We had a great time at the picnic, and probably spent more time “picnicking” than we did geocaching! On Saturday we only found 9 caches, spending most of the time socializing with others at the shelter or on the beach. Along the way we managed to win some prizes at the frog toss and the bison tube game. With temperatures in the 90s inland, the beach was so crowded with muggles (where it was cooler) that the ammo can toss had to be cancelled (no room to toss the ammo cans), so we were given extra frogs to toss. Poor frogs. We also were able to pick up 4 new pathtags, swap several travel bugs, win for the first time the creative cache competition, see a few live T-Rex’s, attend the WGA general meeting led by Raw Evil, and buy some WGA merchandise. The only thing missing was Raslas’ Segways. That night we gathered around a campfire until about 10:30 with some friends at their campsite, WITH the leftover WGA cake, and then headed back to our own campsite about 15 minutes away from theirs. A great ending to a beautiful day! We found 9 more caches on Sunday when the two of us had the trails pretty much all to ourselves.

But what truly made the day great was the people. We especially enjoyed meeting Kbraband and Team GrouseTales, two of the founders of the WGA and some of the first Wisconsin geocache reviewers. The WGA was started as a result of those two and a small handful of others organizing the very first Wisconsin geocaching event: a geocaching picnic in 2001, which has been held annually ever since. It was also nice getting to meet Trudy and the Beast, two of the WGA’s original members.

But about the caches. What a great location for a bunch of caches. There were trails. There were beaches. Scenic views. A great shelter building. And the caches were varied in size and style, some rated as low as a 1.5/1.5 and some as high as a 5/5. We both appreciated the theme of the caches – one for each year of the WGA’s existence, each highlighting one of the 15 previous WGA picnics. A big thanks to Labzone for placing all of the caches. The most we’ve ever personally placed for an event is 7 caches, and you more than doubled that for the picnic. That’s a lot of work! I started out finding several of the caches on Saturday with Lobsters9494 and Little Lobster, and the latter half of the day Mrs. Hack1of2 and I found more with Wi.Hibiscus, Wi.Hi’s Guy, Hearty Soles, Dreamcatchr, and Scribble Scribe. After our last find with that group, I made it back just in time for the group picture. A big thank you to Auntienae for the unexpected gift! That alone made my day!

So thank you WGA for keeping the picnic tradition going for all of these years. The WGA: 15 Years Strong!