We’re a geocaching family. Have been, and, if you asked me 1 month ago, always will be. But when I got home from school this month, I learned all about dad’s new favorite winter sport–ingress.

It has all the benefits of geocaching: you get to look at maps, collect treasure, venture outside of your house, and, of course, walk around with your smart device in hand like a futuristic detective.

I don’t remember when exactly we got into geocaching, but pretty much as long as I can remember we’ve been using our handy-dandy GPS to find coordinates deep in the woods, discover a Tupperware container, and log yet another successful cache online.

Now google is beta testing a new interactive game that only plays on google devices (like dad’s android phone). I don’t completely understand the story behind it, but the basic idea is that some sort of alien force has landed on our planet leaving patches of exotic matter to collect and portals to be taken over.

Two sides have developed, the enlightenment and the resistance, and in order to claim the portal for your side you have to actively visit historic sites, buildings, and businesses where the portals are and deploy your resonators.

And that’s about all I understand.

Even though it’s only in beta testing now (you have to put your email on a list to be invited to play) soon it’ll be another great activity to get people out of the house, using their maps, and exploring the world around them as if it’s completely new.

As for us, we’ve gotten to see some areas of Johnstown, NY that we had never bothered to visit before.

Explorers in a place once familiar. Google, you’ve done it again.

Safe travels everyone!