8 Great Reasons To Take A Date Geocaching

The purpose of dating is to get to know someone, right? You can learn a lot about a person geocaching, so take a date geocaching!

The “bring a girl home for dinner” date

My hubby and I are geocachers. Our youngest son, 18, had never gone with us. When you are 18, you are pretty much into living your own life. I get it. But then he brought a girl home. It was his “bring a girl home for dinner” date with her. The one where she meets mom and dad and everyone starts to picture how she would fit into the family.

After eating homemade pizza (she likes pepperoni)  and playing some really bad badminton in the backyard, I asked if they would like to go geocaching with us. We got a more enthusiastic response from her than from our son, but, since they were willing, we grabbed our bag and headed out.

Let’s go geocaching!

Not really knowing where to start with a couple of novices (we haven’t taught anyone how to geocache yet), we decided to head to a nearby park that had at least one cache we hadn’t found. I could tell from the ratings on the geocaching app that it was not difficult to find or involving difficult terrain. Both ratings were 1 1/2 out of 5.

It turned out that it was at the back of the park which required a walk of .2 miles according to the app. We searched longer than I would have expected from the difficulty rating and the name of the cache. It was called Kid’s Galore II and the description said we were looking for a camoed peanut butter jar. Sounds easy, right? We thought it would be easier with newbies to look for something bigger than a micro.


Well, find it we did after quite a search: 4 people looking for 20 minutes. They were not hooked on geocaching yet so we took them to another cache in the same park, one we had previously found. We sent them in the right direction with my phone in hand to look for it. Unfortunately, it had been moved since we found it. We couldn’t find it again. It looked like they needed a quick find to make this night a success so we led them to a park and grab micro at the park entrance which they found with a little prompting.

8 great reasons to take a date geocaching

All together, we spent about an hour geocaching. Although I wouldn’t say the geocaching was a huge hit, I recognized some advantages to take a date geocaching.

  1. On a geocaching date, you go outside! So many dates are spent sitting in restaurants, movie theaters, and bars. It is a refreshing change to spend some time outside.
  2. You will go places you haven’t gone before. When we were with our son and his girlfriend, she remarked that she had never been in that park before.
  3. You get moving! In the hour we spent geocaching together, we probably walked a mile. That may not meet your workout goal for the day, but it beats just sitting.
  4. You will see beautiful scenery. The first cache we attempted in the park was in a butterfly garden at the end of a beautiful trail. The garden was in full bloom and filled with butterflies.
  5. It can fill a little or a lot of time. If you only have an hour, you can still attempt at least one geocache, more if there are several close by. If you have a bigger chunk of time and are enjoying it, you can geocache for hours.
  6. Geocaching reveals character. You will see how your date responds to challenge. Do they get frustrated right away? Give up quickly? Or do they rise to the challenge and get into it? Are they willing to get their hands dirty, climb up on a picnic table, crawl under a park bench, or walk through some weeds? Are they a good sport? Bossy? Cooperative? You can learn a lot about a person by going geocaching.
  7. You can add it to any date. Enjoy walking the city streets and window shopping? Add geocaching. Like hiking, biking, or just walking? City, county, and state parks usually have many geocaches hidden in them and bike and walking paths are loaded with caches.
  8. It’s free! Since geocaching is free, you may find out if they like to spend time with you, or if they just like you to spend money on them.


Geocaching is a great activity for a date. You get to walk, talk, explore, and work together. You get to go on a mini-adventure! Geocaching will give you an opportunity to spend time together and get to know each other better. After all, isn’t that the purpose of a date?

A couple of considerations

Since nothing is perfect, I want to point out a couple of things to be aware of.

  • If you are both new to geocaching, you will not have an account set up. You can easily go to geocaching.com, set up an account, and download the free app. Since we were introducing them to geocaching, we used the app on my phone and signed the log with our name. Read this post to learn the basics of geocaching.
  • Use caution. I wouldn’t walk to the back of a park alone with someone I barely knew. Since we were together as couples, there wasn’t a safety issue. In other circumstances, I would recommend staying where people are around.

The rest of the story

This story needs a P.S. Just 2 days after our geocaching double date, my son, oh so casually, mentioned to me that he wouldn’t be seeing her any more. No explanation. No reason given. This mom knows enough by now to just nod and say OK. Clearly, an interrogation was not necessary.

Was it the geocaching? Did he learn something about her that he didn’t like? Guess I’ll never know.

But I still stand by my thesis. Geocaching is a great activity for a date. So take a date geocaching!

For more reasons to love geocaching, check out this blog.

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My name is Peggy McGranahan and I started this blog, Shaped By The Waves, to share my experiences and life lessons as I navigate the waves of change in my middle-aged life. I love reading, chocolate, geocaching with my hubby, and Jesus. I am actively battling my weight, and sometimes I win the battle! Now that all 5 of our homeschooled chicks have left home, my nest may be empty but my life is full. So welcome to Shaped By The Waves. Come ride the waves of change with me.