Geocaching With Your Kids Through Texas

It was a winter day in Austin and the rain had fallen for days, a surefire recipe for cabin fever. Nature needed to be explored, blue lips notwithstanding. After all, this is Texas, and before we know it we’ll be longing for a chilly breeze. Besides, there are a few young pirates around these parts who hanker for buried treasure.

And buried treasure is exactly what my three pirates found, when we combined forces with our friends John and Donna and asked them to introduce us to the world of geocaching. After spending a good part of the day chasing down boxes large and small in locations ranging from a solitary hiking trail to a hidden corner of a busy parking lot, we almost felt like we had rediscovered Austin. I think we might be hooked!

Geocaching is an international pastime popular among families with children, teenagers, retirees, childless couples, single adults — basically anyone with a spirit of adventure and a handheld GPS unit (available for $125 and up) or a GPS module for your iPhone or iTouch (roughly $70).

By entering our zip code into the search function at www.geocaching.com, we zeroed in on a couple of the many caches concealed in our own neighborhood — spots we would normally pass unknowingly by.

Choosing some good introductory caches for us, our friend John downloaded their coordinates into his portable GPS unit, along with a couple of hints in case we got stumped (we did). Those coordinates led us to the general area or landmark, urban or rural, where the cache was concealed, but once we arrived some hunting was always in order.

A cache, we discovered, is a general term for a hidden container that has been placed by a fellow geocacher. A cache can be large (bigger than a breadbox!), but more often is small, like the “nano”-sized magnetic one we found affixed to the underside of a streetlight base.  With the larger caches, my kids had the chance to trade small items we brought along for “treasures” hidden inside the box.  With the smaller caches, keen eyes and persistence reaped rewards.

Geocachers practice their art for many reasons: the thrill of the chase; the opportunity to find and move “geocoins”; “travel bugs” and “mystery caches”; the sense of community engendered. As novices, what my family and I found most appealing was the chance to discover, on wheels and on foot, the nooks and crannies of Austin we probably never would have found on our own. When you’re hunting, your eyes stay wide open. You notice the shaggy bark on the tree you’re scanning, the old stone labyrinth hidden behind an apartment complex, the narrow trail entrance camouflaged by bushes, the tiny red berries that fall into the crevices of railroad ties, the echoing tunnel formed by a short culvert, the ghost town buried in plain sight within city limits.

As it turns out, this is hobby that can travel. In Texas alone, nearly 36,000 caches have been registered. By way of comparison, in Antarctica, there are 33. So, next time these pirates head there, they’ll be going prepared! 
Geocaching in Austin:
Austin Explorer
www.austinexplorer.com/geocaching/

Texas GE Cache Challenge
www.tpwd.state.tx.us/geocaching/
Texas Park and Wildlife sponsors this annual contest (begin Nov. 1) that awards a medallion to the first 100 people to find the cache in 12 state parks

Texas Geocaching
www.texasgeocaching.com