Geocache Picnic on the Brandywine 3 - 9/12/2010

Our family participated in a first for us on Sunday September 12; we attended our first geocaching event. It turns out that the owner of the Brandywine Picnic Park is also an avid geocacher, and once a year he holds an event at the Park for geocachers and their families and guests. I have been to the Park a number of times over the years and knew what kinds of things there were to do, so I was pretty sure the kids would enjoy it.


It was scheduled to run from noon to five o'clock or so. Part of the lead-in to the event was a series of 5 new caches that would be emailed to the guests ahead of time before being published to the general public. Each of these 5 cache would have sealed envelopes containing playing cards. Cachers completing all 5 new caches would have a random poker hand built that could get them prizes. This was something that I had hoped to do, but the weather did not cooperate, and it rained overnight Saturday night and through into the morning.

Looking at the hour by hour weather forecast, it looked like we might get a window of overcast but dry weather in the early afternoon, so we planned to give it a try. The rain did let up shortly before we left the house, and it didn't rain again until we were safely back home. Arriving at the Park shortly after noon, there were already many people there, and it was fun signing in and wandering around. Everyone was wearing name tags with their geocaching names, and there was a mixer bingo event where you had to try to find people who had accomplished all of the many different things on a bingo-looking card. Any person could only sign one block on your card, so you had to talk to a lot of people, which was a really good way to get me to walk up to way more people than I would have otherwise. It was cool to meet some of the people who are active in this area whose names I only knew from seeing them in logs and on the website. Geeky but fun.

There was also lots of good food and drink, and lots to do for the kids. Miniature golf, a water balloon fight, a few animals to see, a rock climbing wall, and Grace's favorite - a gigantic slide. Best of all perhaps for the kids, uncle Dave showed up partway through, and stayed with us for the last hour and a half or so.

One other thing that always makes coming here a good memory for me is the knowledge that my father worked the boat dock at this very park as a summer job in high school in the early 1940's. The very same boat dock that I can stand on today. Amazing.

We had the chance to meet a lot of nice people, have a good time for the kids, and get to hear some fascinating stories about geocaching from people that have been doing it a lot longer and have a lot more experience at it than us. This was the third annual, and if they do a fourth, we'll be back.