one day find treasure in our neck of the woods.

Good chance it'll be something Lego.

How about you, readers?  Have you tried Geocaching yet?