The 23rd Annual Texas Challenge and Festival

Once again, as we have for so many years, we all gathered in our various panoplies, ready to face off against one another for the honor of taking home the Golden Ammo Can. Once again, I opted not to captain the team this year. I could not be an effective captain and a good steward to my children at the same time. But my traditional enthusiasm remained, even when it was a bit much for some that early in the morning. As always, the doors were locked at 7:30 a.m. The captains were brought up on stage to compete in what I have come to call a “stupid human trick,” in this case involving small packages of boxes wrapped together. Inside one of each captain’s many connected boxes was a thumb drive containing the GPX file of the competition caches, necessitating the captains tearing their wrapped packages to pieces to find it. The rending began, to cheers and shouts, and one by one, the drives were found, and the maps were disseminated to the various team members. We loaded up our coordinates, and when the doors opened at 8:00 a.m., we were off!

The activities ranged from the simplistic (three bags in the cornhole) to the ridiculous (carrying an inflatable cow through a course while holding a potato between your legs). The caches themselves involved back roads, fake animal poop and plants, tree and ladder climbs, and searches around some of the more important buildings in Floresville. My caching daughter (who was competing) was a trooper—hunting down the hole punches and foraging through flora, fauna, and the creations of man. My muggle daughter (who was not competing) was equally a trooper—reminding us of things, toting things to and from the car, and generally serving as our most valuable TOTT. At one point, we encountered the Geocaching Vlogger himself, filming people on the hunt. Running from car to cache, talking about what we were doing, and then running back to the car made me feel old and fat, but I’m sure it made for compelling video. Sometimes, we would encounter our own teammates and temporarily join forces in our search. Other times, we would encounter our foul and most foreign rivals! The smack talk would sometimes rise to the heavens themselves! But it was all in the name of friendly competition. For hours, we searched, climbed, and punched our scorecards (when we didn’t forget them in the car, that is). Usually, we found our quarry. Sometimes we didn’t. But we gave it our best effort until time started getting close to the end. And shortly before the appointed time, we returned our cards to the event center. With that accomplished, the enemy cachers I hated with the heat of a thousand suns (that, kids, is what we call hyperbole) became once again our friends and comrades. With time on our hands, we checked out the rest of the Block Party.

We went ahead and hit the Maze, the girls’ first, my third. It was all right, but I think it should be more mazelike. I remember my first having more twists and turns, but that one was also the first one in the States in years, so did anyone have opinions on what it should be like?

We signed the log for the Block Party and took photos. And once I logged it, I had accomplished my goal: I had logged my ten thousandth cache! We had snacks and celebration cupcakes (we were also celebrating geocaching’s twenty-fifth anniversary, after all) while I got some of our accidentally-world’s-largest Adventure Lab GeoArt. For a while, the girls were on their own, while I attended a talk given by Captain Math on county caching, a subject I have some experience with. As much as I hate to say it, I didn’t get much out of it. It was a good and useful talk, but half of it was about tools and techniques I already use, and the other half was about routing and pathing that didn’t apply to me because I have a secondary concern: courthouses. I was a little disappointed that I missed the EarthCache talk. But eventually, the girls and I left to grab lunch and then head back to the hotel. I forgot some of the afternoon stuff, notably the introduction of the current TXGA board, of which I am a member. They called me, and I wasn’t there! Awkward! But the nap and shower were (almost) worth it.

Before it was all over, though, the girls and I grabbed a few caches around town. All the running around meant we hadn’t had time to do some of the clever gadget caches around town. The one with spoons to pick a bison off the bottom to the exit at the top was harder than it looked, but we got the proverbial ’er done. I never would have figured out the braille-based Three Blind Mice one, as its answer was based on a peculiarity of braille that I didn’t know, and I doubt I would have noticed it skimming the Wikipedia article to figure out the answer. The Jeep one turned out to be a master class in misdirection. But once we grabbed a few, I took the girls back to the hotel. They decided to enjoy a few hours of hotel life without Dad while I attended the evening soiree, a little Event called…