Based on the calendar Spring is here. It hasn’t felt that way for the last week! Now that summer is approaching more people are getting outside to enjoy some geocaching. I’ve personally introduced caching to a few families and have others contact me by email. How do you introduce someone to geocaching? For most of us it involves a group outing of some kind where you take the interested party or parties on a cache hunt. Through that experience the uninitiated learn about various cache hides and hopefully will get a sense of what they might like to look for.

Here are some things to look for if you are introducing a family with children to geocaching:

  1. Pick regular or large container sizes.  Kids like to exchange swag.  It’s the treasure they are after.  Be sure and bring ample amounts to trade.
  2. Look for a group of caches in a neighbourhood park or a local conservation area.  Don’t make the trip to the caches so long that the kids get bored before they get there.  Shoot for 3-4 caches in 1-2 hours.  Longer trips are possible but you might want to save those until the muggles turned geocachers get a little hooked.
  3. You probably don’t want to try for anything to difficult either physically or hard to find.  Save the 5/5 for an adventure day.  Build up the difficulty once the new players have demonstrated an understanding of how to find a cache.
  4. Look for attributes that indicate this cache hunt won’t pose too much of a challenge for younger players.  Here’s a few attributes I’d look for:
    1. Recommended for kids
    2. Less than an hour
    3. Short hike
    4. Parking Available
    5. Restrooms nearby (the little ones don’t always think in advance)
    6. Winter Friendly, these tend to be off the ground reducing the amount of leaves that need to be moved thus keeping everyone a little cleaner.
    7. Stroller Accessible if the kids are very small
    8. Parking available, road-side parking is not ideal for kids
  5. Search for “kid” in the cache name, this isn’t a sure fire way to find kid friendly caches but it can help.

If you are the kind of person that likes to introduce people to geocaching you might want to set up a bookmark list of the caches in your area that you’d recommend for newbies.  A little preparation in advance makes it a lot easier later.

teamvoyagr

I have been writing the cachemania blog since 2008. I'm interested in the development of geocaching and the many ways that people play the game.

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