Earlier this year VISIT Milwaukee launched a new program designed to give visitors a tour of 15 of Milwaukee’s distinctively unique neighborhoods—the Discover Milwaukee’s Neighborhoods GeoTour. Centered around geocaching, a twenty-first century treasure hunt played with a smart phone or GPS device, VISIT Milwaukee placed a geocache container somewhere in each neighborhood and then uploaded the location to www.geocaching.com.

Highlighting the history and unique features of the neighborhoods, each geocaching description suggests nearby venues and events worth visiting while in the area. As an example, here's the description for the geocache in the Historic Third Ward:

A few blocks to the EAST is the Henry Maier Festival Park, the home of Summerfest, the World’s Largest Music Festival, and Milwaukee’s famous ethnic festivals including German Fest, Festa Italiana, Irish Fest, Indian Summer and Polish Fest. To the WEST is the campus of the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and to the SOUTH you’ll see lovely riverfront apartments and condos. To the NORTH is Broadway Street where you’ll find the Broadway Theatre Center, home of the Skylight Music Theatre.

In all the neighborhoods are: Lakefront, Brady Street, Historic Third Ward, East Town, Water Street, Westown, East Side, Walker's Point, Bay View, Northpoint, Menomonee Valley, Clarke Square, Wauwatosa, Marquette University,  and Riverwest.

Adding a second element to the GeoTour, VISIT Milwaukee also created a unique geocaching passport for geocaching teams looking to extend the challenge. Requiring visitors to decode a unique word at each location, and then unscramble the words to make a sentence, completed passports can be returned to VISIT Milwaukee to win a custom, limited-edition VISIT Milwaukee geocoin (available to the first 100 participants).

Requiring geocachers to read signs, plaques, and other historical markings to find the missing letters, the passport is ideal for families with children as well as history buffs.

With next month dubbed the "31 Days of Geocaching," teams that find a container or attend a geocaching event can earn a unique calendar-style Geocaching souvenir for each day in August. The souvenirs are virtual and are added to each geocaching team's profile (and are coveted by those of us who like a good challenge).

Recently visiting Milwaukee just to complete the Discover Milwaukee’s Neighborhoods GeoTour, the photos in this story highlight our adventure and solidify our claim that Milwaukee is one of the best "big" cities in the U.S. Extracting a random sampling of geocache log comments, it turns out we weren't the only ones who really loved the GeoTour.

Each neighborhood was so unique and each had it's own "gems" for us to discover. I just love it when it all falls in place. Many thanks for placing this FUNtastic series and for tempting us with the trackable geocoin "carrot" for our efforts. ~ AKiteFlyer

I have been to Milwaukee several times and learned some new things today and was introduced to some new areas (new to me that is.) Thank you VISIT Milwaukee for putting this together and thanks again for the Coin. ~ drank

Here from Michigan visiting. Seen this series and thought it would be a great way to see the city. Thanks so much for placing these caches. ~ HucksHill

Out after the Milwaukee cache series. Glad to make the trek and re-visit old and fun places. Glad someone has a series focusing on the to do's in the Milwaukee area. IT has been fun. TFTC!!! ~ Youngins3

Even though I have lived in Milwaukee county most of my adult life, this geoseries has taken me to many places I have never been before. ~mewwi101

Out with JahnFamily on this beautiful day. This is our twelveth of the Milwaukee GeoTour. This series sure highlighted what a wonderful gem we live in! Thanks for putting out this wonderful GeoTour. ~ MicMac 4

I loved this little park ... my doggy Dori and I went for a walk and took a rest where indicated... we also discovered a historic fire station just down the road that was pretty neat looking where I got a few pictures for a traveler I am carrying at the moment! ~ Glitter Princess

To download all 15 of the geocaches on the Discover Milwaukee's Neighborhoods GeoTour, visit the official page on Geocaching.com here: http://www.geocaching.com/adventures/geotours/visit-milwaukee