Well, I attended the fifth version of the Golden Horseshoe Geocachers and Friends Annual Picnic and it was another blast!
The picnic holds a special spot for me, as the third edition of this gathering – two years ago – was the first event cache I had ever been to, and the second cache I’d ever found. We make a point of bringing the entire family on Kristen’s side out to these, and enjoying the picnic lunch together.
I wasn’t a huge fan of all the bees this year though, so I didn’t picnic all that much. The event attracted over 200 people from around Ontario, Ney York, Pennsylvania and more. GHAGAFAP also seems to be a sort of geo-vention that brings out the cache hiders with their newest techniques, like a beta test.
From this year, I’m expecting to find on the trails soon:
– A cache hidden as an acorn
– A floating duck decoy with a geocache in it
– One of those Amazing Race style pipes with water that constantly has to be filled up before the water drains out in order to float the cache up
Another phenomenon that occurs at GHAGAFAP (and it’s Central Ontario Geocachers cousin event, Spring Fling) is the geocachers that line their milestones up with the day. Last year I found cache #500 here. This year, Kristen picked off her 500th find. Others marked 1000, 1500 and even 3100 cache finds.
The community has become close knit and it’s like meeting a couple hundred friends when these events happen. This year, we marked the passing of one of the more respected cachers – 1701eh – and a tribute was set up in his honour. We know he’s watching over every cacher in the Golden Horseshoe (and beyond).
Next year is going to be somewhere else, and I’m thinking I should throw my hat in the ring, but we’ll see how my first hosted event cache goes on October 28th first (more on that later)