Treasure hunting can look different for many people; be that a marathon of garage sales to stop and start at, or perusing the shelves at thrift stores, or attending flea markets with your eye on specific items to add to your own collection of treasures!  (I personally once had a salt n pepper collection, tin collection, teacup collection, my favorite mug collection, Thornton W Burgess book collection .... yes, it was extensive).

But, if you don't have the room for all these collections, but still enjoy the treasure hunt geocaching might be all you need if you're bitten by the treasure hunting bug!

The Turtle Mountain-Souris Plains Heritage Association (TMSPHA) currently have 28 geocaches spotted across the southwest corner of the Province, each one shares a unique bit of history at that location and landmark.

TMSPHA Administrative Assistant, JoAnne Juce, says geocaching began 24 years ago when the GPS coordinates system became accessible to the public. "So, all of a sudden you could establish your latitude and longitude very readily through your electronic media devices and pinpoint where you were with the global positioning system."

This helped to create a world-wide game where caches are placed all over the world, hidden you might say, where only a GPS search with clues help you find it.

"For us, it's a perfect way for us to get people over to historical sites," explains Juce. "Our 28 caches are all over the municipalities and are quite a thing to find because we have a postcard that shares the history of that particular site. There's a photograph, a little story, and it's all factual, it's all been researched."

The Brockinton Archaeological Site is a nationally recognized historic site as an ancient buffalo jump near Melita and is one of the TMSPHA geocache sites.

Juce says most of their sites are on public land, with only a couple on private land, but with permission from the landowner to have a cache there.

"None of them are difficult or dangerous," she adds. "Some of them you might need to wear a pair of boots at this time of year but it's fun without being too risky!"

TMSPHA will be adding a handful more now in the newest addition of their municipalities joining their association being in the Killarney-Turtle Mountain area.

"We have followers from all around the world," she says. "It's a lot of fun and so very interesting!"

Please listen to more with JoAnne Juce below!