Sample cache in Clayton County, Ga. I love the trading cards!

What: Geocaching
Where: Throughout Clayton County
When: Anytime
Cost: Free but you must have a GPS
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A few years ago my family tried geocaching for the first time at Jekyll Island. It was a bumpy beginning, but once we got started, it was a lot of fun for the entire family and we discovered areas of Jekyll we wouldn’t have visited otherwise. If you aren’t familiar with geocaching, it’s a sort of treasure hunt, where participants use a GPS system to find boxes filled with trinkets or trading cards. Participants take a trinket from the box and leave one of their own. Some boxes contain stamps for participants to collect similar to a passport.

Geocaching is a high tech treasure hunt that uses a GPS to find the cache.

Clayton County joined the geocaching craze in Jan. of 2011. There are nine caches spread throughout the county at various tourist sights and attractions. Each cache contains a trading card specific to the location, giving quick facts about each historic site. The trading cards are numbered so cachers know when they have found card number 1 out of 9.  Geocachers who find six of these nine cards get a prize, and cachers who find all nine cards receive an additional prize. Cachers redeem their trading cards by visiting the Clayton County Welcome Center located inside the historic train depot in downtown Jonesboro. Once you find the caches, make sure to write your name in the log book too. I love the idea of the collectible cards in Clayton’s boxes because it gives a bit of information on the location where you found the cache.

Guess where this cache is located?

To start your geocaching adventure, go to Clayton County Geocaching. You’ll find the name, coordinates, difficulty rating and hours of operation for the location.

Geocaching is a great way to discover new places and a fun way to get families outside with a common goal. Anyone from 2 to 100 can participate and it’s fun to try to figure out where the cache might be hiding just based on the terrain – it’s not always where you think!

Geocaching lets you discover places you might not normally go, or see an old favorite in a new light.

If you enjoy Geocaching, try these other places:
Georgia State Parks Geo-Challenge
Jekyll Island Geocaching

What: Geocaching
Where: Jekyll Island, GA
When: Anytime
Cost: Free if you already have a GPS ($5 parking on Jekyll)

Recently we borrowed a GPS and headed to Jekyll Island to Geocache. Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunt that uses a GPS. You can geocache anywhere, but I read something recently about geocaching at Jekyll Island and thought we’d try it while on vacation.

It took a while to prepare. We searched out locations to geocache on Jekyll. To find the coordinates, you have to register, but it’s free. Apparently you can load them to your GPS or phone with a click, but it didn’t seem to work for me. That could be because we’ve never used a GPS before and we had a learning curve getting the GPS up and running. Finally I just copied the coordinates by hand and brought the paper with us. Then we had to determine our pirate names, you can’t search for buried treasure without a proper pirate name.

Our first venture was a bit of a bust. We found our first cache, which was very exciting, but just as we started to get into it, the GPS died. Like good pirates, we didn’t give up, just went home for some ale before beginning again the next day. With a fully charged GPS, we headed out again. However, our family couldn’t find the side of a barn with the GPS and the coordinates. We did finally get our first cache, but only after a few discussions about mutiny.

In the end it was a fun afternoon exploring the historic district of Jekyll Island and we had a lot of laughs about our inability to follow the GPS. We got sidetracked once setting traps on the trail like Man vs. Wild, but it was fun to watch all three boys working together toward a common goal that involved more than a new computer level.