GeoWoodStock 2008

Ok, I'm warning you. This is going to be of my longer posts, because this was such a huge event. I'm only putting up about 1/4 of the pics taken because there are so many.

We surprised the kids by telling them we were going somewhere this Saturday that was "special" and something we've never done before. Of course they were guessing all week.

Saturday morning we woke up to rain...and lots of it! We were sad, but we had family prayer and told Jacob to pray for no rain today, and we headed out for our 20 minute drive and the rain had stopped. It wasn't sunny, but it wasn't rainy..just cooler and overcast. Where were we going?

GeoWoodstock #6 of course! This is a world event and is the largest geocaching event held every year. This year it just happened to be in a small town called Wheatland which is 20 mins from our house! Oh, and it's free and for the whole family, so we signed up not really knowing what to expect, except we wanted to participate.

We started finding some caches along the way, and we hadn't told the kids yet where or what we were doing. As we got closer, we began to see other cachers along the side of the road caching as well. The kids mentioned that it was weird that there other people out caching too! Then we ran into a cache that had 14 other people there all at the same time....and they all had on caching tee shirts (which were sold online and at the event) and all had lanyards with their names on them.

Meghan was realizing something was weird with that.. Why were so many people wearing geocaching tee shirts? Why did they all have name tags? What was going on? We then ran into some cachers from the east coast and Meghan was really perplexed. They asked us where we were from, and we told them Roseville, to which they replied, "Hey, that's where our hotel is!" Meghan then asked what was someone doing out here in the middle of nowhere geocaching, who stayed at a hotel in Roseville? What was going on?

We then pulled out the lanyards and gave them each their own and told them it was a meeting of the secret club we belonged to! We explained that this was a world event that we probably wouldn't ever get to go to again, it was right here so close to us!

There were estimates of 2000 cachers coming to this event and more than 100 caches hidden in the area for this event. Above Meghan is signing the log of a magnetic one that was on the "Welcome To Wheatland" sign.

There was another by this Wheatland sign

We logged more than 20 finds today in a few hours. After that the kids had had enough for one day of finding so we went to the actual "event".

This find was along the bottom of a fence, well hidden.

Jacob is pulling out the log to sign. Inside we also found and took a "Digital Fish" which is a trackable find.

This next one was very well camouflaged! It was just placed the day before and when seeing it online, it hadn't been found. We were hoping to be the FTF (First To Find) so we hurried and got this one on the way. Can you see it?

No? How about this photo below:

Still can't see it? Yeah, me neither. We looked and looked for this one, with the GPS telling us we were only 2 feet away, and with it being placed just yesterday, we knew it was there! Meghan finally was pushing around near the base of the tree and see that thing behind the leaves that looks like part of the bark of the tree?

It actually was a piece of wood and bark and moss that was covering up the actual brown plastic container. The bottom of the "stump" looking wood was hollowed out to completely cover and hide the plastic container. We did find it, and sadly, we were 2nd to find instead of 1st.

As we got closer into Wheatland, the easy and closer caches were sometimes busy! We had to wait in line to sign the logbook. Here is one of those above.

The one below was well hidden inside the drain pipe that went under the road.

After a few hours of caching, we decided to go to the actual event. Ah, what a happy family!

This one below was the "Happy Granny" . Marissa said she would be embarrassed to drive that car around, but Meghan loved her car..She was really enjoying herself (the Granny was, well I guess Meghan was too!)

There was a section of just "trackable's" that you log your discovery. So we were able to log a bunch of discovery's for these items. See Meghan in the middle on left?

Sometimes the trackable items have a "mission". Julianna, which was this head's name, had a mission to have her photo taken with geocachers. So we helped her out.

The next photo and video were from the "Geo Packing Contest" where contestants started with larger ammo boxes and it was a race to see who could unpack the cache, find the log, and then repack the cache.

The next several pics are just random ones of the kids activities. They had treasure hunts, letter boxing hunts and just places to play.

The one below is the parking lot. There were a lot of people here!

Each kid under 15 got to pan for gold and they were guaranteed to find real gold. Each one went home with a speck of gold in a little glass jar to keep. Jacob wanted to turn his in for money. He also wanted to bite it to see if it would dent like he had heard gold does.

We had a photo with "Signal" the mascot of geocachers.

These below are ammo boxes which are used in some larger caches. These were part of a painting contest for the kids.

There was even a special limited number Trackable GeoCoin that was made for this event. We got two of them - one to hide and track it, and one to keep. It's a very nice looking coin too.

The back is 3D with two images one of a geocacher finding the cache, and one of the discovery of gold for this area.

They even fed us a free dinner of baked chicken and salisbury steak, pumpkin cake, rolls, watermelons, and salad.

We even added a "Travel Bug" to our car. A Travel Bug is a trackable tag that you add to any item. It allows you to track your item online. It is a hitchhiker. When someone else sees it, it has a special code that they enter online and you can follow it's progress and sightings.

This one is a magnetic one you put on your car. Then when other cachers see it, they log the find online.

All in all, we had a really fun day! As we were traveling around Wheatland finding the caches, we would run into other cachers. As we would pull off the side of the road to find one, others travelling by who were also caching would honk and then everyone would wave at each other. Meghan even mentioned it was like our little own secret club that nobody else really knew about.

We met cachers there from San Diego, North Carolina, Texas and even Denmark and Sweeden! They came all that way just for this event!

It was something for us to remember.