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Saturday, August 23, 2008

Geocaching Picnic and Our First Travel Bug!

We just got home tonight from the 8th Annual Kansas City Geocaching Picnic! I had no idea what to expect, but when I saw it would be at a park so close to home, I decided we needed to go, so I dragged jezebelsk and her hubby along with us! (That's her version, she really wasn't so hard to convince!) There were in theory 200 some people there, none of whom I'd ever met before, and only a couple that we had corresponded with a tiny bit through e-mails, so being an introvert, I was a little nervous about the whole thing, though excited (hello, geocaching, prizes, coin auction, food, need I say more?). Everyone was super nice, and super into geocaching, we were definitely some newbies with only 32 some caches logged to date. But that didn't matter, they were excited for us to keep going!

There were door prizes (didn't win), a travel bug trade/exchange table (left our very first travel bug ever and picked up a geocoin in trade to help on it's way), t-shirts (yep, we ordered a couple), a coin auction (yep, we won a couple) and lots of other coins and items for sale (didn't get back to here because I'd used my last two checks for the t-shirts and the auction, probably a good thing, could have been a lot more expensive!)

All in all a very fun time, nice people, a beautiful park, and yet another obssessive hobby, as if we needed one! ;)

Here is our first travel bug, we're so proud! It's already on it's way somewhere, I'm excited to get updates on it's travel! We've named it Kill-a-bug Byte #1:



Here is the coin we picked up in trade, it shows Old Faithful on the front and a cowboy riding a bronco on the back:



And here are the two coins we won at the auction, proceeds to go for funding next year's picnic:


This one is a compass rose and says around the outside edge "They say the Earth is flat, but I know it is round for I have seen the shadow on the moon" -- Ferdinand Magellan. I think it's beautiful!



This one is of grey whales, since I love ocean animal pictures, and when the sun hit it on the auction table, I was in love, very sparkly and pretty!

I don't know that either of these auction winnings will make it into a cache, they're just too pretty to let go of, but I did see someone with an album book of coins that were there for participants to "discover" though not take, and people were writing down numbers in a frenzy! It was funny, a little scary, and all together a total feed of the OCD-esque part of this hobby! There were people with travel bug numbered t-shirts, name tags and car stickers! I loved it! I have a whole page of numbers to log in for discovery! And Mr. Shaunie and I have decided we really do need those car stickers, they're great!

It was a great time, and we'll definitely go again next year if at all possible! Thanks to everyone that made the picnic possible!

4 comments:

  1. It was fun, wasn't it? Thanks for dragging us! (tee-hee!) I've been logging discoveries this evening, still not through. I think we're gonna drive up to Iowa or Nebraska for a caching adventure and to take Darth Tater to a new home.

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  2. Those are cool! My husband just started a coin collection but my mom has been collecting for years.

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  3. Very cool! I wish we were that tapped in to our local community (I'll put the Tour Manager on that).

    It dawned on me today that a cool camping trip for the Scouts would involve teams of Geocachers 'cause trying to zero in on a cache with 20 Scouts and their parents...that ain't easy. What do you think? Am I onto something fun?

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  4. SHG - I think it would definitely be a fun thing for the scouts. One of the things that they did at the picnic was to hide a bunch of caches for the kids, and then Larry would hand out coordinates to each kid and family that was only for them, so that each team/family was able to get a cache that had a coin in it. So you could totally make it a team type competition. I don't know if he actually registered these at the geocaching site, I'm thinking that he didn't, because they were not to be permanent, so it's definitely something you could do even outside of geocaching, just as GPS practice, or something, you know? Just go out before time wherever your campout was to be and hide a certain number of caches, noting the coordinates of each one, then hand out the different coordinates to each team, or give them the whole list, but give them a FTF = First to Find prize, or something. Many ways you could do it.

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