Free San Diego Scavenger Hunt: For Tourists and Locals

San Diego has so many sights to see, and this free scavenger hunt will lead you to all the best places, local haunts, and have you keeping an eye out for what makes San Diego unique! Below, is our free scavenger hunt, where you can click or tap each item to mark it as complete. And for the planners out there, you can drag and drop rows to change the order in case you want to map out everything in advance.

For a print-and-play instead, click the picture below and you can download and print that.

San Diego Scavenger Hunt

Read further for more information on how to play or check out our hard-mode San Diego scavenger hunt if you prefer that over the below checklist-style option.

Scavenger Hunt Checklist for San Diego

ItemPoints
Balboa Park4
Sunset Cliffs3
Gaslamp Quarter4
Chicano Park Murals2
USS Midway Museum2
La Jolla Cove2
Seaport Village4
Cabrillo National Monument3
Coronado Beach4
Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve3
The Whaley House2
Old Town San Diego2
California Tower at Museum of Man4
Mission Beach Boardwalk5
San Diego Zoo1
Mount Soledad Cross3
Little Italy3
Point Loma Lighthouse5
Petco Park4
Botanical Building in Balboa Park4
Birch Aquarium at Scripps4
The Spruce Street Suspension Bridge1
Tuna Harbor Dockside Market3
Spreckels Organ Pavilion5
San Diego Museum of Art5
The Marine Room5
Liberty Public Market5
Chicano Park Day of the Dead Murals2
Cabrillo Bridge3
Ocean Beach Pier3

How to Play

For this San Diego scavenger hunt, we’ve come up with a list of things to see in the city. Some of them are popular tourist attractions while others are more local secrets. For each item, you (or your team) will need to take a picture that shows both you and the listed item. For each photo you take, you’ll get the corresponding amount of points listed to the side of that item. 

At the end of the allotted time for the scavenger hunt, you can see what level of rank you’ve earned and whichever team has the most points wins! You’ll be allowed to go to City Hall and ask for a key to the city. (We haven’t actually made any arrangements, but it doesn’t hurt to ask, right?)

Additional considerations for how you play:

  1. We recommend three hours for the scavenger hunt just to have a limit on the time you’re focused on this activity, but that’s up to you.
  2. If you’re traveling as part of a group and don’t want to split up, we’d recommend treating this as a game of I-Spy and awarding points to whoever in the group spots the item first or takes the first photo.
  3. It’s up to you how tough you want to make it with respect to awarding points just for seeing something, or if you have to go inside, or taking it further and requiring even more depending on the location.

Score and Rankings

0-10: Did you even leave your hotel?
11-20: Business trip traveler
21-30: Frequent business trip traveler
31-40: Tourist
41-50: Lives in the next city over
51-60: Over-caffeinated tourist
61-70: Recent transplant
71-80: Local
81-90: Actually grew up here and has always lived here
91-100: Mayor

Think you’re the best ever? Let us know how you did in the comments (and how long it took you) and sign up for our newsletter to be alerted of other scavenger hunts, our challenges designed for only the top finishers, and more.

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