Sunday night on the Geocache Talk podcast, Gary, Memfis and the Mingo Madness organizing committee made several announcements regarding the event, which celebrates 20 years of geocaching just up the road from the world’s oldest active geocache — Mingo GC30.
Before I get into some of the announcements from the podcast, I want to share that on Saturday, I attended CritterSitter’s event, which just so happened to be my 1,600th find. During the event three caches went live, and a group of us all got first to finds on those caches. So now I’m up to 1,603 finds and I have at least one first first find in 10 straight months.
Mingo Madness is a mega event scheduled for 8 a.m. to noon May 2 at the Community Center in Colby Kansas. Mingo itself is south of Colby just off Interstate 70 Exit 62 in Kansas.
Much of the announcement had to do with SWAG and the SWAG packages, which start at $30 for a T-shirt and geocoin and $80 for the T-shirt, geocoin, five pathtags, 10 trackables and a patch. They also announced that camping will be available at the Fairgrounds.
One set of trackables depicts the early history of geoaching. It’s a set I’d like to own. The artist who designed them was on the program and he said they are meant to be in the style of comicbooks. As an a la carte purchase, the set is $20.
In addition to the SWAG items, the sales of which help defray the cost of the event, the committee announced a new virtual cache will go live on May 1 with an event at Mingo itself. The Mingo Madness organizers worked local state and county officials to to get a historic marker put up at Mingo signifying its place in the history of geocaching. (It’s not the first; it’s just the oldest active cache, hidden in May 2000.) An event is planned that day when the historic marker is unveiled. The event’s page does not yet show up on the geocaching map.
On Saturday evening, at the fairgrounds in Colby, a community event is planned. The Travel Bugs, a pop band that records geocaching-themed songs, will perform. Community events are a special category of events that will start worldwide in May and continue through the end of the year as another way to celebrate 20 years of geocaching. I know of two such events planned for May 2 here in Indiana.
In addition to Mingo Madness and the community event, the GPS Adventure Maze will be in Colby, and people completing the adventure maze get a special icon. It was at the Geowoodstock event last year in Fort Worth, Texas. The Adventure Maze will be at Midwest Geobash in Wauseon, Ohio, this year in July.
Derrick Baker at Behind the Cache did a real nice video on the maze. It is the one event at Midwest Geobash I really want to do.
All in all, I think Mingo Madness and the other activities surrounding it will make for an awesome weekend of geocaching. I hope to go out there. It’s still up in the air at this time. If I do go, it will give me at least one new state — Kansas. (I have a few caches in Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico on the list.)
Geocaching with Capt. TailWagger 