The world is invited to Groundspeak HQ in Seattle, Washington USA to celebrate the global phenomenon of geocaching. Check out the cache page, and log your “Will Attend” to meet geocachers from around the world and talk with the Lackeys and Volunteer Reviewers who help power the Geocaching.com experience.
Each year, Geocaching.com celebrates International Geocaching Day on the third Saturday in August by hosting the Geocaching Block Party. The Geocaching Block Party on August 18 runs from 11am to 3pm at Fremont’s Solstice Plaza by the JP Patches statue. Geocachers can challenge themselves with beginner, intermediate, and advanced geocaching courses. They can also explore the Fremont neighborhood where Groundspeak is based and win prizes with “Fremont Funventures”—all while swapping geocaching stories. The public is invited to explore the family-friendly adventure of geocaching and meet geocachers from around the world. More than 2000 people from a dozen countries attended last year’s Block Party.
Around the world, there will be nearly 200 events in more than a dozen counties. Anyone who logs a cache or an “Attended” for an Event Cache on August 18 this year earns the 2012 International Geocaching Day souvenir for their Geocaching.com profile.
Subscribe to the official Geocaching.com YouTube channel to be one of the first to see new videos about the evolving world of geocaching. Watch the more than 50 videos produced by Geocaching.com on our video page.
WINNING CAPTION – I know the hint said the cache was in a ‘breathtaking spot’ but this isn’t quite what I was expecting. –catflowers
Ever had a geocaching day like this? Enter your most creative caption for this picture to win a ‘barely coveted prize’ in the 34th Geocaching.com Caption Contest. This picture was originally posted on the official Geocaching.com Facebook page. Special thanks to geocacher Arjan Voskamp for use of the picture.
Barely coveted prize
What caption would you write for the picture at the top of this post? Submit your caption by clicking on “Comments” below. Please include your Geocaching.com username in all entries. Then, explore the captions other geocachers have posted.
You’re encouraged to try to ‘influence’ the voting process (*nudge*nudge*). “Like” the caption that you think should win. If you think your caption should win, convince your fellow geocachers, your friends, and family to “like” your caption. Lackeys vote from the top finalists to decide the winner of the contest.
Click the image to find the winning caption to the previous contest
The winner receives this month’s vintage ‘barely coveted prize.” It’s all the collectable pieces of the 2011 Geocaching Block Party Challenges course. Join us this year for the 2012 Geocaching Block Party in Seattle, Washington.
More than a dozen Lackeys voted to award the winner of the 33rd Geocaching.com Caption Contest a barely coveted prize. Click on the image to your right to read the winning caption of that contest.
Explore all the winning captions by checking out all the Geocaching.com Caption Contests. If you have suggestions for Geocaching.com Caption Contest photos, send a message and the image to pr@groundspeak.com.
Geocachers from Foundation Fitness competing in the Wild Canyon Games Geocaching Event. The circle highlights a helicopter
Four geocachers finally stood atop the rock covered peak of a desert vista. The geocachers could see the horizon stretch out before them for miles. Geocaching.com Lackeys Colin Williams (Colin) and Jenn Seva (MissJenn), accompanied by two other geocachers, climbed high enough to look down on the flight path of an observation helicopter.
Logging a geocache near the Wild Canyon Games venueLackey Troy Kaser running in the Triathlon
There were no homes to be seen. They squinted to even find a road. But hidden on the largest geocaching course in the world – 55 square miles – 450 geocaches waited in crevasses and cracks, bushes and trees, to be discovered. Colin and Jenn were part of one of two Geocaching.com teams competing in the Wild Canyon Games. The Wild Canyon Games is a team-based adventure race competition.
Colin and Jenn’s GPS coordinates told them a geocache was somewhere on that peak. They teamed up with other geocachers to find it. Geocaching is just one event in two days worth of adventure games.
In the geocaching event hundreds of competitors had four hours to accumulate the most points – by logging geocaches and recording the unique codes inside. Each geocache carried a point value based on its difficulty, terrain, and distance from the start.
Lackeys Annie Love and Nicole Bliss ready to download waypoints for the Geocaching Event
The course crawled with more than 600 geocachers. Teams plotted strategy to unlock the geocaching route they believe would deliver them the most points. They raced the clock.
Nearly 130 teams from the Pacific Northwest of the United States competed in the games.
Lackey Ernesto Ricks after riding the bike course
Colin says they had to take the long detour to try to find just one cache – to help even the playing field, “Sure, we climbed the highest mountain in the area. If we spent the whole time geocaching it would have been unfair to the rest of the field.”
