BEST OF CANADIAN GEOCACHING

Minotaur Mazes is working with Groundspeak to create a new traveling maze exhibit called GPS Adventures Canada GC2HB80, which is launching at the Best of the Bad Mega Event in Alberta, Canada in July 2011. They'd like your input on what you consider to be the most notable places and caches in all of Canada.

16 Canadian Treasures These will essentially take the form of postcards locked in 16 lockers at the exit of the exhibit. When you successfully find the 4 geocaches hidden in the maze and complete your Treasure Card, it will give you a 4-digit code which unlocks one of the lockers, and you will discover your Canadian Treasure. What do you think are Canada's most notable treasures? These should be fairly well-known places - not geocaches, but what you consider to be Canada's best cities, remarkable sites, natural or man-made attractions - the wonders and heartbeat of Canada. 13 'Best of the Province or Territory' Caches Aside from the main goal of finding 4 caches in the Maze and completing your Treasure Card, this area will have you spin a wheel featuring each Canadian province and territory, and searching the maze for a hidden graphic panel about some extraordinary cache in that province or territory. Here we want to feature caches that are simply cool. Cool places to be and cool caches to find. Places and caches that your friends would be impressed and envious that you've found, whether they're in gorgeous, secluded or alluring places, or whether they are ingenious or devious to the point of notoriety (or infamy). Please keep in mind these are full size graphic panels, so we will need to be able to find some stunning photograph to accompany each (suggestions that include a source for such a photo get special attention and appreciation). Also, please provide the cache name and its GC code, and add a few words of why this is the one cache from each province that should be featured. So, TWO QUESTIONS for you: 1.  What do you think are Canada's most notable treasures? 2.  What do you think is the most notable cache in each of the 10 Canadian provinces and 3 territories ? Feel free to post your suggestions in this discussion on the Groundspeak Canada forum, or email your suggestions directly to Kelly Fernandi at Minotaur, with the letters "CTC" (Canadian Treasures and Caches) in the subject line. If you have questions or comments you'd like Kelly to respond to, please put "RSVP" in the subject line as well. All suggestions should be made by April 10, 2011. Thanks a bunch for your interest! And feel free to pass this on to fellow cachers who might have some ideas.  Kelly Fernandi Minotaur Mazes gpscanada@gpsmaze.com

BAD News

WA Cachers Now a Legacy  Registration for the Best of the Bad Mega Event began just after 5:30 pm on January 29, 2011. Less than a half an hour later grandpaloren & Tacoma Homer from Washington state were the first to register. As a planning committee we decided to honour this moment and as such we will be placing a cache in their name on the Legacy Trail. We asked grandpaloren and Tacoma Homer to share a bit of their caching history with us. Loren - grandpaloren I first learned about geocaching from a colleague in Bend, Oregon in 2003.  After my first cache find I was hooked.  Work moved us to Edmonton where we met a lot of great people in the geocaching community.  We still maintain contact with some of them.  Our Alberta caching friends have been gracious to adopt many of our Alberta caches. In 2008 work again moved us, this time to the Minneapolis, Minnesota area.  In the fall of 2009 I retired for health reasons and we moved to Soap Lake, Washington to be closer to family. We have two kids and six grandkids, all of them involved with geocaching.  We raised them well. We have been looking for an opportunity to go back to Alberta to visit our friends there.  We were excited when we first heard of the possibility of there being a Badlands mega event and, since we had been to the Badlands Cache Quest event in 2006, we signed up for The Best of the Bad Mega Event as soon as registration became available. Mary - Tacoma Homer When my husband first started geocaching in Bend, Oregon in 2003 I went with him sometimes but did not really become excited about it until a few years later when, as a Fathers Day gift, I signed up for my own geocaching account.  From then on I have become a great geocaching fan.  But what really got me interested and involved was all of the great people we met in the Edmonton geocaching community.  We have never been anywhere where the caching community was so warm and welcoming as they are in Edmonton. Haven't registered yet for Western Canada's Baddest Mega? Head on over to our registration page and check out the great package deals for the Best of the Bad Mega Event and Jurassic Mega Park!

22,000 Days....

With winter's grip still holding fast it sure feels as if that's how many days before we are celebrating Canada's Baddest Mega. However, by the countdown calendar there are only 157 days left until we are having a BAD time in the beautiful Canadian Badlands!! My apologies for the lack of posts over the past month, it's been hard to think about what our plans will be when the skies are clear and the grass is green underfoot. However that doesn't seem to be stopping cachers from logging their "will attends" for the Best of the Bad Mega!

The event was published on November 15th, 2010. By the 29th, one week in, we already had 118 "will attends" which, after a quick tally of the numbers posted in each log, came to approximately 199 attendees. Not a bad start if I do say so myself. Now, with less than 5 months away from the event the numbers have been tallied again. With 209 "Will Attend" logs posted there are approximately 296 attendees, and of the 22 notes on the cache listing, 24 attendees hope to make it for a total to date of.... drum roll please.... approximately 320 attendees.  These are great numbers with five months still to go! If you haven't logged your "will attend" yet, head on over to the Best of the Bad Mega Event CG2GA1J listing. Please be sure to include the number of attendees in your party so we can have a clearer count!

Oh, and just as important! If you haven't seen it yet, Best of the Bad Event Registration and Jurassic MegaPark Registration are now up and running on our website. Check out the awesome deals to be found there and be sure to let us know your favourite!

Don't forget to follow us here, on facebook and twitter! Next week, "Has the Best of the Bad Gone to the Dogs?"