What the heck is Geocaching??

I don’t know about you, but I loved treasure hunts as a kid, anything with a mystery attached to it piqued my interest. Geocaching has brought the treasure hunt we knew as kids to another level. It offers people of all ages the chance to discover a city or area in a different way.

I love to travel and although I enjoy experiencing all the things that you are supposed to see in a location, it is often that my favorite spot is a hidden gem or something I stumbled upon by accident. Geocaching allows the participant(s) the adventure of seeing parts of a city they may never have seen otherwise, the unknown if you will, even in their own hometown.

I had lived in New Orleans about 6 months (and visited numerous times prior to moving) when we tried geocaching for the first time. It was extraordinary! We found places that even Eric didn’t know existed and he was born and raised here. We combined geocaching with letterboxing and used both www.geocaching.com/play & http://www.letterboxing.org to “plan” our route.

Interested? I thought so! In order to start your next adventure, you must first go to the sites listed above or download their corresponding apps (Yep, there’s an app for that!) and sign up for an account. You then put in your location and pick what area you want to explore! Once you find the geocache, you open it, sign and date the log book and most importantly, re-hide the geocache exactly where you found it. It must be in the right spot for the next treasure hunter.

The sites are also a great resource for clues if you should need them and can tell you how often people are actually able to find the “treasure” or geocache. It helps to carry a notebook and pen with you as you will want to leave your mark, like the treasure hunters before you. If you are letterboxing as well, there may be a stamp hidden within the letterbox you can use to commemorate your journey.

There are 2,354 Geocaches near New Orleans. Our treasure hunt included many legendary locations:

And a few locations that didn’t work out quite the way we planned, but we still had quite the adventure getting there!

So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and explore and use Geocaching as your guide!

About Our Guest Poster:

Darcee Snider is a Wyoming native, who appreciates the work ethic and strong values that growing up in the Cowboy State afforded her.  New Orleans has been a part of Darcee for a long time and she is excited to now be a part of New Orleans. She believes there is truly nowhere else like the Big Easy and the experiences it affords its citizens; she can’t wait to share them with the family and friends that are sure to visit.  Passion for literature, food, history, adventure and music are reasons why living in New Orleans is such an important part of Darcee’s story. She writes each chapter by enjoying the wonders of the Carousel Bar, exploring the WWII Museum, walking the streets of Uptown, navigating the hidden gems of the French Quarter and eating a Po-Boy at Mahony’s.

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