Geocaching 10 Years!

Mark: Last weekend was the 10 year anniversary of Geocaching, of which Kris is a newbie, been doing it for a little over a year and I have been geocaching for over 4 years. For the 10 Year Celebration Groundspeak created a new event type with a special icon for and events scheduled and held during the weekend of  April 30th - May 3rd.

In the Twin Cities there were several 10 Year events to choose from including what I would consider the two main events, St Paul and Minneapolis. On Saturday, the St. Paul event was hosted by friends of ours, NOSNOW and Shadows Friend. Their event was in Carver Lake Park (actually in Woodbury) and they went with a bean theme. (For anyone not familiar with Geocaching the very first geostash (cache) was hidden on May 3rd, 2000 and contained several items including a can of beans. Many years later a plaque was placed marking the location of that hide and when they were preparing the spot for the concrete to hold the plaque that found the original can of beans that was hidden in the cache. It is now sort of a treasure in the geocaching community.

As part of the Bean Theme, NOSNOW and Shadows Friend had a couple of bean games, guess the type of beans and a guess how many beans are in each size of Geocaching container. Here is Kris counting beans.

Kris: Thank you to Gilby 4 for taking this lovely picture of me :-P

Mark: In addition they also produced a special pathtag just for this event with a can of beans on it and everyone who attended received one. VERY NICE!!

In addition to the Pathtag, there was also a special 10 Years geocoin that you could purchase which was unique for Minnesota. Actually they used the same design for the geocoin and changed the colors in the coin for each state/location.

Not sure if it was part of the plan or there was a note to the effect somewhere that I missed but just about everyone brought a dish for the potluck that was bean themed. Baked Beans, Bean Salad, Jelly Beans but my favorite was the Boston Baked Bean Cookies.  Kris: Yay for Boston Baked Beans!!  Love those things :)

Mark: While we were at the event we conveniently found a few caches, surprise surprise, and discovered I already had a found a cache in this park that I don't even remember finding. Based on the cache pictured below with Kris you would think I would remember that.

There was a great little creek that you had to cross to get to one of the caches.

Near the end of the event they took a group photo, which Kris and I missed, tried to find a difficult cache that was a little too far away to get back in time. :( After the picture the was a drawing for prizes, they had so much cool stuff to give away, and I think just about everyone got something. (Kris was one of the unfortunates not to get anything) I got a waterproof match container that can be used as a cache container. I was hoping to get one of the numerous geocoins that were give away but no such luck.

Thanks!! to NOSNOW and Shadows Friend for putting on such a GREAT event!

We had to leave the St Paul 10 Years! event a little early to get back to Minneapolis because Kris won pictures to the Owl City concert. I originally debated about buying Kris tickets to the concert, she really likes the song "Fireflies" but decided the $40 ticket price plus the extortion money ticketmaster charges was not worth it.  After attending the concert I am glad that I didn't actually spend any money, except for the beer and wine to help us tune out the teens and tweens. Kris:  Ugh this concert made me feel SO old!  But being old has it's perks....again please refer to the beer and wine!  Great performance though and very glad we got to go.

Don't get me wrong, it was an entertaining something to add to the life experiences but the concert was almost entirely attended by teens, tweens and their Moms. There was the occasional Dad around in attendance but not many and it was one of them that gave us the alcohol idea. Thanks Dad!

Here is Owl City preforming their one hit song "Fireflies" which they saved as almost the very last song. (Made sure you stuck around for the entire concert)

On Sunday we both ran the Lake Minnetonka Half Marathon which we had a great time and Kris even set a new Half PR which you can read about at her personal race and training blog.

Originally we had not planned on attending the Minneapolis 10 Years! hosted by King Boreas but we decided at the last minute to head straight from the race to the event at Gluek Riverside Park. An opportunity to get credit for attending 2 of the 10 Years events. This was a much....... simpler event. Mostly a social event, geocachers standing around talking caches. There was a potluck as well, but no theme or games and there was only one cache in the park that you could find with out even using the GPS because the grass was trampled down right up to where the cache was hidden in a pine tree.

Several of our caching friends were at the event including Ronindoc who gave us one of the pathtags he used to propose to his girlfriend the previous weekend. Kris: I thought he had a very cute proposal story!  He surprised his girlfriend out in PA where she lives with a new cache and this pathtag.  The full story is very sweet

Mark: A group photo was also taken at this event and Kris and I made it in this picture. We can be seen just behind KB (Holding the 10 Years! logo sign in the center) and just to the right. Also of note is our friend Gilby4 who decided to climb the tree behind the group.

After the picture was taken it was time for the potluck, which was good since Kris and I were starving, remember Kris and I ran a half marathon prior to coming to the event. After the potluck KB also had a drawing for some geocoins, not many just a few, nothing like the day before in St. Paul.

We cut out a little early but we were tired and and need to go home and take a nap. All and all we had a very good weekend at both Geocaching 10 Years! Events. 

Kris: I'm also very glad we got to attend both even though it was a lot of running around over the two days but it's fun to catch up with our caching friends and for Gilby 4 and Pippin and Merry, I promise I won't forget my MOGA medal for the next event at Nerstrand so I hope you'll be there!!