International Geocaching Day takes place this Saturday, Aug. 18, and Wellesley is a good location to scout for a number of hidden treasures using your GPS devices. Among the areas where geocaches can be found in town include near Blue Ginger, along Lake Waban near the topiary, at Wellesley College, near Longfellow Pond and near the community center (you can find more info on the geocaching.com website). We’ve proven to be pretty clueless about finding most of the ones we’ve looked for.
If you’re not familiar with geocaching, it’s a high-tech treasure hunt that involves using GPS coordinates and other clues to find caches, boxes that typically contain logs or prizes. Geocaching is good clean family fun, typically getting people off their butts and onto trails or other places outside.
(I wrote a piece for the Boston Globe about 5 years ago about stumbling across a local geocache.)
For a lower-tech version of geocaching, try letterboxing, which does without the GPS but includes the same concepts of searching outside for caches based on clues. You can give letterboxing a try on Oct. 21 when the Wellesley Trails Committee holds its Kids’ Trails Day.
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