Dear Maine Geocacher

My name is Gary Lewis and I am the Director of Education and Outreach for the Geological Society of America and the creator/developer of the EarthCache program that is part of geocaching.com. It is a wonderful program with now over 11,200 EarthCaches around the world. I am a resident of Maine - a wonderful place to work, live, play and cache!

I am delighted to announce to the local geocaching community first that Maine will host the very first International EarthCache Event on the 2 September 2012 (that is NEXT year) and we are confident that this will be a Mega Event (over 500 people).

Over the last few months I have been working with a group of local cachers to get this Event planned - including SoME Geocachers, Geocaching Maine Board Members, and the Maine Reviewer. This will be an exciting event with speakers, games and the opportunity to meet other geocachers from around the world. The focus will be on EarthCaches, but there will be something for everyone at this potential Mega event!

Organizing a Mega Event takes a long time and the volunteer help of many people. At this stage we are asking people to get on our email lists so we can send you more information when it becomes available. Go to the event website (www.earthcacheevent.org (http://www.earthcacheevent.org/)) and click on the link near the bottom to get on the list.

We will be putting a call out for Maine people to help us closer to the event. But for now, we want to get the event onto your calendars and hope you will be able to support us by attending!

One of our first tasks is to find sponsors for the Event. If you are in a local business that may be interested in being a sponsor or vendor at this event, please contact me at glewis at geosociety dot org".

Gary Lewis
(geoaware)
Event Director
EarthCache Program
Raymond ME

Wow, this a great. I always thought Maine would be a great spot for a Mega Event and to roll it into an EarthCache event is fantastic. I know a couple of the folks who are helping you and I am sure they will tap me as needed for a hand.

Greetings all. Remember me? LOL This is great news and I am thinking it may be a good reason to get back to Maine to visit.

Another cacher here who is excited to hear about the event. I ditto lexmano's comment about willingness to help.

If we get 500 people to attend and sign the log this might become a MEGA EVENT! How wonderful to think of Maine as having such an event.

How willing are you to travel, and how far would you go, to attend and get the MEGA icon?

I know folks from away are talking about it already. Making plans already. Why not Maine? Of course we can get enough for a Mega!

I travel thousands of miles just to get an regular cache icon :)

I travel thousands of miles just to get an regular cache icon :)

Why, yes, you do. I have too and would love to have the resources to do it more. ;)

Dream job = cruise ship medical department nurse! Required equipment = GPS! Required employee benefit = leave time while docked! :cool: Where do I sign up?

Have you seen crew cabins? You don't want to live there.

My apology to geoaware for continuing this off topic. Back to the Mega ~ so much to see and do in Portland. I hope one excusion is for the ocean Earthcache......that would be very cool. I did post on the GC.com form threads about the train from Boston to Portland. At least one person picked up on that. Please don't hesitate to share more as it becomes available.

Oh, ho, ho, Mega cool!

I posted a link about this event in the Granite State Geocachers' forums. Really pretty excited about this, myself!

I'm not too far away and would be happy to be of service if the need arises!

I really enjoy Earthcaches and look forward to this event. Portland is a great location for this event.

LA, I want to sign up on that job with you!

I am going to a Flash Mob event in Canada on 6/4. I will mention this mega to the locals and see if there is plans for some attendance from up North and Canada. I know I will be there!

Found a couple of Earth Caches when I was out of state the last two weeks. Promoted the event to the cache publishers when I sent my answers to them.

When are pre-event shirts going to be on sale? What would someone do to use the logo which I presume has a copyright? I have a thought but need to know who to contact about permission to use.

All use of the logo has to be approved by the Event Director (which is me :) )

PM me...

All use of the logo has to be approved by the Event Director (which is me :) )

PM me... I knew it would and thanks for the reply. Let me better refine my idea and I will PM you.

Nice! I'm attending Geowoodstock this year, for the first time, so this will be my 2nd Mega event. I'm a zero-lever Earthcacher, but am looking forward to doing more. Is there a page at Big Green to log a "Will Attend"?

@ Geoaware - You will have snail mail soon ;-)

@ Geoaware you should have snail mail soon.

