Find Your Geocache: Centennial Event
100 Years of Statehood: Arizona’s Centennial Event
I finally have my geocaching event, “100 Years of Statehood: Arizona’s Centennial Event” published on geocaching.com. You can find it at GC30K47
I’m still working out a few details like what type of geocaching games we’ll play, but I was at a point where I could post it to geocaching.com and start getting registrations!
The event is being held in Memory Park in Chino Valley. In fact, I’m off to the Town Council meeting in just a few minutes to ask the council to refund the fees we paid to rent the park for the three days. Chino Valley Parks & Rec have been hugely helpful in planning this. They’re letting us camp (not something they usually do) and are arranging so the restrooms at the park will be available throughout the weekend for cachers.
Next on my agenda, besides event promotion is to get a TON of caches ready to go out. We’ll be placing about 30 new caches for the event so I need swag and goodies to fill all those containers. I’ve contacted a local business owner who does promotional items to see if she has any “left-overs” that I could put into the caches for swag.
But, I have some questions for you guys about the caches:
- Do you see any issues with hiding a variety of cache sizes?
- What would be good FTF prizes? Do you think that gift cards (donated!) are too hokey?
- Has anybody had any luck getting people to donate cache containers?
- How much “seed” swag do you place in a container? I try to fill it up but with 30 new caches to place, I don’t know if that’s feasible!
Um, getting a bit nervous! Any help or advice is appreciated!

I think you SHOULD have a variety of sizes, as there may be varying degrees of skill level available. Big/easy for kids, micros for the pros, etc 😉
I think good FTF are things that show off the fact. Something that says FTF on it? Maybe have a raffle of all the FTF’s for a bigger thing? Unactivated Travel bugs would be neat.
I’ve never organized an event, so I wouldn’t know about donated containers. HOWEVER, you might checkout a local recycling center for plastic containers.
As for seed swag, it would depend on the size of the caches. You want some variety, so an ammo can needs a good 8-10 things. In the registration, I’d try and gather demographics on # of kids/adults, so you can weight the swag accordingly. Also, you could have making (some) geocaches as one of the activities with some sort of contest on decorating them?!
You could also do a ‘poker run’ of caches… with a prize.
Hope that helps!
@Josh — Oh good, I’m glad that somebody answered the question about a variety of sizes. I think it will be too boring if they’re all the same size. And good idea about the recycling center. I’ll have to check that out!