the giant, huge, out-of-this-world geocaching event finally arrived today!! And we were there.........it probably wasn't anything like the original Woodstock; however, I'm sure the attendees had as much fun. We arrived around 1000 and found a bunch of cars and people already there. I only own three geocoins so Becky took pictures of them for me at the entrance. The parking lot had a whole bunch of vehicles that were travel bugs that could be logged as discovered. Becky took a bunch of pictures of them and will probably log them........I used to log the TBs but they became overwhelming for me to keep track of so I don't do that anymore. At the entrance I again met the "Retired Professor" who was talking to "Graniteman". We chatted for awhile; or I should we listened, believe the Prof can talk your ears off. Graniteman puts out some interesting caches, seems he has access to tools at work, including diamond drills, that he uses to create some really neat caches from granite. Will have to check him out and see if any of his caches are nearby that we can hunt down tomorrow. They had lots of booths set up peddling their wares and Becky was in Hog Heaven. She ended up with a bag of goodies and probably spent her last month's allowance. The event was held at a farm set up for entertaining kids. They had a train ride, animals, etc. etc. for the kids so it was a fine family affair. One lady had a Skwerl Travel Bug on display that won a race starting in Holland and ending up back in Roseville, Ca. A couple of "cuties" really enjoyed Becky's walking stick, Frankin Bears and everyone who saw him commented on this fine piece of work.
Jeff, of Team 360, had his "Original Can of Beans" there and was also peddling the Illegal Alien Geocoin..........naturally Becky now has one...........I don't know the story behind this coin so will have to do some research on it..........they probably weren't refering to "illegal aliens" from Mars!
They had various contests, a stage set up with a band and things pretty much going on all day. We met Minnie and Mike from San Diego, we had run into them on a number of occasions in Yuma. They were going to wrap up their geocaching and spend the next few days just sightseeing. We finally left the event and started geocaching around Wheatland. Geocaching wasn't too difficult today...................all you had to do was drive down the road until you saw a bunch of people stopped, hop out of the car and sign the cache log. Well it was about that easy for a lot of the caches and we kept meeting the same group of people in our travels. In the next to the last picture we arrived first at a cache and spent considerable time looking for it.............other people and cars arrived and it was stumping us. Finally a bunch of young guys all dressed up alike pulled up and one of them finally found it. They are a group of cachers from Denmark, Team DKO8, who set a record for finding 315 caches in a 24 hour period. More info on the web of their activities. Last picture is of a "5/5" cache we found, accidentally. It's a traveling cache that is supposed to stay in Oregon; but, it was brought down just for the event and will return to Oregon. The only way to find it is to be in the right place at the right time so guess thats how it obtained its rating.
We missed out on the "free dinner", as we were out and about adding about 20 more caches to our find list and missed the dinner hour. That's OK 'cause I can imagine the backed up lines trying to feed over 3,000 people. Becky made it over 1300 today but I'm still 5 short of the 1300 mark. If the weather is OK we'll probably go looking for some more caches tomorrow and that should put me over the 1300 hump.
Not a bad day............enjoyed chatting with a lot of people..............met one old guy from Massachusetts and I asked him if he came here just for the event. He said yes and has attended 4 of the 6 Mega Events ever held. Some people are really NUTS about stuff!
Later. B&W
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