If you’ve been on a walk, you probably know how it’s great for your mind, mood and body, but if you walk the same route too often, you might find your enthusiasm waning. Nope, you don’t have to find a new form of exercise, you just need to find a way to spice up your walk. Like turning it into a walking scavenger hunt!
Scavenger hunts engage your mind, keep you focused, give you a sense of accomplishment and fire up your dopamine response. With every box checked, you get a tiny dose of that feel good hormone that encourages you to keep searching for the next item on the list. Now pair that feel-good fun of a scavenger hunt with a restorative walk and you’ve got a spicy, new combo sure to get your happy hormones soaring as well as keeping you fully present in the moment.
How to Create a Walking Scavenger Hunt
Creating a walking scavenger hunt can be pretty simple with ideas limited only by your own creativity. Below are seven ideas to get your creative juices flowing. Feel free to keep track of all your finds by snapping photos or jotting down notes on your phone, a small notebook, or even by using a template like THIS. However you do it, a walking scavenger hunt is a great way to gamify your walk!
Find the Flowers. Depending on the season and where you live, challenge yourself to spot different kinds of flowers or different colors of a specific flower. This type of scavenger hunt will really help you tune in to the current season.
Walk the Rainbow. Follow the order of ROY G. BIV, finding something red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Bonus points if you can find indigo and violet!
Color of the Day. This idea can cover a whole week’s worth of walks as you set a color of the day. On your walking scavenger hunt each day, see how many things you can spot that are that day’s color.
Spot the Animals. There are two ways to approach an animal spotting scavenger hunt. Option one is to simply count the number of animals you spot. Or, for a more advanced option, assign typical animals point values. Perhaps dogs are one point, cats are two points, squirrels are three points, etc. This is a scavenger hunt you can do on multiple days, since the wildlife will always be changing.
The Weirdest Thing I Saw on My Walk Today. Each day, look for the most unusual thing you can find. Maybe it is a wayward flip flop, a lone sock, or a leaf shaped like a perfect heart. You can even let your imagination wander and turn these items into a story about how they came to be in your path.
Letter of the Day. Either by choosing one letter at a time, or tackling the whole alphabet in one walk, work your way through each letter, striving to spot something that starts with that letter.
Shape of the Day. Choose a shape and be on the lookout on your walk. See how many you can find of one shape, or make a list of shapes and see if you can find them all.
Invite Others to Join You
There’s nothing like some friendly competition to amp up the impact of your walking scavenger hunt. Grab a friend or two and challenge one another to complete the same scavenger hunt. The rules are up to you, but you can base the winner off of who completes it first, who has the most finds (or points) in a certain category, or who was the most creative. Feel free to prize the challenge, or just offer bragging rights. The choice is yours!
Remember that the main goal is to have fun and enjoy the process of exploration and discovery. Adjust the difficulty level of the clues and the items based on the participants' ages and interests for the best experience. And don’t forget to celebrate. You’ve just completed a walk, and not only did you have fun and accomplish a challenge, but you were focused and mindful, which, in this day and age, is sometimes a challenge in itself.
Happy hunting!
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