The Gilmour’s are back from our holiday, we had a fantastic time in America and of course we Geocached. We visited Anna Maria Island for a week and this is a place where my husband has spent many family holidays growing up, it was lovely to be able to finally share in those memories with him and his family. The second week we spent at Disney World which was an experience in itself. It was the children’s first time on an aeroplane and my first time outside of Europe.

We will be sharing our out of the country caching experience with you all soon but for now I wanted to share another hunt we did, the quest to become a senior Wilderness Explorer. For those who don’t know what that is, it is based on the movie ‘UP’. Collect all the badges by completing the activities and learning about the wilderness at each station around Animal Kingdom, there are over 30 to collect.

 [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHi7P_tDTuU&w=560&h=315]

As fans of Geocaching, anything similar to this setting we are good to go and couldn’t leave without completing. We spent two days to complete this although if we had planned it out better or where only going for the badges you could complete this in one day.

The children were very excited about hunting for the badge locations and to be honest I think Rob and I felt as excited as Sophie, Riley and Robyn.

To get the booklet they had to recite the Wilderness Explorer promise and do the special handshake.

Some stations we learnt about animals or creatures in the wilderness and other stations we could be learning about the environment and how we can help the wilderness. The children were always asked questions to guess or respond with answers and I was really proud of how much they knew and if they weren’t sure they still gave a guess and weren’t afraid of letting the leader know.

Once we had finally achieved all the badges we went back to where we started to receive our final badge and again another Wilderness Explorer promise was to be read in order to become a senior. The leader announced to the public that our three children had achieved this ranking and they received their certification and final sticker/badges.

We couldn’t not have a Disney photo taken to mark the occasion and my husband treated me to an official Wilderness Explorer hat, yes I know, I am a geek and I don’t mind one bit.

If you are Geocachers and are heading to Disney World, we would all highly recommend the Wilderness Explorer badge collection. We had so much fun and we all learnt something new from the experience, the education behind each station and even in the booklet is very informative and interactive.

Looking forward to sharing with you again soon.

Jennifer