Wednesday, February 25, 2015

A Geocaching, Letterboxing, Munzee Triple Play



Doyle Carlton Pavilion
Kiwanis Island Park
951 Kiwanis Island Park Rd
Merritt Island, FL 32952
GPS: 28.361102, -080.677363

Michelle and I had a nice day out and about running some errands and playing games. All of our activities were in the Merritt Island area and that minimized mileage. We started with a stop at Camping World. There we usually drop big bucks, but today we just picked up a cartridge for our fresh water filter. We had a coupon, so the filter which normally costs about $27 only set us back $2. Of course we spent time browsing the store looking for things we couldn't live without and didn't find a thing.

East under the highway to Sam's Club for a few grocery items and then continued east several miles to Kiwanis Island Park, interrupted by a lunch stop at a Five Guys burger joint.

Kawanis Island Park was our destination today to attend a geocaching event GC5HYBP -- Castaway Cachers Trivia Night on the Space Coast. We arrived quite a bit early so that we could capture the five letterboxes in the series AQ238337 – Kiwanis Island Park: Get Out There and Play placed by Three Flamigos. The five letterboxes were Baseball, Basketball, Racquetball, Kayaking, and Tennis – all carved by GypsyLadyBug. The sixth box in the series, Volleyball, went missing some time ago. Baseball had a logbook so we spent some time looking over the stamp images of previous letterboxers.

As we found each letterbox, we noticed a Munzee very close by, so we picked up Munzee points along with each letterbox. I used my smartphone App to see if there were any more Munzees in the area. Foolish me! Of course there were. Munzees are like mosquitos – they are everywhere. I grabbed a few nearby.

Continuing our exploration, we found GC3PPDA -- Kaelyn's Kache, a geocache placed by DalenBarb. There is a sad but very informative story described in this geocache. Even if you don't search for the cache, you should look this one up on the website and read the story. We did find the cache however. We were having a successful afternoon even before the main event started.

We still had some time to kill before the appointed dinner hour, so we returned to our truck to relax a spell and recharge our phone batteries. While sitting there, we noticed a growing group of people assembling near the pavilion. We later learned that these were the "Castaway Cachers". Geocachers who were arriving to leave tomorrow morning on a nine day geocaching cruise of the islands in the Caribbean. Tonight's trivia event was arranged for them by Dale and Barb Swinehart of Space Coast Geocaching Store as a pre–cruise event. What a neat idea.

Time for dinner and the main event.

Doyle Carlton Pavilion


Dinner was a pulled pork sandwich with baked beans, coleslaw, and a beverage. Simple but good and thanks to PsjKids for preparing it.


It's All Just Trivial: A Geocaching Trivia Event

The game was hosted by the team of Hoosiersunshine (+Chris Decker) and FailedApparatus. These two folks put on a very professional show. Learn about them at geocachingtrivia.com

hoosiersunshine was the MC for the evening


FailedApparatus ran the equipment and did the scoring


We formed into teams of 2-6 people. There were seven rounds of trivia questions, mostly geocaching related. Between each round hoosiersunshine gave out prizes for such things as "Who is the oldest geocacher here?". "Who has the shortest geocaching handle?" (RonC won that one) and many others. It was a lot of fun.

Golden Geopile Trophy

This is a traveling trophy. It appears at all events hosted by this dynamic duo. The winning team gets their name on the trophy and their picture on the Geocaching Trivia website. How cool is that? And of course the trophy is trackable (TB4ZX88). At the very beginning I got scared thinking that the winner was going to have to take this monster home.

Tonight's winner was Team Feeble Film Canisters. Congratulations to them. I do not know, but am curious to learn, how many years of geocaching and how many Finds are represented on that team. Maybe they can tell me.

Trivia Teams

My information on the teams is incomplete and probably contains errors. I would appreciate comments from anyone who can fill out or correct this data.

