A GPS-based scavenger hunt, guided walking tour or competition may be the next big hit at your family gathering!
I tried something new with my family over this past Memorial Day weekend!
Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels.com
My kids have been troopers in the past about visiting family graves in cemeteries near and far. I have appreciated their cooperation, but also recognized that they had little genuine interest in spending a day in that fashion. Surely I could come up with a better way for us to connect with the family members we sought to remember on this day. Ideally, a way that multiple generations would find engaging…dare I hope, fun?
That’s when I recalled using an app called Actionbound to create an interactive scavenger hunt/hike experience for youth in my church last summer. The church teens seemed to like using their phones to find their way to set points, answer questions and complete tasks. Why not try the same thing with a family history “tour”??
The End Product
Since this was an interactive, on-site and on-the-go kind of thing, it’s a bit difficult to describe in a blog.
Imagine:
With the app downloaded to our phones, we scanned a QR code and opened the Bound.
Right away there was a picture riddle to be solved.
After inputting the correct answer, we were given directions to walk up a certain street. On the phone screens, a directional arrow pointed the correct way and also indicated our distance from the “target.”
When we reached the next stop, a chiming sound told us we were there and a new screen appeared with info relating to our family’s connection to that site.
Another riddle or a quiz question (with highest points awarded for correct answers the first time around, but endless chances to try again to get it right), then directions to another site…
In total, we walked just over a mile, stopping at six different spots. Then we were told to hop back in the car and used the map that appeared on our phones to navigate to two more distant points on the edge of town.
Yes, in the end, we were at the cemetery.
But in between – oh!
We were taking selfies and solving little puzzles (unscrambling letters to form words, pondering logic riddles, scanning our surroundings to find the missing words from a local street sign)!
We listened to pre-recorded audio snippets and watched two-minute videos uploaded to YouTube which told family stories! (These were simple affairs, essentially Ken Burns’ style slideshows of family photos and clipart with voice-over narration.)
At one site, a photo from 1886 displayed on our phone screens and we were told to compare and contrast it with what we saw standing in that spot today.
And once – only once – there was quiz question that had to be answered by viewing a pedigree chart.
According to my kids
When I asked for some feedback, my kids had this to say about it:
“Not as fun as Disneyland…but it beat just standing around with mosquitoes in the cemetery. It was entertaining.”
“I thought it was pretty fun, and I learned some things about my ancestors here!”
“I thought it was pretty cool to see where our ancestors actually did things: where they lived, where they partied, not just where they are buried. It helped me remember they were people.”
And now, a few weeks after the fact, guess what?
My kids actually still remember some of the family names talked about that day and some of the random details of stories they heard!
Others have created videos and tutorials about how such digital scavenger hunts can be created. An online search for “gps scavenger hunt app” will bring up plenty for a genealogist to choose from. And there are a variety of great apps available. I only have experience so far with Actionbound, but I have heard good things also about Goose Chase, and there are others too.
I simply wanted to plan the seed, the idea. Marry genealogy with GPS, educating with electronic devices! Connect with people and places in a way that is playful, not painful!
The Possibilities are Endless!
The experience you craft can be relatively small and have somewhat the feel of a guided walking tour, as mine did. Or you could go big and keep teams busy for hours at your next reunion with incentives to get the most tasks completed in x amount of time, or awards for the team who earns the most points with correct answers, etc.
You might reach into the distant past as we did, stopping in front of the house where your 4th-great grandpa held Sunday School before a church was built in town.
Or you may look to your own life story for content! Maybe your scavenger hunt will start in front of the house where Grandpa was born, past the place you got your first job, and end where you got your first kiss.
Explore even more of your chosen app’s functionality than I did!
Whatever you create, keep your participants foremost in your mind. Creating this experience for them will be a labor of love on your part. But don’t make playing the game laborious for those you love!
Two final pieces of advice:
- When in doubt, keep it simple.
- And first time or hundredth time, always TEST YOUR OWN BOUND before you make your family try it out!!
Let’s get our families out having FUN, connecting their past to the present, and making memories to treasure long into the future 🙂
***If you have had success in pulling off a genealogy-themed, GPS based activity for your family, please comment below with your insights!
connectthedotsgenealogy.com 
Having been on the Actionbound activity described in the article, I can heartily endorse it as a way to generate understanding and love for ancestors who lived real lives there. I had never met them in person, but walking their streets, seeing buildings that they saw (or built) – their neighborhoods, churches and yes – even their cemetery, helped them come alive to me in a way I had never been able to experience before. Wonderful!
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