Lackeys helped the rest of the field prepare for the event. The Lackey teams assisted competitors by downloading the waypoints on GPS devices and offering GPS device training before the geocaching event began. Groundspeak’s two teams of seven also competed in an Olympic length relay triathlon and a seven stage relay which included, among other obstacles, a 50 foot canyon swing, an elevated ropes course, and a zip-line.
Lackeys MissJenn and Colin pointing the mountain they climbed
Lackey Annie Love (Love) completed the zip line safely. But she says, her fate seemed a little unsure at the top of the tower, “As I was about to step off the Zip Line platform, I had a quick thought of ‘OMG, I am going to die!!’ and then I thought to myself ‘My team needs me.’ and I leaped off.”
The weekend wrapped up with a team relay race called Creek to Peak that features Cyclo-Cross, an obstacle course, a lake sprint swim, two mountain sprints, and much more.
But for Lackeys like Constance Baldwin, it was the geocaching that defined the weekend. She says, “Geocaching brought us together in sometimes adverse terrain and we cared for each other. It was extremely profound for me personally and made me love the game and Groundspeak and what we do even more.”
Wild Canyon Games 2013 is already being planned for next year. When asked by the emcee of the event, “Are you coming back next year?” Lackey Bethany Buer simply said, “Duh!” And we hope to see you there.
A special thanks to the Wild Canyon Games organizers and Paul Tannahill (Pablo Mac) and his team for preparing the geocaching course.
Geocaching.com Teams at the Wild Canyon Games (not pictured Lackey Volunteers Cathy Hornback and Tom Phillips )
Editor’s note: Groundspeak Lackeys are traveling thousands of miles from H.Q. throughout the year to share smiles, shake hands, and make geocaching memories at nearly 20 Mega-Events worldwide. Cathy Hornback aka, Prying Pandora, attended the Mega-Event GeoWoodstock X (GC2X6ZV). It took place in Indiana, USA. Cathy has been a Lackey since 2009 and works in Customer Relations. Here’s Cathy’s account of her trip.
Cathy aka Prying Pandora
Written By: Cathy Hornback
On Memorial Day weekend 2012, I had the honor of representing Groundspeak with our CEO and co-founder Jeremy Irish at GeoWoodstock X in the small town of Sellersburg, IN. Sellersburg is about 10 miles north of the much larger city of Louisville, Kentucky.
GeoWoodstock is not just any event, and this was not just any GeoWoodstock. The event is held annually at different locations in the US, and for its 10th anniversary, GeoWoodstock returned to its roots in the Louisville area where the first GeoWoodstock took place. The event has grown from 75 attendees at GeoWoodstock I, to 1500 attendees at GeoWoodstock X!
I was eager to begin my Mega-Event adventure so I booked the first flight out of Seattle on Thursday morning, which meant I needed to be at the airport at 4 AM. I hoped to attend an event in Louisville on Thursday evening after I arrived, but my layover in Houston was extended due to a delayed flight so I did not get there in time. One of the nice things about a big Mega-Event is that there are many opportunities to interact with the community spread out over the weekend, so I settled in my hotel for the night looking forward to Friday’s events.
Belle of Louisville
Friday began with a delightful event, a cruise aboard the Belle of Louisville with 650 fellow geocachers. The Belle of Louisville is the oldest river steamboat still in operation, and it’s a National Historic Landmark. We boarded to the merry sound of the boat’s calliope and spent several hours cruising the Ohio River, socializing, and viewing the massive steam engine and boilers that power the boat’s paddle wheel. An afternoon of geocaching with new friends followed along with a visit to Churchill Downs, the location of the Kentucky Derby. Soon it was time for the evening event, the Miles of Smiles Meet & Greet. Set up like a geocaching street fair, it was a chance to meet more of the community. The evening air was a relief from the powerful heat wave that had settled over the area for the weekend.
Saturday was the big day – GeoWoodstock X. I met up with Jeremy for breakfast, who was back in town after spending that Friday attending the opening of the Geocaching Adventures Maze Exhibit in Dayton, Ohio. When he and I arrived at the event, we were greeted by a crowd of geocachers and a traffic jam of more cachers arriving.
GeoWoodstock Wedding - Signal gives away the bride
A big hot air balloon was being inflated on the hillside where a huge Hollywood-style event sign had been set up. The temperature was even hotter than the day before – 93°F and humid – but cachers are an intrepid bunch and there was a smile on every face. A full day of activities awaited all of the attendees – a group photo, silent auction, educational sessions, caches in the park to find, a vendor expo, catered lunch, a reviewer panel for Q&A, and more. There was also something you rarely get to see – a geo-wedding!
