The GGA’s annual “Challenge Event” was held October 14th at The Elachee Nature Center near Gainesville. Forty four GPS teams participated in the actual challenge, but there were close to 80 people present for the event. Sixty two signed in under 56 geonicks (44 old members under 41 geonicks, 18 new members under 15 geonicks).

The theme of the challenge event was “Bubba’s Harvest Farm Game”, designed by johnnie and building on several earlier geocache campout games with that theme.
36 caches were hidden containing slips of paper with “bushel of corn”, “laying hen”, “canned peas”, and so on printed on them. No one knew until the end what the point value of the various items would be, so there was an element of chance built into the game. Caches were hunted by the teams in the morning, and again in the afternoon. The weather was beautiful throughout the day. Some hunted in groups, some went solo, some slid down gulleys, some sank into the swamp and blamed bad coords.

The Cache Hiding team was lead by Trez, and caches were hidden by erik, johnnie, Phat.bak, Slayerette, Tarvol, and of course Trez.

The all important Support Team was lead by ParentsofSam, and supported by 599er, Marietta Moose, Mertat, mtn-man, Redworm, and Strapped for Cache. This group produced the excellent lunch we enjoyed during a break in the cache hunt. Great job team!

There were many prizes, and no one left without a prize of some sort. Atlanta Gal also produced a “Bubba’s Fall Harvest / GGA Challenge Event” geocoin which many purchased. In addition, money was collected as a donation to the Elachee Nature Center to thank them for supporting geocaching and hosting the event.

Cache logs and photos can be viewed on the event cache page.