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and who won the pajama contest?

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Never saw a guy ramming cars but we did see a red camaro do a ton of do-nuts in the walmart parking lot Saturday night. Was an interesting “show” for us in the area doing the Red Herring night cache and probably for those “camping” nearby.

I was just glad he stayed away from us and our vehicles!

With all those cops around I was surprised to see this display.

I saw more police cars and people being pulled over than ever before in my life. I was “followed” onto 45 and all the way to Hwy D and down the off ramp before they went back up on 45 again. Don’t ya just hate being followed by the police??

Anyhow, I did not see or hear of a crazy ramming incident.

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@Team Black-Cat wrote:

Nope. Never happened.

Until after you started this thread. 😮
Someone just retrieved our Suburban…

Too Funny! 😀

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Yeah, helping out the “newbies” in the class was one of the most rewarding experiences of the weekend for me. It was great to re-group with them at the end of the day and learn that they were able to go out and find 16 of the event caches. They also learned that a garmin nuvi is not really a good geocaching unit (in the field).

I would definitely volunteer to do it again if asked.

I would have also volunteered for some of the other tasks like the breakfast but I wanted to attend with my family and forcing them to get up that early just wasn’t going to happen! 🙂

It’s amazing to see how many of those cachers found all 52 (53 minus the MIA water cache) caches. My family didn’t “power cache” but we did find way more as a family then we ever have before.

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I didn’t hit 1k. Fell a bit short. Mostly because we did 0 caching on sunday other than the breakfast event. Kids spent the morning swimming and I sat around resting instead.

West Bend is definitely a numbers destination. My wife even commented on just how many were “on the map” around there. So many we just walked right by as we did the event caches and the night caches.

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I agree 100%

This cache was awesome from start to finish. I am very glad my son and I did this one Saturday night.

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Our family did 20 of the event caches between 11:00 and 4:30. Got a bit of a late start as I volunteered at the WGA geocaching training class to help with the hands-on cache hunting.

Even more amazing is the new caching family that I helped them “learn the ropes” found 16 of the event caches with a garmin nuvi. Now that’s cool no matter how you slice it.

Looking back, it’s amazing just how many caches I “skipped” that were literally .1 from all of those I found. Minus the “competition” I would have had a huge numbers day.

As for what I expected, I expected our family to find 5 or 6. They were troopers and held up much longer than I expected. I did end up dropping them back at camp and heading back out to tackle some longer hikes solo.

I think the goatman caches were my favorite of the 20 we did. Mostly because I went back and read up on the topic not being familiar with that local lore. There sure were some neat areas with caches for this event.

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My team spent the entire day in the car and on trail….not spending $ in town.

Quite the opposite experience for my family. We spent the first “half” of our caching day “in town” hitting all the caches near businesses that were easy to jump from cache to cache and we stopped 3 times along the way and spent some cache (er’ cash) at some of the businesses. Then later I headed out further and did some of the IAT and harder hike ones.

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It’s interesting to read ecorangers’ post about hiding some of the caches long ago when there was no corn or pretty flowers. Definitely changes my opinions on some of the one’s I did.. It’s amazing how a “ground zero” changes throughout the seasons and year. FYI – I enjoyed the hike through the corn field quite a bit actually. First time I ever hiked on an official trail through a corn field. Corn was “almost ready” 🙂

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Thanks for the feedback and for everything you guys do to make this event great.

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My wife wondered what was up with that kilt jeremy… I couldn’t tell her as I don’t know the history.

Now back on topic, THANK YOU to everyone who helped place all those caches and organize all the great family friendly activities!!! Our family had a lot of fun and half of that family “hates geocaching”. That is a sign of a very well-run event. When there are enough activities to keep the whole family occupied.

Can’t wait for the next one…

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Put some info in my various logs but here’s the good and sorta bad from my family: (keep in mind this was our first trip to the west bend event and our first large caching event)

– We absolutely LOVED the candy cache mystery. Our kids loved looking both indoors and outdoors and exploring the exhibit rooms. Well done and we will certainly be looking forward to this again next year.
– The night caches were great. They added variety and the ability to continue caching after dark.
– The penny/toy hunt in the sand was awesome for our youngest daughter. She loved it!!!
– The map was extremely helpful and really without it my family would have struggled planning our day.

The sorta bad
– Saw at least one cache – the one near the police station where flowers and landscaping were completely trampled. Perhaps for the bash target caches trying to keep in mind what will certainly happen might be in order.
– Baggies in the target caches were pointless. I removed a half dozen shredded baggies from containers as they served no purpose by about noon.

The suggestions
– For the longer hikes and water caches, perhaps give 2 stamps/tickets to reward those who target the harder caches. It seems like the 1+ mile hikes on the IAT caches should be rewarded more than the quick stop at the Chocolate House. Just a suggestion. Could just have a rectangle instead of a square and a note about 2 stamps. Could just use the same stamper.
– Could the new night caches be rewarded with raffle tickets as well? Logistically more difficult but it would be cool to incorporate them into the event.
– An exciting “speaker” at the main event? Nothing against those behind the mic..

It was a really fun weekend and we were glad we went.

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Congrats on the milestone!!

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From the grounspeak forums

On Wednesday August 12th, 2009 at 8:00 PM Pacific Time (GMT -7), we’ll be applying some software updates to our core network switches to isolate and solve a stability issue. During this time, all Groundspeak web sites and services will be off line.

While we’re not anticipating any issues, this maintenance could take up to 2 hours.

Thanks,

signalsmile.gif Elias

FYI – It seems back up

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From the groundspeak forums:

On Wednesday August 12th, 2009 at 8:00 PM Pacific Time (GMT -7), we’ll be applying some software updates to our core network switches to isolate and solve a stability issue. During this time, all Groundspeak web sites and services will be off line.

While we’re not anticipating any issues, this maintenance could take up to 2 hours.

Thanks,

signalsmile.gif Elias

FYI – It seems back up.

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geocaching dot com down once again…

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🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁

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