On the hunt: GeoWoodstock XIX brings adventurers to Owensboro

May 28—Geocachers from around the world poured into Owensboro this week for GeoWoodstock XIX, an event dedicated to the adventures of geocaching.

Amber Tuttle, director of GeoWoodstock XIX, said the event met everybody's expectations.

"Everybody I've seen has seemed pretty happy with it," she said. "We've had a lot of people come, which has been good for the city."

An estimated 1,500 households attended, Tuttle said.

"A household for geocaching is two to four people, so we're looking at about 5,000 people," she said.

The relationship that led to Owensboro hosting the event began years ago in Cincinnati.

"We previously worked with Mark Calitri, president and CEO of the Owensboro Convention and Visitors Bureau, in Cincinnati before he moved," Tuttle said. "He told us we had to come check out Owensboro and that we'd love it."

In 2021, the city hosted the Midwest Open Geocaching Adventure (MOGA) to test the area.

"Everybody loved it," Tuttle said. "That was our first geocaching event here, and we bid to try to bring GeoWoodstock here, and we won the bid. The biggest reason we even looked here was because Mark Calitri asked us to come and see this wonderful city."

Along with the standard geocaches, Tuttle said there were new ways geocachers could interact with the adventure around the city.

"We have several Lab Adventures that are virtual that have interactive areas," she said. "In the Bluegrass Hall of Fame and Museum, for instance, and the fine arts museum has a few trackables where geocachers can go in and try to find the exhibits that are trackable."

Tuttle said the extra offerings even poured into Indiana.

"The Adventure Labs are at the (Evansville) zoo, and Holiday World even has one," she said. "These are virtual where people can go and have a scavenger hunt inside of places that are already of interest. It gives an enticement for geocachers to go to those places."

Tuttle's discovery of geocaching began in July 2013.

"When I originally began geocaching, it was kind of by force," she said. "Our family friends were geocaching. We were on vacation in Florida, and they said they were going to go geocaching the next day and asked us to join, so we did."

The first geocache Tuttle found was in Fort De Soto Park in Florida on an informational sign.

Jeff Caulfield is a business development specialist at Geocaching HQ in Seattle and runs the GeoTours program.

Caulfield said geocaches are hidden around the world on all seven continents and that a GeoTour is a series of caches designed to tell a story.

"They'll take you to the great locations, historic places, great views," he said. "There's a theme built around the location for the geocaches, and they're always designed by the tourism bureau, chamber of commerce or destination marketing organization."

The GeoTour for Owensboro is five caches long and situated along the waterfront.

"It's walkable, it's easy to do, and it gives you a little bit of history," he said.

Caulfield said he has enjoyed his time in Owensboro and the scenery it has to offer.

"I think it's a great venue, and it's been nice to see cachers and non-cachers mingling," he said. "This is an awesome location with the riverwalk. It's been great."

Caulfield began geocaching when he was working for a GPS manufacturer and was making GPS' specifically designed for geocaching.

"I learned the game through that, and that kept me into it," he said. "The more I played the game, the more I enjoyed it. I enjoy going to places I've never visited before and finding cool, new locations you wouldn't find otherwise."

Elizabeth Straub and Chris Moore traveled from Indianapolis for the event.

"I've never been to one of the larger events, and there's a special badge you can get on the app for going to the larger events," Straub said.

Moore said he attended a GeoWoodstock event in the past but had never been through the GPS Adventures Maze.

"It's a way to hang out with other geocachers, and you know all the geocaches are going to be there," he said.

The pair have been geocaching for nine years.

"We were in the middle of nowhere in Georgia with students on a school trip, because I'm a teacher, and one of my students asked if I had heard of geocaching, because there was a geocache in our location," Moore said. "He whipped out his phone and went over and found this box in the woods. I got hooked."

Moore said they have been to all of the states east of the Mississippi River to go geocaching.

"We took a trip to South Dakota a couple years ago and hit all the states on the way," he said. "Pretty much any time we go on vacation, we look at the geocaching attributes."

Straub said finding beautiful places she wouldn't have known to go to otherwise is the unique part of geocaching.

"Lots of times there are natural springs or beautiful hikes that aren't major attractions that are geocaches," she said.