We had a great evening last night at a local German style Ale House with over 20 other Geocachers! We spent several hours enjoying excellent company, great conversation and some fine food. The event was held to give a warm Maritime welcome to Geocachers Binrat and Geogranny, who were visiting from Eastern Ontario. The photo below certainly shows that our traditions held true to its roots:

Binrat and Geogranny were in town to visit their brother/son Ducky (also a Geocacher) and his family. They will spend the next week or so caching in the area with a trip to Canada’s First Geocache in the plans.

The evening began with dinner of choice which included a variety of fare, the most popular being the German Schnitzel. This was followed by the awarding of quite a few door prizes donated by GPSCentral and The 3Geeks Outdoor Store. Throughout this there was a treasure trove of Travel Bugs available for discovering and exchange. There were a dozen conversations going on at once but good times and laughter was the common topic!

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The 8th Anniversary of Geocaching in Canada was held yesterday, June 28th, 2008, at the Graves Island Provincial Park and a great time was had by all! The day was in celebration of Canada’s first Geocache which was hidden by local Geocacher “eastriver” on June 28th, 2000, less than two months after the world’s first Geocache was hidden by David Ulmer in Oregon, USA on May 3rd, 2000.

The cache is located just off Highway 103 in Nova Scotia about a 30 minute drive from Halifax. It was originally named GC41 but was relisted as GCBBA when Geocaches were taken out of the Geocaching.com site admin account. Apparently a typing error also occurred at that time and the date was changed to June 18th, 2000. The date has since been corrected to reflect the original cache placement date of June 28th, 2000.

On June 24th, 2006 a Geostone giving the details and co-ordinates of GCBBA was unveiled at the Graves Island park which is only a few kilometers from the cache site. The Geostone was built and designed by Geocacher Wallace_River. Plans are now in the works for another plaque to be placed at the actual site of GCBBA.

This was the third year for this annual event and the number of Geocachers attending has steadily grown with this years event drawing 148 Geocachers! For a number of Cachers it was a weekend event which began earlier in the week with camping on site. There was a pancake breakfast on the morning of the event and a potluck supper after the event which by all indication was not to be missed.

There were lots of activities to keep you busy throughout the day. There are several Geocaches in the immediate area including Canada’s First Cache and an EarthCache. There were also several event Geocaching games for both young and old such as:

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The Elk Grove Geocachers hosted a breakfast Monday morning at Elk Grove Park as a closing event to a great Geocaching weekend. Called ‘Thanks For The Memories’, it gave us a chance to say good-bye to all of the new friends that we met at GeoWoodstock VI and it also gave us a chance to make some new ones too!

The food was excellent and there was lots of it, with far more choices than any restaurant buffet! It was supplied by the members of the Elk Grove Geocachers and included homegrown apricots, delicious blackberries, a variety of other fresh fruit, bacon, eggs, pancakes, biscuits and gravy, a french toast casserole, sausages. chilaquilles and more. There was also a variety of drinks including coffee and juices.

After we all ate there were some announcements, a singing of Happy Birthday for ‘MamaCache’ who was celebrating her birthday and a raffle was held for variety of items including Geocoins and cache containers.

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GeoWoodstock VI was an obvious success as around 3000 Geocachers from all over the world converged on the small town of Wheatland, California. This was our first Mega-Event and our first GeoWoodstock. We had such a great time that you can be assured we’ll be at the next one!

We arrived at the event shortly after the 9:00 AM opening and we were quickly escorted to our parking spot on a very large field. The attendants did a great job bringing us ‘in for a landing’ with their cool little orange flags!

We were greeted at the entrance gate by a large banner welcoming us to the event:

Once inside we were met with a bevy of tents housing everything from first-aid to fire tacks! There were tents for the information booth, the Travel Bug center and quite a large series of tents for the raffle items. The largest area of tents was the Vendors area called Swag Alley. We never seen so much Geocaching swag in one place! As you can imagine, this was a VERY popular spot.

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We just got back from the GeoWoodstock Meet and Greet that was held tonight not too far from our hotel here to Roseville, California. It was estimated that there about a thousand Geocachers in attendance!

After picking up our registration package and rooting through it to see what cool and neat stuff we got we found what we were looking for - our Geo-Bingo card! This card was our ticket to escaping from the awkward icebreaker question you tend to default to when meeting people for the first time, “So, where are you from?”. With it we were able to ask such questions as, “Have you ever Geocached on a motorcycle?” or “Have you hid more than 50 caches?” and our favorite, “Have you ever been questioned by authorities while Geocaching?”.

Set up like a traditional bingo card but with questions about Geocaching the object was to find Geocachers that met the particular question and to have them sign the card. Not only does this get you to meet people but for every completed row on your card you get a raffle ticket plus 5 bonus tickets for a completed card! This led to a lot of conversation as you exchanged cards and signed the cards for others where you could and had yours filled likewise. It also led to a lot of fun!

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We just back from a Cache In Trash Out (CITO) event held at Shubie Park, a local park and trail system.

This event was organized by the first year Ecotourism Students from the Nova Scotia Community College - Akerley Campus. They are currently in a “green event planning” class and as a group they had to create an event, plan it and then follow through with it. The event they chose as a class was today’s Cache In Trash Out event. The students provided both garbage and recycling bags along with gloves and hand sanitizer. After it was over they hauled the garbage away.

As you can see, it was a successful day with a fair amount of garbage collected. We were able to pick up well over a half of a garbage bag full on our trek. One of the strangest things we picked up was an old car radio. Why it was here off a park trail system is beyond us!

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