Join us for a potluck picnic lunch featuring BBQ burgers and hotdogs provided by GeocacheAlaska! and cooked up by grill-master SSO JOAT on Saturday, July 26th. Please bring a picnic-ready side dish to share with the crowd, as well as your own favorite beverages. Please, no alcoholic beverages as this is a family activity in a public park.
Please RSVP with a "Will Attend" log stating how many adults and how many children will be in your party. Also state what side dish you will be bringing. When planning your side dish, please consider that we will have at least 60 people attending!
This year's picnic is once again in the City of Kenai at the Kenai Municipal Park's South Pavilion overlooking the mouth of Kenai River. Access to the park is via the Kenai Spur Highway, through the City of Kenai and turn left (south) on South Forest Drive. Follow Forest straight to the end. The park is on the left and the pavilion is visible from the street behind the basketball court and volleyball field.
We recommend car-pooling if possible to allow ample room for parking. There is some parking at the end of the street (about 50 yards from the pavilion) though it will probably be full of dipnetters sneaking in around the toll booth. Due to that problem, the city has closed the park to all vehicle traffic this year to limit parking. We have a key to the gate and it will be opened ONLY for participants in our event. So, we may spread vehicles out inside the park as much as needed to get everyone to fit. It will be up to our group to ensure that no one drives into the park that is not here for our picnic. Signs will be posted at the entrance.
From our location there are spectacular views of Cook Inlet and we'll be at the heart of the Personal Use Salmon Dipnet Fishery. Our vantage point high up on the bluffs gives a great view of the fun-filled chaos down below, as it will be final weekend for the dipnetters working the Kenai River!
Plan to spend the whole day as we'll have plenty of fun-filled activity in store. JOAT's been brainstorming some new twists to his daycache challenge, which will still involve a team-based race to find as many daycaches as possible while working against the clock. It is the funnest ~2 hours of team geocaching possible. And there will be a LOT of daycaches to find! Bring your GPS and appropriate outdoor clothing to engage in a rapid-fire multi-cache hunt!
Be forewarned!!! Everyone gets to log a single "attended" log to this event. We don't allow multiple logs to account for daycache finds up here in Alaska. No stat padding is allowed!
Visit with Board members from GeocacheAlaska! to learn first hand what your state-wide geocaching organization is doing to promote our fun hobby throughout the state. The official GeocacheAlaska! merchandise store will be on site throughout the event. You can pick up some cool GeocacheAlaska! trackables, pathtags, and other geocaching items. It is the sale of these fundraiser items that allows the club to pay for events such as this. For 6 years running, there is still no admission fee to this event. But we would love to have you help out by joining GeocacheAlaska! as a Sourdough member and pick up some merchandise from our store.
Tentative Schedule of Events:
(Subject to change at any time, including on the fly during the event)
- 11:00 AM - Setup and Social Hour
- NOON - Lunch is Served!
- 1:00 PM - Kids CITO Challenge and Ice Breaker Activities
- 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM - JOAT's Daycaching Challenge!
- 3:30 PM - Prizes and Awards
- 4:00 PM - Site Cleanup
Check this page periodically for updates. If you are willing to volunteer to assist SSO JOAT in setup or assisting with managing activities during the event, please send a message through his geocaching.com profile.
For those coming from afar, don't forget to plug away at some of the area puzzles before you come down. After all, this is the Puzzle Capital of Alaska and you'll even have access to the creator of many of those puzzles so you can try and coerce a hint or two.