A Scavenger Hunt...and more Party Pics

Two hours.
Five teams.
Competing for prizes unknown.
And knowing ahead of time that bribing the judge with peach snapple is perfectly acceptable...

It was Kim and Shawn's Amazing Tenth Anniversary Scavenger Hunt!

I met the people on my team ten minutes before we started the game. It was only fair to pair the locals with the incoming party guests. I mean, how are people from out of town going to know how and where to re-enact a scene from the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off otherwise?

As my team members were from the next province, I had to be navigator. We leapt into their red sports car and were off!

We needed to find...a lot of stuff. There were four pages of things to find and do. And having a digital camera along was entirely necessary: how else are you going to prove that you made a K or an S with your body lying on the grass like in Sesame Street?Would the judge take our word for it? Heh, unlikely! :)

Unfortunately I had to give my own camera to Jeff as there were only so many cameras to go around. Blast it! Me giving up my camera is difficult. I'm snap-happy, you see. So hopefully Shawn's relatives will email me some photos of our quests as I'd really like to see how our recreation of spotting a sea monster turned out, or the picture of us on the borrowed motorcycle.

You know what I like about missions like these is that it gives you a sort of tacit permission to do things like run breathlessly up to total strangers and ask to sit on their motorcycles. If they raise their eyebrows, just show them your paper that tells them its worth five hundred points and they will hopefully break into a big grin.

If there's something goofy out there that you want to do (roll down a hill, eat fruit off a tree without using your hands), consider the freedom of saying its for a contest/scavenger hunt...

A Partial List: (and things were allowed a lot of creative interpretation fortunately)


*A banana with signature of person who sold it to you (150 points)

*Evidence of extraterrestrial life (200 points)

*Receipt for 25 cents worth of gasoline (300 points)

*Photo of a baby cuter than Zoe (anyone who does this loses 500 points)

*Paint a picture of Cumberland in the style of Emily Carr (500 points)

*Build and fly a kite (1500 points)

* Photo of group in a coal mine (400 points)

*Translate into Klingon: Where is the bathroom (500 points)

*Snow (2000 points)

*Photo of group with police officer (350 points)

*Recreate a famous movie scene with animals (450 points)

*Draw a chalk masterpiece on a sidewalk

*Wear sunscreen (100 points)

*Photo of group swim (500 points)

*Group photo with Comox Glacier in background (200 points)

*Penny from 1996, the year Kim and Shawn were married (150 points)

* Completed Sudoku puzzle (100 points)

*Photo of group member holding up a video of Hollywood movie filmed in the Comox Valley (200 points)

* List of ingredients for beschemal sauce (150 points)

* Build a fort out of driftwood (450 points)

Yes, we had to call upon all our inner resources to cheat a little, er, bend the truth as it were, and argue our cases in front of the judge when we arrived panting back at the finish line.

My team didn't win but we still accumulated over fifteen thousand points (including a bribe of a pig's ear for Loki the Dog) in the allotted time and won ourselves brilliantly kitschy and evilly-grinning tiki-lounge punch glasses which I used the whole evening afterwards with pride.