Texas Challenge 2014

This weekend, I attended another Mega event in the Lone Star State.  The Texas Challenge 2014 took place in/around Bastrop, TX.  It is a reunion and competition for cachers in the state and for visitors as well.  The competition is fierce among the "regions" (anyone can join any region for competition).  Congrats to North Texas for the win!

I was not able to make it to any of the pre-events, but I did get there for the day on Saturday.  I met up with my geo-buddies, AgNav and Scrapnphotos and we shopped a little, greeted friends and capped and deployed some Munzees.  There were quite a few virtual and mystery virtuals in the area of the main Challenge event. New ones that I deployed had quite a few hits over the weekend.

At noon, those of us that were not on the hunt teams for the Challenge met at the Old Iron Bridge over the Colorado River in historic Bastrop for the official Bridge-spitting ceremony where we learned the song.

Dirty Lil, Dirty Lil

Lives on top of Garbage Hill

Never took a bath and never will

(Spit)

Dirty Lil!

  We came, we saw, we spit!  We got our certificates that said we were official members of the International S.O.B. (Society of Bridge-spitters). After the ceremony, I got to meet Rob Vardeman (CoachV), president of Munzee.  What a nice, down-to-earth guy!  Thanks for the extra Munzees to put out!

After lunch at the Roadhouse, Nov64 (Patty) and I took off to complete some of the new Lab caches that were only in place this weekend.  We saw many interesting sites in/around Bastrop, including a bronze foundry. We saw several of the Buc-ees beavers there. There was a candy shop, wine shop, rock shop, rain water bottling plant and more along our route.  We put out some Munzees and capped others.  I even found a couple of Sights and created a couple on Sighter.  I did not get a chance to go into Bastrop State Park on this trip, but from Hwy 95, it STILL looks like a battle zone from the fires two years ago.  All those burned pines just break my heart.

We made it back to Mayfest Park in time for Patty to make it to the Texas County Challenge Reunion.  Yes, she has found a cache in all 254 counties in Texas!

We took a big group picture, waited through announcements and raffles, visited with cachers/Munzeers.  Then came the announcement for the winners of the Challenge.  Congrats to the North Texas team for the win this year!

Sadly, I was busy using my phone for locating caches and Munzees and did not capture many pictures.