Midwest Geobash 2007

After work this past Friday (OK, maybe before work officially ended) I left for Kendalville, Indiana to attend the 2007 version of the Midwest Geobash, or MWGB. This was a fun time because I got to see some geocaching friends from Iowa and Wisconsin and meet many geocachers.

It was held on the Noble Country fairgrounds, and there was plenty of room for all the hundreds of campers -- everything from huge RVs down to my small tent. I arrived after dark on Friday night, so after getting some directions from the helpful volunteers at the gate, I drove in to look for a campsite. I ended up at the very far fringe of the campers, which was fine with me because I figured it would be a quiet spot. Well, that would have been the case if it wasn't for the trains. After setting up my tent, I walked the campground looking for familiar faces. I found a group of geocachers from Wisconsin that I knew -- well, I knew one of them: zuma! -- so I sat at their campfire and enjoyed a beer with them before heading back to my tent and calling it a night. Indiana calls itself the Crossroads of America, so Kendalville must be the railroad crossing of Indiana. I swear that trains must have passed by at least every 10 minutes. Finally, sometime after 2 a.m. the trains decided to give the camping geocachers a break for awhile. Saturday morning I awakened at 6:30 and decided to walk around and check out the fairgrounds in the daylight. There wasn't another soul stirring. Everyone must have stayed up a lot later than I did. I ate breakfast at my campsite, then fired up my notebook computer because I heard there was a wifi network at the fairgrounds. Sure enough, I got a strong signal at my campsite so I logged in and reviewed 21 Iowa caches that morning. Later, when I saw the tasty looking pancakes being served by the Noble County Farm Bureau in one of the barns, I decided a second breakfast wouldn't hurt me.

The rest of the day included a presentation by Sonny & Sandy, hosts of the weekly podcacher.com podcast. They emailed me a few weeks earlier and asked if I'd be willing to sit for an interview for an upcoming show, so we found a quiet spot to do the interview. Listen for it on an upcoming show. After the interview, I went geocaching with 7 other friends I met at the event and enjoyed seeing more of Kendalville and the surrounding countryside. We got back just in time for a panel discussion featuring a panel of geocaching.com reviewers. Trippy1976, who organized the panel, said he needed another body willing to sit on the panel, so I found myself volunteered. I'm glad I did. It was fun to help out with the event, and it was a good way for me to meet even more geocachers as quite a few of them who now recognized me as a reviewer stopped by to chat after the panel discussion. By late Saturday afternoon it was time for me to head home. I would have enjoyed staying a second night, but Mary is going to be gone on business most of the coming week so I wanted to get home and spend Sunday with her.