Treasure Hunting for Kids - Geocache

After the first two days, everyone is, hopefully, saturated with sand and sunshine and Mom and Dad are thinking of ways to get the little ones away from the beach for some rest from the sun.

I hope before you left on this vacation, you got yourself a gps device and checked in to geocaching.com to plan some treasure hunts nearby where you will be vacationing or along the way.

After you log into your Geocaching.com account, just click the links in your account to explore the caches located where you will be going on vacation. You can print out some maps or note down the coordinates. It's also possible to download the maps and coordinates to some gps devices for paperless geocaching.

Ocean City is the nearest ocean beach to my home. We can drive there in about 3 hours and just south of it is Assateague Island, which was a favorite vacation spot for our children. There are places all around Ocean City that we totally missed seeing because we didn't know about geocaching when our kids were still home.

The cache location map takes us to one called "Blast Off" and it's just off Route 90 on the way across the Bay as you go into Ocean City. In many cache logs you can read similar statements to this one "Thanks for bringing us to this new park, i never would have stopped if there werent caches there!" There's no physical treasure in the cache...it's all around it in the beauty of watching fiddler crabs run all over the place and dodging the sea gull poop on the wooden deck.

There's another one just off Route 50 before it crosses the Bay to Ocean City: West OC Wetlands (enter N 38° 19.959 W 075° 06.218 as your travel destination and follow you GPS to find it). There's no physical treasure to find in this cache either. The treasure is the lesson to learn. You log your visit by taking a digital pic and posting it on the cache gallery page.

This cache has a lesson page and a quiz!

Email the answers to the following questions:

a) What is another name for tidal wetlands?
b) Name the three key attributes of wetlands. (listed on the Cache Data Sheet)
c) List three kinds of seafood that start life in the marsh.
d) List four birds that inhabit the marsh.
e) How do marsh plants keep the bay clean?

Kids get to look for the birds out on the marsh and smell the salt air. This is fun learning. Some call this an "earth cache". Here's a quote from the site's log book "We're glad to see a cache at this hidden gem of a spot."

You could be missing some of these gems if you are not into geocaching.

Just up the coast from Ocean City is Bethany Beach. Bethany has a rep of being a much quieter family beach than Ocean City, MD. There are geocaches all along the way to Bethany. Here's a map showing the ones right in that area.
One of these is the Bethany Beach webcam.

It's a cooperative challenge to do a webcam geocache. You need a cellphone and a friend with a computer. You call your friend when you are in the vicinity of the webcam and then they have to go to the webcam's website. Then when you are correctly positioned in front of the camera, they will right click the webpage image to capture and email the pic to you. When you log your find for this cache, you will need to upload that image capture to get credit for it.

I found all the treasures around Bethany to be very small micro or nano caches where all you do is log your find on a tiny log book. If you want to find a bucket of toys, we will have to try some other spots.

Micro and nano caches are fun for the challenge of finding them. Most of them lead you to an interesting or fun location such as an historic building, a recreation area or a natural area.

The caches around the board walk all had stealth cautions associated with them. They warned about muggles. These are people who don't know what geocaching is. When searching for a cache, we have to try and not look too suspicious to "muggles". They just don't understand what it's all about.

Many of these caches should contain warnings to bring bug spray for ticks and mosquitoes. Those are just part of being outside in summer.