Need an interesting hobby that will not only exercise your body but also your mind? Not everyone is familiar with Geocaching but it’s a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. Participants come up with a cool or clever profile name and register at https://www.geocaching.com then begin their hide and seek adventures. Our FLorida4ce started out Geocaching in October 2005 because my parents got us into it. I homeschooled our kids and felt like this was an excellent way to learn so many things about problem solving, navigation, teamwork, determination and disappointment as well as learning about nature and enjoying all that the outdoors gives us. Our team was my husband, myself and our two sons, hence the “4 ” in FLorida4ce. We really had a LOT of fun especially in 2009 when we all had a lot of time to find caches as a family.

After all of the construction stopped in our area my husband had to switch careers and out of necessity changed from running a land survey crew to being an over the road truck driver. With my husband out of town a lot we didn’t get to cache much because we wanted to stay a team. Eventually we stopped caching at all. In 2013 my husband left us without much of a warning and as you can imagine that was a huge disruption in our lives. I went from being a stay at home mom to working 3rd shift in an industrial laundry and teaching yoga and fitness classes mornings and evenings in a few local gyms and studios. I didn’t have much free time. Anytime we would think about Geocaching we just didn’t do it because I was either too tired or didn’t have time to sync the cache locations from the website to our GPS. We were also reminded of all the good times we had as a four person team. Even our caching handle reminded us that someone was missing.

Currently I am gone for work about 60 hours a week and do not have a lot of time for family or anything else. My sons are now 18 and 21 and I try to come up with activities to do together since we’re all busy a lot. For two years I’ve gotten us annual passes to Universal and that’s a blast but I also wanted to have a less expensive activity that we could do without having to drive for hours. We just recently got back into Geocaching and it is so much easier now because of smart phones and the app to follow instead of loading a few caches into a GPS from the desktop computer. Now there is no need to go back to the computer to log our finds either. Everything can be done on the go.

In the past several weeks we decided to take the leap from just finding to HIDING! We have gotten great responses from the people that are finding our caches. We try to make caches that we would’ve loved to come across when the kids were younger. We try to make sure the hides are in places with terrific views in areas that have parks or picnic areas so that other cachers can not only find a cache but also a new place to enjoy even when they’re not on the hunt! WE LOVE the logs that other participants post when they find our caches and really love the photos that they are sharing!

I am having a good time Geocaching even with all of the changes in my personal life. We don’t have our original team anymore and my older son hasn’t gone out with us yet since we got back into it but he is still part of the team as a consultant until he gets time to join in. My younger son often goes along with me and usually my girlfriend and her super sweet dog Lady comes along with us too. Even if I go it alone I have a feeling that this hobby is going to be part of what keeps me active as I deal with this aging broken body. I adore weather and the sky and scenery and geocaching takes me right out into it.

Check it out, you don’t have to become a part of the geocaching community but if you choose to you can communicate with other cachers on the site and nowadays they even have geocaching events and gatherings. We haven’t gone to any of the events but we’re thinking about it – HAPPY GEOCACHING!!

Boardwalk where one of our caches is hidden

Jetty nearby one of our caches

View from one of our caches

The treasure map I created for participants to follow