Andrea Hofer, , reports from Florida Finder’s Fest
Editor’s note: Geocaching HQ staff are joining geocachers at Mega-Events around the world to celebrate and share the adventure of geocaching. Andrea Hofer returns to her home state of Florida to attend the 2013 Florida Finder’s Fest. This is Andrea’s account of her trip.
by Andrea:
The 2013 Florida Finder’s Fest was a total blast. With hundreds of attendees in the Ocala National Forest, activities ranged from a chili cook-off to running through the woods at night. And of course caching, caching, caching!
Group photo from The 2013 Florida Finder’s Fest
Check out the photo gallery below for a look at a geocaching paradise in Florida.
The first step to arriving in style at a mega is to make sure your car is properly decorated. I decked out my rental in Geocaching flags and the HQ car Travel Bug.First thing in the morning I set out with a2arnold for a Jeep run. Now I’ve learned that snorkels aren’t just for people.
Here we are crossing the St. Johns river on the tiniest ferry ever to get the other half of a multi-cache. St. Johns is one of only 3 U.S. rivers that flow north.After that, it was time for the night gauntlet. This was my first time night caching, and if you haven’t tried it, you owe it to yourself to get out there and stumble through nature at night – with a group for support. Ocala National Forest is known for alien activity, so aluminum foil deflection beanies were encouraged.I also had the opportunity to go caching with Hunster, who has racked up 80,000 finds in 8 years. This included a crash course in GSAK and in using a GPS, since so far I’ve been more of a mobile cacher. Photo Credit: Laurie OlesenOk, this part of my recap might scare you a bit, so consider yourself warned. One great part of megas is seeing the creative trackables people bring to be discovered. This one took me a while to figure out.
All in all, visiting my home state and learning about local geocaching traditions (Florida Style caching, anyone?) was a fantastic experience. Thanks to IceCreamMan and his forest minions for all their work!
Don’t miss this recap video by Geopat92. I’m in there at the 5:28 minute mark.
The full crew from the Going Caching 2013 Mega-Event.Geocaching HQ’er Sean with a couple of happy geocachers.
This past August I had the pleasure of meeting Andi Beyer and Jim Williamson, founders of the “Going Caching” Mega, for the first time. They had just flown to Seattle to attend this year’s Geocaching Block Party and were introduced to me because Geocaching HQ had chosen to send me to this year’s version of their event in Warm Springs, Georgia. We hit it off immediately. They made some bold promises about how much fun I would have at their event and I became super-excited to trek across the country for their Mega-Event.
Often when one travels to mega events as a Groundspeak Lackey it is difficult to find the time to participate in the various events and activities because one gets caught up at the main event meeting and greeting with cachers from around the area. To avoid this, Andi and Jim insisted that I add another day to my trip so that I would have enough time to participate in all the events. When I arrived in Warm Springs, they immediately hooked me up with an amazing family, the Villanuevas, who adopted me for the day with orders to make sure I would partake in all the various events. Agent Hop, his wife HopsGeneral and their two awesome daughters were gracious hosts and went out of their way to make my trip a great one.
“Look at the cache. Now back to me. Now back to the cache. I’m on a horse.”
The first event planned for me was a series of geocaches to be found on horseback. My hosts drove me to Roosevelt Riding Stables, a cute little outpost in the FDR State Park, where Andi and company had set up a special geocaching course for those who wanted a brand new caching experience. Caches were placed at a perfect height on trees along the path, so that it wasn’t necessary to dismount in order to find them. There were multi-caches, traditional caches, puzzle caches, and letterboxes, all accessible only by horse. We spent the morning trotting around the park collecting these caches and then headed back to the main park to jump head first into the main puzzle. Great fun!
