It started in February for us, at the Weeknight in February Meet and Greet event. During the social time, Juli was involved in a conversation about a state-wide powertrail and asked if we would help out with something like that. Of course she said 'Yes' and told the GCCO board that if they needed anything to contact us. Little did we know that the board would be calling on us just a few weeks later.
In late March, Scott (one half of imyy4u2) introduced us to the team creating the next big GCCO cache project. To our surprise, instead of a powertrail, there was a plan for a massive art project on the Northeastern plains. At first we thought it was impossible. The amount of planning and materials needed just seemed unwieldy! We joined, eager to see if this project would even work and how we could help make it happen.
This picture is one of the first visual concepts that we were given from Keith (WitzAbout) of the GeoArt
Our first secret meeting was at Deb's house (KBOUMW) - and from there we were able to see the extent of planning that Keith put into all of this. We had google map images, sectioned 'zones', and spreadsheets with approximate hide coordinates for each cache in each zone. While at the meeting, we discussed what kind of cache containers we would used, how the letterboxes and Wherigo caches would be set up, and even devised an idea for 'Supply Caches' outside of the art for those who want to help in maintaining it. Toward the end of the meeting we starting volunteering for hide zones. Some folks in the group wanted to find Mingo on the same trip that they hid caches, so they volunteered for the easternmost zones. Some folks wanted to cache in an area they haven't been yet, so they took zones that fit them. We decided we didn't care where we hid caches, we just knew we wanted to make a weekend of it, so we volunteered for roughly 18 hours worth of hides - which apparently meant 128 caches.
An image showing the hide zones and assignments. The westernmost area was eventually picked up on a second round of hides and corrections
After the meeting, we went home and started to prepare for over 100 cache hides. I ordered 400 containers, a small stack of RITR paper, and a pile of plastic baggies. Over the next week, we started printing logs, cutting paper, stuffing baggies... however the containers got delayed in shipping. When our containers didn't arrive by the Saturday before we went out, I asked the GeoArt team for assistance. They were more than happy to help, and had 140 containers for us by Sunday morning. That gave us less than 24 hours to camo and stuff all of those cache containers, and somehow we managed to get it done by Sunday night. We were ready to ride!
Our logs all printed, cut, and ready to go. The front page is RITR paper!
Quickly threw together all of these caches. There were a few that had to be 'improved' on the drive up - but not bad considering we only had a few hours.
The 'weekend' (a Monday/Tuesday weekend for us) that we headed out to hide our caches, the weather was beautiful. Good thing, too - as there were a few spring snowstorms the week before. We decided to start our hides in the far north area of our assigned zones, and work our way south, then west. That way, hopefully we would be close enough to I-70 or Hwy 36 toward the end of the first day that we could easily find a hotel to stay at. That plan worked pretty well, as we were able to hide 88 caches in that first day! The projected hides that Keith had mapped out using google earth were simply amazing. Some caches we were able to drop right at the very same coords, and not have to change anything even down to the 1,000th of a minute! For most of them the coords that Keith estimated were only off from the actual hide by a few 100ths of a minute (30-100 feet). Great planning on his part!
Even though the weather was great - there were still some leftover snowdrifts.
Moonrise over the eastern plains as our first day was coming to an end
The next morning, we awoke and after breakfast and fuel, we headed straight for our nearest set of hides remaining. We seemed to have breezed through those final 40 - the coords were very well lined up and there were lots of good hiding spots. Soon we were headed west to make our final hides in the new zone we acquired the night before. excited, we turned south off of Hwy 36 onto a dirt road. I noticed a muddy spot from the recent snowmelt, so I sped through it hoping to get to the other side which appeared drier. Turns out, the other side of the mud was NOT much drier, and the tires sank in. We ended up getting stuck in the mud some 50 feet off of the highway and had to call the local Co-op to pull us out! Defeated, we let the team know the route from our location was blocked off by mud, and that we couldn't complete the extra hide zone. We managed to make a couple of finds on our way back home, and warned the next group that there was some sloppy mud out there.
Stuck in the mud. If you see the tracks behind us, you can see that we managed to get turned around - just not free.
This was our only trip out to the hide zone. We were going to make one more run to move a few caches and make sure others survived the weather, however we could never get our days to sync up. So while the rest of the team rotated trips up to the area to hide caches, we worked on digging up facts about Colorado to use for the puzzles and organizing them on a spreadsheet. Once we got the spreadsheet started, the team went crazy adding facts to it. We soon had enough facts to use for all of the puzzles, letterbox hybrids, and the Wherigo cartridges, plus a few extra just in case. Those in the group who were more computer & software saavy found a way to create a quick puzzle using the facts we all came up with. Others encoded the puzzles into HTML and added them to the cache pages. It worked quite well, and it was soon obvious everyone on the team was chosen for a reason.
A pile of spreadsheets from inputting hide coordinates
After months of preparation and multiple trips to the high plains, we were finally ready for the big reveal. The question was, how do we present this giant piece of art. From what we can gather, it is the biggest geoart in the world, measuring 60 miles from tip to tip in either direction - that constitutes a big reveal! The idea of publishing during an event right in the middle of the art came up - and we almost went with it. I mean, how cool would it be to see a bunch of geocachers all speed off in different directions? Instead of that, we decided to host an event in Bennett - just a short drive east of Denver. The main difference being that we believed folks would be more apt to attend an event that less than an hour outside of the city; rather than one out in the middle of no-mans land.
Once we had a location picked for the event, all we had to do was generate some excitement without giving away what we were up to. Not an easy task with Colorado's group of 'super-slueths'. We ended up using some of the facts that we had accumulated for the puzzles as daily trivia questions throughout the month of May. We posted each question in a Geocaching group on Facebook, and told everyone to save their answers to bring with them to the event at the end of the month. We eventually told people that the answers would give them a huge advantage at the event, and used words like 'this is big' and 'you don't want to miss this'. That seemed to work at building interest, and the 'will attend' logs kept rolling in! Finally, somewhere towards the middle of the month, we injected one more thing into the event to really bring out the Geocaching masses - A GPSr to give away!
The GPSr we gave away at the reveal event - we loaded it with a few of the caches yet to be published ;-)
Finally all of the pieces to the event were in place. We even got a timeframe from the reviewers as to what time they would publish so we could try and coordinate our event for a big reveal! I decided at the last minute (the day before the event) that a slideshow presentation would be nice to go along with our big reveal. I had all of the pieces to create an outdoor display and hook it into a laptop, so it worked out quite well. After coordinating with the board, I came up with a pretty sweet presentation to go along with their big reveal!
The presentation display (this picture was from my test the night before the event)
Finally the big day came for the reveal. Those of us involved in the event showed up about 30-45 minutes prior, thinking we would have time to set up and coordinate. Little did we know how much hype we generated - and attendees started showing up within moments! We quickly set up our tables and before we knew it the park was getting packed. After some short delays, we presented the Giant GeoArt to the masses! It was a fun event, where we gave away a gold GCCO coin (which can only be won at events), The GPSr, some Colorado GeoArt tee shirts, and some cool cache containers. Just a short 30 minutes after the actual reveal of the GeoArt, the 1,005 caches were published - and folks were out to make their FTFs.
Even my truck was dressed up for the event!
There was quite the impressive turnout!
Even Bounce The Frog was there!
In the end, it was a lot of fun being part of this amazing group. Just like any cache placement, our next challenge will be maintaining the hides! With the energized team of cachers we have, I don't think that will be a problem at all. Until next time, happy caching!
