Geo Fun

I've been looking into this Geocaching thing for a while and I decided it sounded like fun. Our family loves the outdoors, and every kid (and grown up) loves a treasure hunt. What more could you wish for? After signing up at www.geocaching.com, we decided to give it a shot. My husband and I found a couple caches near our home. Then, I found out the Georgia State Park System has this cool program for kids called the Geo-Challenge.  What? Visiting new places, time spent in the outdoors with family, an opportunity for my child to learn more about her home state? Where do we sign?
Today my little one and I visited our first park- James H. Sloppy Floyd State Park. It was close to home and we were already familiar with the area.   We picked up our passports at the park office. (Passports have the "rules", participating parks list, and a grid. Each time you locate a cache, you find the stamp inside and stamp your grid. Each time you get 15, you get a geo coin. Caches can have cool stuff inside them, too. See the website).
After a picnic, we headed out. OK, mom is not great with the GPS...but after walking in circles for a while (ahem) we headed in the right direction. It was a beautiful day. I took a couple pics of the trail as we hiked through the woods.

Being a little (ha!) inexperienced, I can't say it was an easy find for us, but boy, was it fun when we found it!

 We logged in with our Geocaching.com ID. Then, Miss Priss took great pride in putting the first stamps on our Passports.

 The loot was cool, but I didn't see anything I needed. (There were some cool tree seeds, a State Parks Patch...) However, the little explorer found a coloring book set with crayons that she just HAD to trade for. After going through our trade items we found a fair trade and traded out.  This was a good lesson for her- it isn't free. You have to give something up- something of equal or better value. There are a lot of good lessons in this.

All in all, this was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday afternoon.  We got some exercise, we explored, we learned...and best of all, we were together. That's what it's all about, isn't it?