When we returned to the main event site, it became clear to me how amazing the organization and logistics for this event actually were. Andi and Jim had designed a giant, super-complex puzzle cache based on a hybrid of the television series “Lost” and the Indiana Jones trilogy to be the centerpiece of the event. They had printed, minted and crafted all kinds of cool swag for participants such as path tags, collectable coins, gold-painted plaster scarabs, collectable caching cards featuring photos of attendees, and laminated map cards. All of these things were brilliantly incorporated into the puzzle so that participants would be required to collaborate with one another but in such a way that made it actually possible for everyone to complete the challenge. They repurposed staff members as actors, who were dressed up as druids with scary contact lenses in order to defend an elaborate map room from the unauthorized. Those who made it past the druids were required to hook up their collectable geocoin to a staff of the correct size, and a laser would then shoot out of the wall pointing to the final cache location on the giant map. This location ultimately turned out to be a faked aircraft crash site in the middle of the woods with a huge cache box where participants could enter the evening raffle by dropping off their validated map pieces. So cool!
The geocachers who earned smileys on horseback.
Overall, there were 10 different mini-events associated with this awesome Mega including a Civilian Conservation Corps CITO event, a tasty brunch on Sunday morning and even a Fireside chat with FDR himself! Also, the event hosted a series of Groundspeak’s new Lab Caches featuring a historical tour of FDR state park and another fun caching challenge called the ACE challenge which had participants run around the park gathering a series of stamps with the ultimate goal of cashing them in for a specially-designed Magellan coin. Finally, 100 newly published caches were released throughout the region and were provided to participants the morning of the event on a special thumb drive provided in the welcome pack.
Truly the Going Caching Mega events are a special treat for those who are fortunate enough to attend. Next year’s theme is already set, Going Caching 2014 – “When in Rome…” to be held in Andi’s and Jim’s hometown of Rome, GA! If you are able, you should definitely find a way to attend. You won’t be disappointed!
A location of one of the experimental geocaches from Geocaching Labs.
The Frog or the Geocache, for this you must decide!
With Halloween just around the corner, it is time to get creative – and not only with your costume! Help us find a caption for this perfectly dressed up little geocacher, like “Trick or SWAG!” Tell us your funniest caption for this picture! You could even win a ‘barely coveted prize’ (emphasis on the ‘barely’) in the 40th Geocaching Caption Contest. This picture was discovered on the Recent Geocaching Log Images page. You can discover the 1000 most recent images from recent logs.
There’s a magnetism to Geocaching Geocoins: the weight, the metallic shimmer and how each Geocoin is a message forged in metal. Some celebrate milestones like First to Find or 100 Finds, and some are just cool, like an eagle whose wings actually flap (fly eagle, fly!).
12 years ago on September 30, 2001, Geocoins came into existence with a solid clunk in a geocache. Today more than 3 million Geocoins are proudly displayed in collections and found in geocaches around the world. There are even Geocoinfest Mega-Events held in Europe and the United States each year.
If you’re entering the realm of Geocoins, here are a few quick tips:
And if you’re just not into reading anymore right now, check out this vintage Geocaching video about the history of the Geocoin. Happy Birthday, Geocoins!
Editor’s note: Geocaching HQ staff are joining geocachers at Mega-Events around the world to celebrate and share the adventure of geocaching. Amy Faulkner, attended the 11th Annual Geocaching Hampton Roads Picnic (GC42NJJ). This is Amy’s account of her trip.
Amy (in middle) with the basket logbook
I recently traveled across the country from Geocaching HQ in Seattle, WA to Newport News, VA to attend the 11th Annual Geocaching Hampton Roads Picnic (GC42NJJ). This Mega-Event looked really interesting from the get-go but I certainly had no idea what a trip I was in for.
