A friend recently told me about some fun-looking educational treasure hunting booklets created and sold through the Urbia Adventure League. These booklets were created based upon the concept of letterboxing (which I wrote about last week), but add so much more.
Each booklet has at least ten pages packed full of information and activities designed to provide the child (family or class) with a two-hour nature adventure within the city of San Francisco. The booklets provide clues and riddles that “navigate” the seekers through the area to the ultimate destination (a hidden box). Along the way, the explorers are taught about plants and animals, geographic and geological features, and a bit of history specific to the region. I haven’t been on an Urbia adventure yet, but I have ordered and read through the books. They all look fun!
Urbia currently sells five booklets, which can be purchased online, www.urbikids.com/buy-booklets:
- Islands in the Sky: Explores the hills above the Inner Sunset
- Wayfinding on Rocky Mountain: Explores the natural area surrounding the Randall Museum
- Seeking California in the World of Plants: Explores the San Francisco Botanical Garden
- A Hidden Creek Makes a Lake: Explores the Stern Grove & Pine Lake area
- Journeys to San Francisco: Explores the environs of the Richmond District Library
We’re going to do the “Islands in the Sky” outing within the next week, as a cool feature of this adventure is a discovery of green hairstreak butterfly. The season to see these butterflies (which have been disappearing from San Francisco) is April, and we don’t want to miss them (if we can find them!). I’ll report next week on our outing!
hike.wander.wonder 
Thank you for sharing! What a great idea to have adventures for kids and famililies within San Francisco. We’re going to share this on our page for parents in the area. We need to see those butterflies, please keep us posted.
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Thank you for sharing this with your readers! I was planning on trying this out within the next few days, but it looks as if we have (much-needed) rain in the forecast for the rest of the week. I can’t wait to try one of these adventures out!
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This is a fabulous idea! I don’t live in San Francisco but maybe I can make my own booklets/activity packs to explore different areas in my town. Neat.
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I’ve been exploring the concept of “questing”, which seems to be more popular on the East Coast and in the UK. I haven’t been able to find much of it here in California (other than geocaching and letterboxing). You might want to do some online research. Here’s a link to “how to make a quest” from a site in Vermont.
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Oops… here’s the link… http://www.vitalcommunities.org/valleyquest/howto.htm . Have fun!
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Thanks! I’m going to check out that link now and will let you know if our questing goes anywhere.
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