Free San Francisco Scavenger Hunt: For Tourists and Locals

San Francisco 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 Francisco 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 Francisco Scavenger Hunt

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

Scavenger Hunt Checklist for San Francisco

ItemPoints
Golden Gate Bridge3
Alcatraz Island2
Cable Cars in operation (bonus point if you’re on it)2
Fisherman’s Wharf (bonus point if it includes a sea lion)4
The place where fortune cookies were invented4
Victorian Painted Ladies near Alamo Square3
Coit Tower atop Telegraph Hill3
The oldest chocolate shop in San Francisco3
A pagoda5
Person in a puffy jacket2
The best Taco Bell in the world3
Mosaics on the 16th Avenue stairway5
Lombard Street5
Balmy Alley murals4
Yoda Fountain5
Transamerica Pyramid2
Exploratorium museum on Pier 153
Heroes Grove memorial4
Person with Warriors gear on3
San Francisco City Hall2
Sutro Baths4
Painted fire hydrants in the Castro District4
Where Irish coffee first came to the US5
Person on an electric skateboard2
Ferry Building Marketplace with its clock tower2
Person with 49ers gear on3
Museé Mécanique’s vintage arcade games at Fisherman’s Wharf3
The wave organ at the Exploratorium’s Wave Organ4
Mission Dolores3
Japanese Cherry Blossom trees in Japantown3

How to Play

For this San Francisco 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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