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

Happy Birthday USA -- A Call to Action

TaGeez and I sent out the attached email to 100 close geocaching friends. Let's hope they take up the challenge!

Greetings fellow geocacher!

Throughout the Winter, TaGeez and I had many conversations with our local hiders about a special series for this summer. If we connected with you, this is your reminder email. If we did not have the opportunity to connect with you personally, this is your invitation.

We decided to create this series HBUSA (Happy Birthday, USA) in celebration that winter is finally over, summer is here and it’s time to get out and go geocaching. We decided to release this series on Independence Day (as it lands midweek and will add to the celebration of the day).

What we are asking (if you choose to accept this mission – and we hope you will):

• Each local hider to hide a minimum of 2 geocaches (but more would be delightful!)
• They can be any type of geocache available (Traditional, Multi, Wherigo, easy Puzzle, etc.)
• Hidden anywhere in Southern Michigan
• With the prefix HBUSA (for Happy Birthday, USA) in the title
• Reviewer note is for the caches to be published anytime on July 4^th (we thought staggering them would add to the fun)
• All participating geocaches need to be submitted for review by June 20^th.

We hope you take this time as the weather is improving to go out and hide some geocaches in this series, and we look forward to running into you at events and on the trails this summer.

Happy Caching!

Elisa and Steve

Scrapcat and TaGeez

*If you are not a hider or unable to hide at this time, no pressure – it’s all fun. If you know of someone who might like to join in, please forward this email.