Last Geoevent Of The Year & Tarpon Springs

We attended the last geo-event of the year in our area and Dad came along with us. Afterwards, we stopped by the sponge docks in Tarpon Springs, toured the area and had dinner at one of their premiere Greek restaurants.

Here we are at the geoevnt, and Katrina is helping Captain Biggins with awarding the door prizes.

Did I mention that she also helped out with logging all of the visitors and giving them a raffle ticket for the door prizes? No, I guess didn't. I musta forgot...

Dad came with us and he got to see us in action as we awarded some of the winners from our latest geocaching contest.

Here is one of our winners, and she won a topaz blue colored geogem trophy with an ammo box trackable geocoin . Her seeker's name is L2W. Enough said...

This is the Seeker Family and they came in 3rd place in this contest, just like they did in last year's contest. Not bad for a busy family. They have an emerald colored geogem trophy with a celestial navigation geocoin.

Just before lunch, Luann Dad and I went for a ride on our bicycles to look for a cache or two, then we headed back for the eats.

Chow time!

When most of the cachers cleared out to go looking for those hidden containers, I taught Katrina about the finer points of riding bicycles, rodeo style. No feet down, kid!

Then we did a little tree climbing...

A nicely posed shot.

Well, it's getting to be time to pack it up soon.

So I grabbed Luann's bike and doubled-up back to the van.

Here's a neat B&W photo of the wilderness preserve we were in.

And Dad is all loaded up, playing his pocket poker game and is ready for the next portion of our adventure.

Which took us to the Tarpon Springs sponge docks. This pose is cute because in Dutch, the word grandfather is Opa. But in Greek, it means something similar to 'surprise'. Dad decided to strike an Opa pose to show them what a real Opa looks like.

Next, we toured the sponge museum. Unfortunately, it's starting to become a bit run down, which was mostly what Dad & I talked about.

Surprise! Yep, Katrina was there too.

We stopped along the docks to take some pictures of the pelicans.

It really surprised us with how many pelicans there were...

...until we looked to the left, that is. It turns out that this fishing boat came in and they were cleaning their catch and throwing the carcasses to the pelicans.

So we all went over to see how well they had done and how much it would cost go out on the boat.

Yeah, hang in there buddy, you're turn is coming soon!

Here's a map of the Tarpon Springs area. Of course, we were at the Sponge-O-Rama when I took this.

To finish off the evening, we decided to have dinner at a Greek restaurant. This explanation of the inhabitants of Tarpon Springs was on the back of the menu.

It was nice to be indoors where it was warm and we didn't need our jackets.

Flash! See, I finally got a picture of Luann. She doesn't look too pleased though, huh?

When the waiter saw me taking Luann's picture, he offered to take a family shot of us. Thanks, dude!

As we strolled back to the car, we were greeted by the last remnants of Christmas decorations. Soon, these will be comng down.

The next day, we pretty much stayed at home, until...

The opportunity to be the first geocachers to find a brand-new geocache presented itself. Even Dad wanted to go along for the hunt. The funny thing is, we found it without a GPS. I looked at the satellite maps and when we got there, I told Luann the general spot of where to look and she came up with the container. Dad sure is interested in the goodies that were in the container.