Atlantic Geofest 2009 And Hurricane Bill

The old adage about ‘short and sweet’ was never more true than this year’s GeoFest. With the impending arrival of Hurricane Bill the festivities were cut a bit short BUT a great time was still had by all!

As with Geofests of the past Atlantic GeoFest 2009 was held at Blomidon, a Provincial Park located on the cliffs of the North Mountain, overlooking the Minas Basin, here in Nova Scotia. With over 1800 acres of natural attractions, majestic trees, trails and wildlife the park is the perfect place to let Geocachers out to play.

The cachers began to arrive on Friday afternoon and continued to arrive into the early evening. With the forecasted storm, many of the expected attendees regrettably did not arrive but those who did proved to be faithful campers who showed what Caching Campers are really made of!

Friday evening was spent relaxing around the GeoFest Café, chatting into the wee hours of the morning. Several cachers who missed last year’s event took part in the ‘Night Cache’ which was set up specifically for the annual Geofest.

After a slightly windy night we awoke to a fine, though humid, Saturday morning with the sun peeking frequently from behind the clouds. We started the day knowing anything could happen with the weather forecast and we were prepared to go full steam ahead with a full event or go with an abbreviated one, shutting down after the campfire. However, as it neared noon the weather forecasts became less optimistic and Hurricane Bill’s arrival time was changed to much earlier than what was expected.

With Bill soon on it’s way it was announced that Blomidon Provincial Park, which is known to get a bit “blustery” even on a good day, would be closing at 5pm and we had to leave by that time. All other provincial parks were being closed too.

This, as you can imagine, dramatically changed our plans. We weren’t truly prepared to be “evacuated” (it sounds a lot better then kicked out! LOL!) out of the park before 5.

It was decided that the Annual Saturday Night Corn Boil would be switched to lunchtime instead. It was all hands on deck, manning the battle stations as organizers and Cachers alike scrambled to shuck corn. But many hands make light work and in no time at all the corn was shucked, cooked and our tummies were sated. Like last year this was the best corn than we have ever eaten. There was also some delicious chili, red pepper hummus and snacks available.

This fantastic lunch was followed by the prize giveaways, and there were a lots to go around! There were GeoCoins, t-shirts, hydration packs, multi-tools, grab bags and more!

There was also a 50/50 draw with the proceeds donated towards Scout camp equipment purchases and a draw for a hiking stick that was made by EastRiver which was won by Sally6.

Sadly, the other items on the event’s agenda had to be cancelled, including the ‘Camo Contest’, where the Geocachers were to be challenged to create the best camouflaged cache, ‘Geocache The World’, where the Cachers were to choose a country or a region and create and wear a costume that a Geocacher might look like from there and an ‘Intro To Geocaching’ session for the other visitors staying in the park (at this point there were very few people left in the park).

Once all the festivities were over everyone made their way back to their camps and proceeded to pack up and leave. The last of the Crew pulled out of the park at about 4:30pm.

Here are some photos of the event:

This is the entrance to the common area near the Geocache Café which was supplied by Bluenose Climbers:

Some scenes from the Geocache Café:

There have been three Geofests so far: The MudFest, The SunFest and this year… mmmmm… we guess that we will have to call this one The BillFest. 🙂

Thanks to everyone for making the event a success especially 3Geeks Outdoor Store, the New Minas Super Store, Atlantic Canada Geocaching Association, EastRiver, Bluenose Climbers, Geocaching Online, FergusPals, Sally6, canuck thistles, Island Buttons, GCSoft and Environment Canada. (Have we forgotten anyone?)

We would also like to thank canuck for sharing his event notes with us which was a big help in completing this post. 🙂

Of course, the heartiest of thank-yous go out to the organizers of the event, affectionately known as The Geofest Crew. Even though it didn’t go as planned they did another great job this year. Kudos, kudos, kudos!

We had a wonderful time. It was like we said, short and sweet… almost as sweet as the corn! 🙂

Can’t wait for next year’s GeoFest!

Keep on cachin’!