High And Low Tech Fun

A couple of activities that you can do at the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County are Geocaching and Letterboxing. Essentially, these are both a type of treasure hunt.

Geocaching is high tech hide and seek. A person hides the treasure, referred to as a 'cache'. He then posts the coordinates on a website. Your job is to use GPS technology to find the cache. You follow the GPS unit to the coordinates and then look in the immediate area to find the container. When you find the treasure, you add your name to a logbook and when you found it. Sometimes people will write down their experience in finding the cache. Usually, there are little trinkets inside. You may take a trinket, but you must leave one if you do.

Letterboxing is similar, except you follow written clues. People use ink stamps to acknowledge when they find a box. Another interesting aspect to letterboxing, is that some people will include a hitchhiker in the box. The point of a hitchhiker is that the finder is to take the hitchhiker to the next letterbox and leave it for the next finder. This continues with the goal to have the hitchhiker go all over the country, or even the world.

The District places its own boxes and caches in the preserves. We post the coordinates and clues at www.geocaching.com and www.letterboxing.org under the name dupageforest and Senior Ranger. If you would like to place a box in the preserves you may obtain a special use permit (it is free, just call 630-933-7248. This helps us ensure proper placement so it doesn't damage critical habitat, etc.)

Geocaching and Letterboxing is fun for everyone. Come on and try it in your local Forest Preserve.