Our Last Geocaching Event Of 2010

We attended a geo-event up in Pasco County at the Jay B. Starkey Wilderness Preserve today. It was a bunch of fun and we were able to distribute the trophys and geocoin awards to the finalists of our Zodiac Coin Contest.

Here are the top-5 winners in no particular order, (L-to-R) Captain Biggins, OldRocknMetal (red jacket, purple cap), Flying Bird (gray shirt, holding his coin-plaque and one for his son AriaandAsa-not here) and Cold Case Cachers (yellow & white caps).

Here is the display and the veiled award plaques we brought to the event. Of course, this is before they were distributed.

We also brought a crossword puzzle contest for the event and awarded trackable geocoins to the top-10 finalists.

Here is Flyingbird, trying to decide which one of the 5 award plaques he would choose to take home today. One of the benefits of coming in first in this contest is that you get to choose from the 5 plaques, while Second Place will choose from 4 plaques, Third from 3 plaques, etc..

Each one of the plaques were hand-made by us and each one had a valuable geocoin set mounted in the frame. Meanwhile, the crossword contest was continuing in the background...

These 3 were going at it so hard, that they actually ended up winning 1st through 3rd Place in the crossword contest.

Now that Flyingbird made his selection, the rest of the finalists made their selections. 'Metal' of Team OldRocknMetal was excited to choose this plaque because the crystal coins in this set were only available for one day, then the project closed down and they are no longer available. We were able to jump into the initial sale as soon as it opened and buy them before the sales-lottery closed down. She had been trying to find the individual coins to try and create the 3-coin set but now she has the complete set in her hands, just for finishing third on our year-long Zodiac Coin Contest.

OldRocknMetal were so pleased with the contest we put on, that they presented us with a composite zodiac geocoin as a way of saying thanks for putting on the contest. This was quite unexpected and very special to us.

First though, they presented me with a tiny bottle of Heinz ketchup, which reminded them of "Little Heinz", the Zodiac Coin Contest holder. I couldn't pass up the chance to cradle the bottle in my hand and say; "I will call him, Mini-Me". That got a laugh from the crowd...

Meanwhile, Katrina and Karen took advantage of a lull in their activities to do a little photography amongst the trees...

There she is, our family tree-hugger just doin' her thing...

Next, Luann took individual pictures of our winners. Again, Flyingbird (First Place) is holding both of the plaques for him and his MIA son, AriaandAsa (Second Place). The reason he is wearing a black cap and holding a purple one is that we also embroidered the top-ten contest winner's name on a ball cap with what position they finished, on the back of it.

Here is OldRocknMetal (Third Place) with their glass coin set and personalized caps.

Captain Biggins (4th Place) chose the Geocaching Icons coin set for his award.

Last but not least, Cold Case Cachers (5th Place) show their Survey Markers geocoin set. By the way, the yellow cap had something additional embroidered on it, a hornet with its stinger set on 'attack', because she was stung by hornets while playing our contest and ended up in the emergency room. We felt bad about that and chose to 'mark the occasion' on her hat...

With the prizes for the contest having been distributed, we began giving out the award coins for the crossword puzzle contestants. Mrs. SKP (Mr. SKP is in the background) was shocked to see the gold trackable geocoin I handed her.

And Captain Biggins came is second, so he was given a geocoin too.

And for 3rd Place, GeoMsP collected her prize too. We had enough coins to go all the way back to 10 finalists, but we only got 6 answer sheets, so that's all we gave out...

Next on our list of things to do, was to enter into the poker run contest run by OldRocknMetal. Here we are, heading off into the field to find the containers filled with envelopes with a playing card each. The idea is to find each container, select one color-coded envelope, then return to the pavilion and OldRocknMetal opens up the envelopes to see what kind of a poker 'hand' you come up with. Captain Biggins won it with 3 Jacks. The neat thing is that the game paid out to every contestant, so we got a handy toolset that Swampmuck (one of our crossword finalists) had contributed to the 'pot'.

Yep, we found one of the envelope pouches.

And Karen makes her selection while Luann is left holding the bag...

After collecting our prize in the poker run, we set out to find the newly placed caches by OldRocknMetal and we met on the 'field of battle' by GeoMsP, Seminole Neil and Mr. SKP.

Eventually they went their own way while we continued to chase the geocaches down for ourselves.

It looks like Karen found it. I tried to fish a pen out of my jacket for her to use, but I wasn't fast enough. My reward for being so slow was that I became her writing desk...

Wow, a purple mushroom... This thing may or may not be poisonous, but it sure looks like a psychedelic 'shroom'.

On our way back out, we came across this pilfered geocache. When we checked on it later, it must have been an archived cache, because we couldn't find any evidence of it on geocaching.com. Well, we are all done here. It was a bit chilly out today, but it was a bunch of fun. we can't wait for the next annual Starkey Park Event!