HBUSA: Happy 4th of Geo-ly!

Happy Birthday USA

TaGeez and I put out a call in May to all Michigan Geocachers (via social media or direct email) to hide geocaches for the Independence Day holiday, and, WOW! Did they come through!

On the 4th of July, 200* HBUSA geocaches plus 3 events were published (or hosted) across the state of Michigan! WOWWEE! What a thrill to wake up and have new cache notifications popping up on our smartphones like fireworks from 2 am to 8 pm across the mitten! 

They ran the gamut from Traditionals to Multis and Puzzles plus Wherigos. We even had some first time hiders like Detour429, B-Rat and TitanCacher09!  Congratulations, gang!

TaGeez and I ran into a few first-to-finders on our own 18 caches.

Detour, ACLCoordinator and LincolnsAunt

CITOcacher and SCOOK

To kick off the day, Team Gates hosted a flash mob (and listed it under my name... hmmmm... ) at Veteran's Memorial Park in Warren. 

FTF Crew!

Around 40 local cachers braved the heat for a puzzle FTF, a social half-hour, and a group picture. 

Team GMMP and Team Lareau

Note to everyone: You can get fun, themed photo booth props from Amazon on the cheap!

Alona Spiegel and Team Gates

DarrylW4 and ReneeW4

June17, BWY Gang, GSIXX, and DougPeterson

After the event many cachers teamed up and went on a new cache run around the tri-county area. I felt bad for RayQix, Probob and TaGeez, who had to watch from the sidelines due to work and family commitments, but each scored FTF's within the next 24 hours, too!

scrapcat and TaGeez

Thank you to all the hiders and finders and reviewers for your part in the day! Several people are already talking about next year  (I don't remember saying anything ABOUT next year - LOL). I guess it was a hit!

Oh, and the winners?

The Winners Are....

Congratulations to LucyLee (first place, winning the Signal America geocoin) and LincolnsAunt (second place, winning the Ducktales trackable donated by ShelleyJean)!

*Oh, and with a late publication by RayQix, final cache count was 204!

Visit the HBUSA bookmark list on geocaching.com