Geocaching - Interesting idea, but what's the point?

This past weekend I went back to my hometown, Indianapolis, to visit with my parents. I sat down with my mom one night and was talking about classes and such when I started telling her about COM435. I mentioned how I had received a Starbucks giftcard for my work with the Geocaching activity. She was intrigued with Geocaching because she had never heard the term before. It took some time to get her to understand what it meant, but she eventually caught on. Then she asked me a question I did not even think of asking after Dr. Miller's lecture on the subject: Why? What my mother meant by this was, What's the point? In today's world this question is not uncommon. Everything we do seems to need a purpose. So her question, in my opinion, is warranted. And I did not have an answer for her. I tried to make the idea of Geocaching appealing to her by explaining that it is a type of real-world treasure hunt and explaining how much fun it could be to experience. But she just did not seem excited about it, and the more she showed her disinterest in Geocaching, the more I wondered: What's the point?

The goal of Geocaching is to find a cache box with "treasures" inside of it, right? Well, what kind of treasures are in the box? What value would they be to me? What is the likelihood that I would find something in the cache box even mildly interesting? I will not be able to find out any of those answers until I go on my first cache box hunt. But now I'm not even sure if I want to participate in this activity. There is a safety issue involved that is of big concern. I am not very good at navigating to places, whether it is a county away or in a different country (hence why I was not in a navigation role during the Geocaching activity). So one question I would have to consider before participating in Geocaching would be: What would I do if I got lost? And what would happen if I was to get injured? If I go somewhere to find a cache box and it's located somewhere dangerous, do I go ahead and try to get it out or do I leave without accomplishing anything? There are several questions I would have to run through my mind before I would think about going on a real Geocaching hunt.

My main point in this blog post is, what's the point? What could I possibly obtain from Geocaching? I am not sure if the reward from participating in the activity would outweigh the possible negative consequences. I'll definitely have to do my research.