I participated with Team Tangis in the Inaugural / First Annual Seattle Inner CIty Outings Search Party / Scavenger Hunt in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. The event is a benefit fundraiser for The Sierra Club’s Inner City Outings program, where volunteers take city kids into the wilderness for educational and fun experiences. For many of the kids, it is their first time out in the deep forested areas around the Puget Sound region.
The scavenger hunt was very well run and organized, especially for a first year event. At 1:00pm, everyone was given a clue book with the clues divided into several different geographical areas around the Ballard area. We had until 3:45 to figure out as many clues as we could, mark them on the provided answer sheet, and race back to the Sunset Tavern before incurring any time point penalties. There were also “action stations”, where instead of figuring out what word was on a certain step of a tattoo parlor or what was the Latin name for a particular type of oak tree by the Chittenden Locks, we had to stuff a sleeping bag using only one hand, play croquet for points, interpret a word spelled out by a volunteer on a distant hill using the semaphore alphabet flag signaling system, and other random events.
We were the only “corporate team”, so we automatically won the corporate category. More importantly, we then got combined with all the 20 other teams and were the overall winners of the entire event! Schwag included dinner at some fancy restaurants and a white water rafting excursion, in addition to an appropriately goofy statue. The celebration party afterwards was fun too.
The escapades were written up in a Seattle Post Intelligencer article, including some quotes and info from us.
Team Tangis: JP, Dan, Josh, Scott, and Greg