Morton Fox's journal

The last few years, Metro Gathering was in October and had a Halloween theme. This year though, the geocaching mega event is in September and has a pirate theme. I guess it needed a bit of a change. I think October is preferable for this kind of event because the weather would be cooler and better for hiking. However, the weather in Northern New Jersey this weekend turned out to be pretty cool, in the mid 60s. So it worked well.

As usual, there was a Friday evening event, the Pre~Pirates of Port Royale Meet and Greet Event. It was a pot-luck dinner at the Mt. Allamuchy Scout Reservation. I talked to some geocaching friends and had food but didn't stay to the end.

Saturday was the big day. I went to Waterloo Village in the morning for 2019 Metro Gathering ~ Pirates of Port Royale and spent nearly 6 hours walking around finding geocaches and talking to people I knew from way back when. As the organizers seem to do every year, they archived the previous year's geocaches and published them again in the same hiding spots. I remembered most of the hiding spots so it was really easy for me. The twist this year is most of the geocaches had code words in them that you can log in the Adventure Lab app for an additional lab cache find. There were also a number of standalone lab caches around the village and along the hiking trail. Lab caches were also available at the mega event in previous years but you had to log them by entering the code words on the web when you got home after the event or in a web browser on your smartphone as you find them. I think the phone app is a bit more convenient for this activity.

After leaving Metro Gathering, I headed over to Riverside Park in Stanhope for the NJ - Small Town Stanhope 3 Munzee event. This is a smaller event for Munzee players who happened to be in the area for Metro Gathering, as well as a few others who came just for the Munzee event. There was Munzee-related chat and also some special munzees for the event. After the hiking workout at Metro Gathering, this smaller event was a good way to cool down and relax a bit before heading back to the hotel.

What a weekend! I went to Central and Northern New Jersey and attended four events. Those were "This little cacher wants a burger" at The Burger Shop in Matawan on Thursday, the "Pre-Metro Gathering Mega Meet and Greet" at the Mt. Allamuchy Scout Reservation on Friday, "2017 Metro Gathering ~ The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" on Saturday, and Small Town Stanhope, NJ later that Saturday. All those were geocaching events, except for the last one, which was a Munzee event.

In years past, there have been Thursday evening events in Central Jersey before the mega event. I just haven't been going out of my way for those. This year though, I decided to go a bit east to Matawan to meet up with those folks, even though that meant I'd be late getting to the hotel. The Bacon Royal Burger at The Burger Shop wasn't really that spectacular, but the chance to meet up with a few Central Jersey geocachers, who I hadn't seen in years since I stopped going to the Central Jersey events regularly, was priceless.

On Friday, I puttered around the Budd Lake, Netcong, and Flanders area, getting some Munzees and geocaches. A big plus to only coming to this area once a year is I had a lot to choose from in the various GPS games. Well, except for Flagstack, which hardly anyone seems to play over there, but its time will come. In the evening, I headed over to the scout camp for the Pre-Metro Gathering event. It was a pot luck dinner in a rustic dining hall, featuring spooky food such as a meat corpse. Signal, the geocaching mascot, made an appearance.

Saturday was the big event: Metro Gathering in historic Waterloo Village, which had been decorated with all kinds of Halloween stuff, including a mock graveyard, the Headless Horseman, and a spider skeleton. The entrance to the village was like a fair with exhibitors and vendors, and even a pumpkin carving contest. Mostly though, I went for a hike with other geocachers through the village for the 20 special lab caches and the themed Wherigo cache, and spent a lot of time talking to the North Jersey and Long Island geocachers on various things that have happened in the area while I was away. There was a fair amount of gossip and griping, which I'm not going to detail here. Suffice to say there are two sides to every issue. (Unless you're in the Octagon Society. Then there are eight sides to every issue.)

After Metro Gathering, I went down the road to Riverside Park to meet up with a smaller group for the "Small Town Stanhope, NJ" Munzee event. We had some event munzees placed around the park and adjacent trail. Couldn't stay too long though because the event started pretty close to sundown. I found out the reason that there had to be a separate Munzee event was Space Coast Geo Store was forbidden from vending Munzee-related goods at Metro Gathering. It's a new rule imposed by Groundspeak, the company running the geocaching website. If they find any Munzee stuff at a mega event, they'll yank the "mega" status. I spoke to a number of people about this and everyone thought it was a stupid rule and would hurt geocaching in the long run. A lot of people play both Munzee and geocaching so this kind of separation makes no sense. Munzee and Flagstack, on the other hand, don't mind if we mix games and even encourage it by offering "co-exist" badges for multi-game events.

( The caches... )

This past weekend was Metro Gathering 2015 in Northern New Jersey. By coincidence, it was also the weekend for FA United 2015 in the same general area. That was really convenient because I could stay at the Hanover Marriott (shared a room with jbadger) on FAU's group rate and hit Metro Gathering at the same time. If the two events had been on different weekends, I'd have incurred additional travel and hotel expenses to attend both, so that saved money too.

There were actually 3 geocaching events for Metro Gathering. On Friday evening, there was the "Pre~Metro Gathering Mega Meet and Greet" at Brundage Park in Randolph. It was a casual meet at the park pavillion with an opportunity to hike around the park for geocaches. Signal the Frog made an appearance too.

Saturday was the main event, "The 2015 Metro Gathering Event", at Waterloo Village in Byram. There were tents set up by the event itself, and various geocaching clubs and vendors. There were some games, raffles, and trading areas for pathtags and trackables. MacGyver the Coatimundi was present, and we also had a surprise visitor, a red fox who wandered into the village. Most of the fun of the event though was walking around the area in groups to find lab caches, letterboxes, geocaches, and the Wherigo cache. There was also a series of geocaches along the Morris Canal Trail, although by that time, the rain had started so we got caught in the downpour getting to the last few caches.

On Sunday morning, there was a follow-up event, "Join Chinster for a Mega Breakfast", at Panera Bread in Flanders. Signal the Frog was in attendance there too. That was a comparatively small gathering since most geocachers left after the main event, but there was good conversation.

As for FAU, well I actually spent more time at the geocaching events than at the con. However, I did get the chance to fursuit a bit and hang out a bit. I went to the dances each night and played in the Fursuit Games. The fursuit games this time had no teams, or just one big team, depending on how you look at it because everyone got a prize. There were three games: the limbo, charades, and musical chairs. I didn't do that well in the limbo but got an easy word for charades. In musical chairs, it was down to only 3 fursuiters before I got eliminated, which is a lot better than I usually do at that game.

( The caches... )