Happy Father's Day for those of you out there reading this blog that are fathers.

Well we fell upon a new hobby that will go nicely with the boating in various different countries. It is fun, interesting, uses your navigational skills (actually GPS skills), educational and best of all free.

GeoCaching!

What is Geocahing? It is a term used for both hidden treasures and the use of your computer. The game began in the year 2000 and has expanded around the world. The goal of geocaching is to locate hidden containers, called caches, using latitude and longitude coordinates found on websites, such as GeoCaching.com . The containers are watertight and are hidden in the wilderness, parks or even urban locations. Some are easy to find while others have clues that lead to coordinates, that lead to the treasure. The idea is that once found you take one thing from the treasure and put one thing in with equal value.

The game gets more interesting with the use of travelling bugs. This is where my interests were peeked. You can put a bug (Metal Chain Tag with ID number) in a cache with instructions to how

A travel bug

you want the bug to travel. For example, want it to travel to as many Caribbean Islands as possible returning to Calgary. I see potential with the boating community. I went on line and found that there are many caches to find throughout the Caribbean while we travel. Why bother? It takes you on hikes to places of beauty that you may not have visited or seen otherwise.

Mystery or puzzle caches can involve complicated puzzles you first need to solve to determine the coordinates. It might also involve performing some task at the cache location and taking a photograph or writing the online log in a format or with content that satisfies the cache requirements. The challenges are quite unique.

It is a great way to get exercise and something you can do together or with friends. You could go by yourself if you wanted but sharing is more fun.

Most of all you see places you didn't know existed.

This summer the blog will consist of pictures and postings of various places in Alberta and British Columbia. Surely Geocaching will be involved.