March 2007 Georgia Geocachers Association Meeting Notes

The March meeting was hosted by the Chattahoochee Valley Cachers on March 10th, in Columbus, at the Oxbow Meadows Environmental Learning Center. Oxbow Meadows was once a lowly landfill, but is now blessed with a number of excellent geocaches and some really nifty trails on its 900 acres. One of the most unique trails is only 192 feet long, but is 35 feet off the ground suspended between trees. Even on a calm day that trail tended to move under our feet.

Tarvol, or Jeff to his non-geocaching friends, greeted the group and spoke briefly about the GGA. MikeGolfJ3, or Clay, then took over the master of ceremonies roll and welcomed all to Columbus. There were a good number of out of town visitors joining geocachers from the Columbus area. There were, as best we could count, 54 present: 31 existing GGA members under 30 geonicks, 10 new members under 7 geonicks, and assorted kids, camp followers, and groupies to bring the total to 54.

Clay introduced Cibachrome as the first speaker. Lee was actually filling in for Widgeon1178 who was unable to make the meeting. Widgeon (or Peter) is head of the Columbus Georgia Convention and Visitors Bureau and Lee showed off the great website the city has to promote geocaching as a tourist activity in Columbus. That site can be viewed at www.visitcolumbusga.com/geocaching.cfm

Peter, Lee, and other Chattahoochee Valley Cachers have done a great job in hiding caches along the ‘hooch near Columbus, and Lee’s next talk was about “RiverWay South” – a program to increase geocaching along the Chattahoochee in southwest Georgia. This initiative is a prime example that should be emulated in the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area parks north of Atlanta. We look forward to showing the NPS administrators there what the more progressive parks in southern Georgia are doing with our sport to increase eco-tourism.

Amy, from Oxbow Meadows, was our final presenter. She gave a brief history of the 11 year old preserve, invited us to view their exhibits of reptiles and birds of prey, and to partake in two special tours of the treetop trail conducted for the geocachers. Thanks Oxbow for hosting our meeting!

Country BBQ catered a great meal of fried catfish, chicken fingers, and all the fixin’s.
Thanks go to the Chattahoochee Valley Cachers for arranging that. Last but not least, we all enjoyed a raffle of donated items, much fellowship, and a hunt before and after the meeting of the geocaches hidden in Oxbow Meadows. Oh.., and those who stuck around ‘till 4pm got to see those birds of prey eating their daily meal of rats and mice. Yum!

Next month we’ll have two GGA activities – a CITO the second Saturday of the month, and a meeting on Earth Day on the third Saturday. Please join us!