Are you a dad or mom looking for a fun family outdoor adventure that your kids will love? In this episode of Gear Daddy, Daddy Troy reviews one of the coolest outdoor activities, geocaching. Geocaching combines outdoor hiking with a treasure hunt. Get some snacks together, grab your GPS and some maps, and head outdoors on the trail to search for one of the many hidden geocache containers. DadLabs Ep. 591 is brought to you by BabyBjorn.

Welcome back to Gear D addy, I’m your host Daddy Troy. Today we are talking about Geocaching. It’s a great activity that you can do with your kids. It gets you outside, seeing some new places in your community you might not know exist but best of all, you get to go treasure hunting. Stick around, we are going to tell you all about it.

Thanks to our sponsors Baby Bjorn for sponsoring this episode of DadLabs.com.

Somewhere in your town, someone has hidden a box just like this. It's called a geocache. Inside you will find a bunch of little treasures as well as a sign in sheet. Found in parks and along trails, sometimes in urban environements, and they are a really cool thing you can do with your family to go on a treasure hunt.

In order to find a geocache, you start with the online geocaching community at geocaching.com. Type in zip code or address and the website will spit out a list of geocaches in your area. Here I have typed in the zip code for Austin, and you notice that there are almost 2000 caches nearby. Now I am a visual learner and explorer, so I prefer to click on the Google Maps tag, which takes me to a map of all the geocaches in my area.

Rather than randomly picking one, as a parent it pays to do a little research. Since I have young kids, and I want their outdoor experience to be safe and fun, I look for a geocache that is easy to find, since geocachers like to hide the treasure, and is in an easy terrain. I like to read the comments section from fellow geocachers who have recently visited the cache.

Once you have found one the GPS coordinates can be typed into your portable GPS unit, or the GC code can be typed directly into the geocaching app on your iphone. Also make note of where you might park in order to start your journey.

Once you have all of this information, its time to hit the trail. Before you head out make sure to have some snacks and water as well as a little treasure to put inside the geocache because if you take one you need to replace it with one of your own.

As you hike, the GPS units will tell you how close you are to the the treasure and which direction you need to walk.

Even when you find the area with the treasure, there is no guarantee you will find it because the geocahcing comminuity prides itself in hiding the treasure. If they didn’t the non-geocaching community, aka The Muggles, might remove or vandalize the caches, so be prepared to spend some time looking for the cache.

Boy: I found it!

Daddy Troy: You found it? Where is it? All right! Cool! Look at that guys. You found it.

Girl: A dolly! I want the dolly.

Boy: A pick, look!

Daddy Troy: What will you use that pick for? Play guitar, right? I'm going to sign us in, guys. Are you going to put the yoyo in? Troy and his kids came by, and soem of his friends the film crew.

A big shout out to Baby Bjorn. They're our sponsor. They brought you this episode of DadLabs. So we'll see you next week and all week long at DadLabs...

Girl: Dot com.