Awesome ways to get outdoors!

Are you looking for new ways to spend time with your friends and family? Outdoor activities are getting a bit boring, right? With your fast-paced life picking up speed all the time, it’s easy to stick with the familiar; but is that a way to live? Let’s take a few minutes and see how easy it is to break out of the same old routine and into the new one with healthy activities close to home and outdoors. Read on to see why it’s hard to top having fun with friends and family outdoors in the great outdoors.

One of the first things we notice when we get outdoors and into nature is that we are not alone. Life surrounds us. So the first thing to do is slow down and take a look. While you watch, why not do a little bird watching? It’s fun, easy to do, and inexpensive. All you need are birds and they are everywhere. Make a family game out of it. Who can find the first bird with the color blue on it? How many ducks are in the pond? Are they all the same type? You get the idea. But be warned, once you start birding you’ll have a hard time stopping. In no time you’ll have a good pair of binoculars for birding and a field guide to your part of the country. Then you will be a bird watcher with bird watching fever. The best part of birding is spending time with others in the great outdoors; and bird watching is a hobby you will love for the rest of your life.

If you need a sport that’s a bit more technological, try geocaching. Geocaching is the sport where you use your handheld GPS receiver to find caches hidden by others using their GPS receivers. This is something you can do alone, with friends, or with your children. Geocaching teaches outdoor navigation in a fun and interactive way while allowing you to explore your own neighborhood and beyond. You’ll learn new words and phrases such as cache coordinates, trip bugs, microcaches, benchmarking, and geo-gear. All you need is Internet access and a GPS receiver; some GPS receivers retail for many hundreds of dollars, but many models are available for around $100. Although the sport is active in more than 200 countries, most geocachers enjoy playing in their own neighborhoods. Is awesome!

If a GPS receiver isn’t in your budget right now, maybe you could try Letterboxing. Letterboxing is similar to geocaching in that you’re looking for hidden treasure, but in this case it’s called a box, not a cache, and it uses clues instead of coordinates to locate the treasure. There are other components in the Letterboxing game such as rubber stamps and record books. The mailbox is economical, very fun and addictive.

What’s next? How about the oldest of all outdoor hobbies? That’s right, looking at the stars. If you live in a big city and spend all your time there, it’s easy to forget about the night sky because you can’t see it. But it’s still there and it offers breathtaking views that are impossible to communicate. So grab a jacket, a pair of binoculars, and a loved one and go somewhere nearby where you can have an unobstructed view of the night sky with as little light pollution as possible. With a pair of binoculars you should be able to see the man-made satellites, the moons of Jupiter, and the craters on our own Moon. Once you catch the stargazing fever, you’ll move on to a telescope where you can point it just about anywhere in the night sky and be in awe.

There is so much available to us in the great outdoors. Try something new like bird watching, geocaching, letterboxing, or stargazing. Each of these activities has a large online community willing to share their sport, their tricks and their passion with you. Visit our online education center and we’ll point you in the right direction.

Not everyone has the ability or the desire to climb Mount Everest, hike the Appalachian Trail, or navigate the world’s oceans. But there is something everyone can do close to home that will open their eyes and mind to the beauty of nature. Take a few hours this week and spend it outdoors with someone you like. Use this information and you’ll get it right the first time. Get outdoors!