April GGA Event notes

There were two GGA events in April.
The first was a CITO event at one of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area parks on April 14th.
The second was our monthly GGA meeting a week later at the Elachee Nature Center.

We had seventeen geonick participants (including two new members) at the CITO on the 14th, and were joined by another dozen participants from the NPS, US Army Corps of Engineers, and others. At the end of the day we’d removed 35 old tires and many, many bags of trash. The estimate of the volume and weight was 15 cubic yards and 2 tons of trash. Following the CITO the manager of the Dam Store (who assisted trash transport with his ATV) hosted a lunch at his restaurant. A great time was had by all. Details can be viewed here .
You’ll have to be logged in if the event page has been archived. Be sure to check out the photos.

Our second event was a two-parter: Earth Day in the morning, followed by our monthly GGA meeting in the afternoon. The date was April 21st, the location the Elachee Nature Center in Oakwood (near Gainesville).

We had about a hundred participants at Earth Day, with many people looking over the literature and Mertat’s excellent photo album at the Geocaching table. We’d also hidden two temporary caches and taught about a dozen families how to use the Gecko GPS receivers provided by Elachee and hunt the caches.

In the afternoon Elachee hosted our monthly GGA meeting. We had 45 people under the shelter: 36 old members signed in under 32 geonicks, 3 new members under 3 geonicks, and one ferret who tried to sign in but found another way to mark his territory.
As is the norm for our meetings, we had socializing and a raffle of donated goodies. The highlight of the meeting, though, was a hiking stick presentation by Joebids. Participants had brought in their cherished hiking staffs, and Joe also brought some of his own, as well as some novel attachments for hiking sticks. There was the little basket attachment, the mirror attachment (for looking for caches under tables or ?), and the ever popular metal detector attachment. Joe also demonstrated the breaking point of hiking sticks make of old HAM radio antennas, and how to make a very entertaining and funny presentation out of a pretty dry topic. Great job Joe, despite the slapstick humor!

We all enjoyed looking at all the great hiking sticks before and after the presentation. There were some nifty hiking stick medallions on display, as well as some novel sticks. DragonFlyDreams brought her Mount Fuji stick, BushBob a couple of sticks made of saplings deformed by spiraling vines as they grew.
DrPerp showed his wood turning talents, there were three of Diablo’s masterpieces on display, as well as many other unique wooden staffs, and modern lightweight trekking poles. Phat.bak even brought a stack of sticks for those who wanted to make their own hiking sticks. Thanks to all who participated.
Photos and logs can be viewed at this link.
Be sure to view the Earth Day photos and the photos of all the beautiful hiking sticks.

Our next monthly meeting will be on May 12 in NW Georgia near Rome. Please plan to join us. Details can be viewed here.