I announced this event to the South Jersey Geocachers, and more than a dozen have already said they will definitely be there. Since some members of our club (including me) have connections to Maine, we're expecting to host a few side-events before and after. Some want to kayak in the area, and I'm looking into that for them. I know of a few paddle-to caches, but does anyone know of a water trail of paddle-to?

I announced this event to the South Jersey Geocachers, and more than a dozen have already said they will definitely be there. Since some members of our club (including me) have connections to Maine, we're expecting to host a few side-events before and after. Some want to kayak in the area, and I'm looking into that for them. I know of a few paddle-to caches, but does anyone know of a water trail of paddle-to?

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=fedd6904-4d0c-4b73-8a70-e5ca830c7caa

You can only paddle to this one.

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=fedd6904-4d0c-4b73-8a70-e5ca830c7caa

You can only paddle to this one.

Nice! I wish there were other paddle-to's on the same water way.

Nice! I wish there were other paddle-to's on the same water way.

This is on the other end of the lake and would make for a long paddle. I used the nearby boat launch.

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=b11a8820-f4df-47f7-88f3-2e52ffba76a3

And then you could paddle to the State Park and do the caches there starting here....

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=4611bc8e-c1e6-4860-948d-2993825e54a0

from here you can hit the trails inside the park and cache for a few hours.

I announced this event to the South Jersey Geocachers, and more than a dozen have already said they will definitely be there. Since some members of our club (including me) have connections to Maine, we're expecting to host a few side-events before and after. Some want to kayak in the area, and I'm looking into that for them. I know of a few paddle-to caches, but does anyone know of a water trail of paddle-to?

The Lake Arrowhead Stump Challenge in Waterboro has a total of 15 caches with an additional 3 other island caches all of which are only canoe and kayak accessible and will take the good part of a day to complete. Go to this link and check out the map of all of the caches on this lake. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GC2DWJQ#

The event has been published and you can post your " will attend ". Help us to spread the word.

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=24bb4462-e040-435d-873d-b6e65f2d69e9

You can also find the link on the front page of our website. See you all there. :cool:

this is nice...
http://blog.geocaching.com/2012/01/happy-birthday-earthcaching-earthcaches-turn-8-today/

this is nice...
http://blog.geocaching.com/2012/01/happy-birthday-earthcaching-earthcaches-turn-8-today/

That is very cool. That picture from Malaysia is interesting.

It is official.

Sandy posted a reviewer note for 1st Internatio​nal EarthCache Event (Mega-Even​t Cache)

Log Date: 7/9/2012
It is with great pleasure that we upgrade this to a MEGA-Event. There are 500+ confirmed and registered attendees.
Congratulations to the G.S.A. and the Geoaware team!

So this is like tomorrow?

1st International EarthCache Event (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=24bb4462-e040-435d-873d-b6e65f2d69e9) (GC33E6X)
Location: New Gloucester, ME
Date: Sunday 9/2/2012
Time: 8.00am. Official opening. Sessions and log book closes at 5.15 pm
Host: geoaware

We plan on being there. I hope Rick is there, too. I have an "Appalachian Trail" geocoin I know he'd probably want to see! LOL!

Bruce, I will be there.

The Event was fantastic! The location, the food, the seminars, everything worked. I've never seen so many people smiling in the rain! The bar is now set pretty high for the next groups to have the Earthcache Event. Thanks to those who put it together. Also, thanks Gary/Geoaware, for creating the Earthcache idea in the first place!

Brdad, anyway to tell which cache (not an event) got the most logs during this past MegaEvent weekend? I know people were busy at many of mine, esp my Freeport caches. I suspect Fort Williams must have been quite busy as well....others?

Thanks everyone for coming, helping and planning - it took a long time to happen, but without all your support we would not have had such a great day!

Special mention to Gary, Tom and Brad! Thanks guys - you were terrific!

Ok...planning for the next one is underway.....

And, it would also be nice to know which cache received the most favorites!

Brdad, anyway to tell which cache (not an event) got the most logs during this past MegaEvent weekend? I know people were busy at many of mine, esp my Freeport caches. I suspect Fort Williams must have been quite busy as well....others?

Not really without looking at each cache page individually. It would be interesting to know however.