by kellie abrahamson kabrahamson1@aol.com
Once the relatives come into town for the holidays it soon becomes apparent that it’s not enough that they see your smiling face, they want entertainment too. Once you’ve exhausted the usual sight-seeing hotspots (the Landing, Old St. Augustine, etc.), you may be at a loss. Well, have no fear – we’ve found a couple of ways to keep the entire family happy while exploring the First Coast. The following games/sports/hobbies will get everyone off the couch and out and about to experience Jacksonville’s glorious fall weather and breathtaking sights. Best of all, there’s little cost involved, so your wallet won’t suffer in the process!
Everyone loves a treasure hunt. Geocaching is a GPS-based game that points you in the direction of literally thousands of treasure chests on the First Coast and around the world. Founded in 2000, what was originally an experiment to see how accurate handheld GPS receivers were, quickly became an international phenomenon. Today there are nearly half a million active caches worldwide and tens of thousands of people out looking for them. The Jacksonville area alone is home to over two thousand caches, some as small as a film canister, others as large as a five-gallon bucket. The items inside are as varied as the containers used. Many simply have a log book while bigger caches contain DVDs, books, toys, CDs, and (rarely) cash.
Getting started is pretty simple. Get yourself a GPS unit (handheld models can cost as low as $100) and log onto geocaching.com, the official website for the game. Basic memberships are completely free, though you can choose to upgrade your account for a fairly reasonable fee. Search for caches by typing in your zip code and marvel at all the hidden treasures near you. Once you’ve got the coordinates to the caches you want to seek out, step away from the computer and track them down using your GPS. Once you’ve found it, write your name in the log book to let the owners of the cache know you were there and if there is an item you want, take it. The only rule is you must put something of equal or greater value back in the container in its place (seems fair, right?) and you must return the cache to its hiding spot. When you’re through for the day, go back into geocaching.com and log your visit there.
For a complete tutorial on Geocaching, pick up of the book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Geocaching or read the “getting started” section of geocaching.com. There is plenty of info there.
Like Geocaching, Benchmarking is all about finding special things hiding in plain sight. In this case, you’re looking for surveying benchmarks. These markers (usually small disks) can be found in various locations all over the US. The fun here is not in getting “stuff” but in discovering places and objects in history that may well have been forgotten. These benchmarks can be found with a GPS, but they’re generally not necessary, particularly if you’re familiar with the area.
Once again, geocaching.com is your source for Benchmarking. Log in, search for benchmarks and head out to discover them. Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, take a picture of the benchmark and upload it onto the site for all to see. There are over 700,000 benchmarks in their database and only 103,483 have been recovered. See if you can find one of the 818 benchmarks in Jacksonville.
Waymarking is similar to Benchmarking in that the experience of finding a specific location is your reward. With Waymarking you’re basically looking for places other people have found to be interesting, unique or just plain cool. Most of the time a GPS is necessary, but certain locations (such as the lion statues in San Marco) are easy enough to find without gadgets or gizmos.
Waymarking.com is where you can find info on this kind of scavenger hunt. A little over 400 sites are in the greater Jacksonville area. Simply seek one out and take a picture and then post it on the site.
Letterboxing is by far the oldest of all of these games. The hobby can be traced all the way back to 1854 when hikers would place postcards in out-of-the-way mailboxes to be mailed. The next person to come across the box would then mail them, the fun being to see how long it took someone else to come across the remote receptacle. Today, Letterboxing has changed quite a bit. Instead of postcards, hidden boxes contain a logbook and a rubber stamp. Seekers track down these boxes, make an imprint of the letterbox’s stamp on their personal logbook, and leave an impression of their personal stamp on the letterbox’s logbook.
If you’re interested in trying out Letterboxing, head over to letterboxing.org where they have an extensive guide to the sport. You don’t need a GPS to track down these boxes; most don’t provide coordinates, only clues. There are only 54 letterboxes in North Florida, some more tricky than others. See if you can find them all!
The best part about these games is that you can participate in them all over the world, not just in Jacksonville. Even Antarctica has a handful of Geocaching containers waiting to be discovered! Once your out-of-town relatives head back home, they can continue to play in their own city and in the other places they travel to in the future. By introducing them to Jacksonville with these fun hobbies, you could be starting a new family tradition.
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