Gold Award Spotlight: Girls in the Outdoors
Girl Scout Ambassador Katie in Troop 4161 earned the Girl Scout Gold Award by sharing her love of geocaching with her community. Geocaching uses a geocaching app or GPS device to find hidden containers called geocaches. The word combines the prefix geo, meaning earth, with cache, which means hiding place, and today, there are more than 3 million caches worldwide. Geocaching has grown in popularity over the past few years, since it is held outdoors and is an inexpensive activity.
Katie placed geocaches at Chesapeake locations that included: Northwest River Park, Indian River Park, Centerville Park, and Oak Grove Lake Parks. She then invited the community to discover geocaching by placing flyers in the parks with step-by-step instructions about how to set up a free geocaching app and how new users could get started having fun with this new hobby.
Katie’s caches included small trinkets inside a case which listed their GPS coordinates online. In all, Katie created 20 caches over the four sites.
“There are few outdoor activities that don’t cost money and that are easily accessible to families. It is important for people, especially kids, to get out and move because obesity rates are on the rise. Geocaching creates opportunities for people to get out and move while having fun. We also made some of the geocaches accessible by placing them near the roadway or sidewalk for those who use mobility aids.”
Congratulations, Katie!