Team Feeble Film Canisters (Trivia Winner)
a2arnold, gatorman83

Team WJAR
All Hat, WLSnowbirds, jerann, RonC

Team TriWeiner
lisa22b, Wadonga, FloridaJim

Team Trouble
HTBob, ???

Team Geo Pups
RetiredGirl, RetiredGuy, CuteLilFuzzyMonkey, ???

Team TGO
flyfishercacher, wd4kaq

Other teams???


What is the lowest/smallest five digit prime number?

That was one of the trivia questions in the category What does that have to do with geocaching? That was a piece of cake for us math wonks. 10,001 of course. (Hear buzzer scream) What??? Then it has to be 10,003. (Hear buzzer scream loudly again). Sheepishly How about 10,005? (Hear buzzer scream louder and longer). Totally humbled, I crawled under a nearby rock.

First, the definition: a prime number is a positive integer that is not divisible without remainder by any integer except itself and 1.
Correct answer: Lowest 5 digit prime number is 10,007
What about 10,001? RetiredGuy found factors of 10,001 to be 73 and 137 (73x137=10,001). So it is not a prime number.
How about 10,003? No 7x1,429 = 10,003. Not a prime number either.
How about 10,005? Nope 3x5x23x29 = 10,005. No cigar here.
I don't know how Retired Guy (+Doug Macrae) found his answer. Maybe he will respond with a comment to this blog post.
I got the answer for 10,003 and 10,005 the old fashion way. I cheated. Check out this neat website Math Warehouse

I don't want to play anymore.

Here are a few pictures from the evening


This evening I met Julio (CuteLilFuzzyMonkey). He claims to have found 532 geocaches in one day (22 Feb 2015) and over 10,000 in less than one year of geocaching – and he has a full time job. I checked his profile and his current total of geocaches and trackables is 11,409. He joined on 23 Dec 2013. Congratulations to him and sympathies to his wife.

Julio (CuteLilFuzzyMonkey)


Our Score for The Day

Geocaches -- 2
GC3PPDA -- "Kaelyn's Kache"
GC5HYBP -- "Castaway Cachers Trivia Night on the Space Coast"

Letterboxes -- 5
AQ238337 "Kiwanis Island Park: Get Out There and Play"

Trackables we discovered -- 4
TB4ZX88 -- Trophy: The Golden Geopile - It's All Just Trivial Event Trophy. This trophy is awarded to the winner of It's All Just Trivial - Geocaching Trivia Events. As a perpetual trophy, the winning team's name is added with each event along with the event location and date. The trophy makes an appearance at every trivia event put on by these folks.
TB71D9W – RetiredGirl's Nametag
TB2QHJ9 – Madquilter-Sherwood Nametag
TB2QHNE – Madquilter-Dawn Nametag

Our trackables discovered by others
TB5TTXO – Michelle's Nametag – 4
TB5RDPR – Bob's Nametag – 4
TB66JKA – Ram Bug (the decal on our truck) – 4

Munzees -- 19

Attendees

Here is my count of those that attended. If you didn't log the event as "Attended", I didn't get you.
a2arnoldall hatbeemerdonBetyboop1249
Bootscootin70c&s 143Caching NICCoolj72
Crescent TrekkersCuteLilFuzzyMonkeyDale n Barbdb3034
FailedApparatusfloridajimFloridaPantherFLtravelers
flyfishercacherfreebillFridge01gabby0200
gatorman83hoosiersunshineHTBobIsqubaAndNawty
jerannkim--possibleLighthouse Nutlisa22b
Mike&MarciaMommaDirtClod-MDCmonkeys4everMr&MrsGrizz
Mr. & Mrs. MagicnormasgirlPelicansArePelicansRetiredGirl
RetiredGuyRonCrwillowseastar255
SequoiaShabbyDothebige88Tilbury Seekers
WaDongawd4kaqWLSnowbirdYoung Money Girl
pattytrackeraltair1resqgirlMadQuilter
figgmentdfay1165

It was a great evening. What a way to start a carribean cruise. Thanks to all who made it happen. Your work is appreciated.

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