Two cachers from Texas, Crossmage and Phoenix Lady, were married on the GeoWoodstock stage, with Signal giving away the bride! I had a wonderful day meeting more new geocachers than I can count and putting faces to names I had only seen online. I love our friendly, helpful, and clever community. All too soon, it was time for the closing ceremony and announcement of GeoWoodstock XI’s location. It will all happen again next year in Lakeland, FL!
Editor’s note: Groundspeak Lackeys are traveling thousands of miles from H.Q. throughout the year to share smiles, shake hands, and make geocaching memories at nearly twenty Mega-Events worldwide. Arne Moen, aka, RandolphAgarn, attended the Lisbon, Portugal Mega-Event 12 years Geocaching – Portugal (GC35GH8). Arne has been a Lackey since 2009 and is a Software Developer. Here’s Arne’s account of his trip.
Written By: Arne Moen
Arne (on right) with local geocacher and Olympian João Costa
I was in Lisbon, Portugal to celebrate 12 Years Geocaching Portugal with local geocachers.
I was delighted to meet all these geocachers from Portugal. Of course, I knew that there are geocachers all over the world. But to talk to them in person about FTF’s (First to Finds), Multi-Caches, and Trackables in person made it all more real.
Everyone was very kind to me and I was excited to give away some Geocaching.com merchandise like Trackable tags. I strongly suspect I would have felt equally welcome without the swag. I met many interesting individuals and some really sweet dogs. I met a geologist who was born in Mozambique, an underwater archeologist, an Olympic athlete, a C-130 pilot, a cartographer, and many more individuals whose backgrounds we didn’t discuss. Each one of them was a treat to talk to.
Geocacher by a cork tree
While chatting with a geocacher, I recalled that a significant amount of the world’s cork – as in a bottle or on a bulletin board – comes from Portugal. I had heard that it was the bark of a tree. Though I had seen a lot of bark in my lifetime and I couldn’t imagine how the thing in the wine bottle was attached to the outside of a tree.
I mentioned this to my new geocacher friend. He told me cork trees can be found all over Portugal and immediately set off trying to find one in the park. A few minutes later he returned to bring me to a cork tree. The bark was thick, and firm yet spongy. And suddenly I could see where cork comes from.
Night caching in Portugal
I found a couple of geocaches at the Mega-Event. But my first evening in Portugal I went out and found some geocaches with some new friends.
We began our evening with a traditional Portuguese meal: cod, ham, and fried potatoes, covered with a kind of hollandaise sauce. We also enjoyed “vinho verde,” which means green wine in Portuguese. The greenness in this case is in reference to the newness of the wine. The grapes had been picked, squeezed and fermented in the last year.
After our meal the four of use set out into the streets of Lisbon looking for geocaches. This was in an old neighborhood, between the eleventh century castle perched on the hill, and the Rio Tejo, the river from which some of the great explorers like Ferdinand Magellan and Vasco da Gama began their voyages of discovery.
Ultra Violet Night Cache Clue
We started in front of an old cathedral across the street from our restaurant. There was a geocache, Catedral (GCZWBV), just down the street. As the guest, I was allowed to make the first attempt. I was nervous with three experienced geocachers watching me. I was still suffering the affects of from jet lag. I skipped over the geocache at first, then found it a few seconds later.
The next geocache, Portas do Sol (GC1F9NG), was in a little square that overlooked the river. We took several seconds to enjoy the view before looking for the geocache. We found the geocache in one spot and a second log book in another. This was my 100th find and my furthest find east of my home coordinates. It was a fantastic spot to hit a milestone.
Then we went down the hill towards the plaza at the site of the former royal palace. This area of town was relatively new. An earthquake and tsunami wiped out this neighborhood in 1755 so it had to be rebuilt. We knew exactly where the next geocache, No Paço do Terreiro [Lisboa] (GC13Z3E), was hidden from a spoiler photo. Before we were finished signing the log, a police offer walked up to ask us what kind of tomfoolery we were engaged in.
Travel Bug haircut at the Mega-Events
I felt like I was back in high school, getting caught by an authority figure. Here we were, four adult men, each with full lives running around downtown in the middle of the night. Isn’t there something more we should doing with our lives? No, it turns out. We were having an adventure. What could be better than that? We explained we were geocaching. He told us he knew what that was and let us replace the cache and let us go about our evening.
All of the caches we found that night were traditional urban micros. They were good geocaches. But the food, the company, the hunt, the adventure that evening, and the Mega-Event experience, made my trip magical.
