Geocaching HQ staff attend dozens of Mega and Giga-Events around the world, shaking hands, sharing stories of adventure, and of course, geocaching! jtcoffee is the Community Volunteer Support Lead at Geocaching HQ. She recently traveled to Memphis, Tennessee to attend the WorldWide CacheFest Mega-Event (GC9E5GX). Here’s her trip summary.

I grabbed my blue suede shoes and I boarded a plane—I touched down in the land of the delta blues, but thankfully there was no rain!

I arrived and was encased in the sweltering heat of Memphis Tennessee, heading to the very first WorldWide CacheFest Mega-Event. I went directly from the airport to the first of many side Events, and was wrapped into the glow that is the local geocaching community of the southern United States. We were immediately old friends.

The Events of the weekend included a fun Mega-Event, several Community Celebration Events, and a very productive CITO in a local park. Leading up to the weekend geocachers could plan by listening to Geocache Talk Network podcasts for tips on caches to find, previews of the event geocoins and challenges to work on leading up to the big day.

I loved how the event hosts showcased the uniqueness and history of Memphis through their Event locations and Adventure Labs. For one of the Events, Geocachers took over famous Beale street one evening and saw how the past and present are alive along this street.

A particularly memorable Community Celebration Event showcased a local museum. As geocachers arrived, we learned there had been a heist: the golden scarab had been stolen, and we had to figure out who had done it! We ‘interrogated’ the actors and used the Adventure Lab placed for the Event to solve the mystery and complete it. It was so much fun to do a live-action Adventure Lab and watch the story unfold!

On Saturday CacheFest was finally here! A unique feature of the schedule was a series of Academies: Gadget Academy, Challenge Academy, and Puzzle Academy. Each of these were intended to be fun and help learn from community experts about different aspects of geocaching.

At Gadget Academy, participants got to clip, solder, and hand wire a puzzle box to take home.

I was delighted to hear my box beep and light up, telling me I had connected everything correctly!

I love seeing how creative Mega-Events can be creative with their event logs. Since this Event had a music theme, the log was a huge guitar!

After the Mega-Event had finished, geocachers returned to the park for a live blues concert from a local Memphis band. It was the perfect, authentic way to cap off a fun weekend (and did I mention there was an Adventure Lab created just to be completed during the concert?). There was even a special musical interlude by one of our good friends, the Geocaching Vlogger, who performed an Elvis Presley classic. You can see the Geocaching Vlogger’s video recap of WorldWide CacheFest on his YouTube page here.

The volunteers who planned the Event went above and beyond to make sure everyone had a fun time—from reminders to drink water to creative Event swag to a cohesive theme throughout, this is a Mega-Event I’ll never forget!