Upon arrival Friday evening for the event’s Meet & Greet (GC4FDA7), I was barely in the parking lot of the event venue when I was asked by a fellow geocacher to stop my car so they could take a picture of the trackable code I had placed on the window. As weird as this may sound, it was a refreshing welcome to the event and it gave me the comforting feeling that even though I was 3000 miles from home I was right where I belonged. The excitement as I walked in to the event only grew. I met the event organizers (more on them later) and attendees from all over the United States. I listened to some great geocaching stories and received my awesome registration pack that included a lunch tote, a t-shirt, a water bottle, a pen with a stylus, a geocaching hat and so much more. I had so much fun, but this was merely a glimpse of what was in store.
At the end of the event I set out for dinner with some fellow geocachers that are also the worldwide geocaching community reviewers for North Carolina and Tennessee. Although I had not met MonkeyBrad, NCReviewer and Dogwood_Reviewer before, we had exchanged a few emails prior to the event and decided that we would grab some dinner afterward.
Occasionally around Geocaching HQ or out in the game you hear that “geocaching makes the world smaller.” I have heard this in regards to folks getting out and exploring places they normally wouldn’t have and geocachers exchanging stories about similar experiences they have had in finding the same cache, but what happened at the random restaurant we chose for dinner is one of those exemplary stories that you almost can’t believe. Picture this: as the group of us sit down to dinner, our waiter approaches the table in the overly exuberant waiter style and introduces himself. He’s super friendly, he tells us the specials, asks for our drink order, makes a suggestion on a good beer to try and heads off to obtain the drinks. As he returns with the beverages, he inquires as to why so many of us at the table have on geocaching shirts. This was quite observant on his part as we were not sitting there in matching uniforms but in various different geocaching shirts.
We explained that we were in town for the event. We discussed with him where each of us traveled from and then, when the waiter did not ask us what geocaching was we inquired if he was a geocacher. Read carefully, here’s where it gets interesting… Our waiter then tells us nonchalantly that he’s “been a few times” and he continues to tell us that he once found a geocache in Chattanooga, Tennessee that required him to paddle out to it and he was one of only 40 some people to find it since it was placed in 2006.
Photo Op
Around this time I happened to glance across the table at MonkeyBrad to see a perplexed look on his face. He asked the waiter if the name of the cache was Island Booty and the waiter enthusiastically said yes. MonkeyBrad then explained that he was the co-owner of that geocache and the entire table erupted in laughter and cheer and sounds of disbelief that our waiter, who barely identified himself as a geocacher, had such a great and vivid story that he shared with us in the middle of Virginia about an elusive geocache that he found in Tennessee.
After a great dinner and a lot of geocaching stories we turned in for the night with great anticipation of what the next day and the big event would bring.
The morning started off with an event called a Muffin-A-Go-Go II (GC4AF43) right outside the camping area at Newport News Park. As geocachers arrived they would grab a brown bag that included the muffin flavor of their choice. My muffin bag simply included a muffin (it was delicious) but some also included special instructions that challenged the muffin holder to participate in some of the big event’s activities. I did not have the luxury of spending a lot of time at this event as I had to get over to the main area and assist with the setup of the Lab Caches that were going to be tested at this event.
Purple Shirt Club
Newport News Park is a park rich with history. Many Civil War battles took place in the park including the Battle of Big Bethel and the Battle or Burnt Chimneys. The organizers of the event set up the Lab Caches to take geocachers on a journey through the park while learning about its history. In addition to the Lab Caches, there was a plethora of activities from an Ammo Can Toss, a GeoSurvivor competition for teams of two and an egg hunt that tested a participants’ pure luck in choosing an egg that contained the coordinates for a cache that could possibly contain a prize. There were also a few works of art and pure craftsmanship that blew me away. The event’s photo wall and the handmade giant picnic basket event log simply cannot go without mention.
The community volunteer reviewers and I sat on a panel discussion in the afternoon which really started some great conversation about the game that continued on throughout the day with everyone I chatted with. I had so many great conversations and met so many amazing people it truly made the event memorable, but the real heroes in creating such an awesome event were the “purple shirts” that organized the event and ensured that everyone had a good time and felt like part of their geocaching family. I’m excited to go back next year.
