St. Louis Area Geocaching Association

MEETING MINUTES 2019

6 January 2020/ 6:00 PM / Grant's View Branch

ATTENDEES

Steve Bromley, Carolyn Jaycox, Michael Smith, Melissa Pierce, Jan Salvaggio, David DeWitt, John Elfrank, Patricia Hutchison, Jason Jaycox, Bill Lange

Meeting called to order at 6:02pm.

Motion Called to approve December 2019 minutes by Carolyn, seconded by Michael.

Motion called to approve December 2019 treasurer's report by Melissa,  seconded by Michael.

Upcoming Events

• Slurpin’ Soup event is this weekend, January 11, 2020. Caches for the event have been hidden; thank you to John and Laurie Elfrank. There are 21 new caches and will publish Friday night, January 10, 2020
• Winter Potluck, GC8FF4C, will be on January 25, 2020. 
  • There will be new caches placed for the event.
  • “Duck hunt” for the kids. (Adults can participate after kids have all had a chance.) 
    • Will hide 25 total rubber ducks around the event location. Each duck will represent a prize and prizes will be ranked based on how difficult it is to find.
      • 5 lock and lock type containers
        • 5 will contain SLAGA swag
        • 1 will also contain a $10 gift card
      • 20 preforms 
        • Purchasing from MOGA at $0.50 per
• Winter in the Woods, February 1, 2020. Venue will be supplying us with two-8 foot tables and four chairs. 
  • After thorough discussion on the pop up available and the needs of the association, SLAGA will be purchasing their own popup tent along with weights. 
  • Steve and Patricia plan on going out to venue on January 18, 2020 to get coordinates where we will hide 5 temporary caches for the day to show people how geocaching works, similar to the GC101 class.
  • Steve will bring swag and load the coordinates onto the GPSr units.
    • GPSr units are still being used by Laura, planned return on January 25, 2020.
  • Would like to have a minimum of five people working at all times
    • Will put out an email blast for volunteers
    • Will have a sign-up sheet with time slots at the Potluck.
  • Will meet up at 8:00 am on February 1, 2020 to complete set-up
    • Will need to also get the banner
• Community Celebration Event will be hosted by John on July 18, 2020 at the Riverside Pavilion at Cliff Cave Park. This will be in place of the summer picnic. 
  • Reservation has been paid for.
  • Cliff Cave will be open that day for tours
  • Event can be published 6 months in advance
  • COs are encouraged to have games/activities for the Community Celebration Event
    • Thinking of a pinata, ammo can toss.
• MOGA 2020 GC8F5PX is set for April 4, 2020. John gave updates on the progress thus far. 
  • There are currently 128 “Will Attends” for the MOGA event
  • MOGA t-shirt information:
    • Full color design on tan background
      • Per email from Monica Fischer at Schwartzkopf Printing Inc
        • Port and Co Essential 100% cotton tee, light sand
        • Quantity: 72-173 = $5.70 each
        • Additional $2.05 for 2X
        • Additional $2.55 for 3X-5X
        • One time $60 screen charge
        • One time $15 art set fee
    • Plan is to do pre-orders at the Winter Potluck. 
  • Carolyn will be disseminating information to other geocaching facebook groups.

Ongoing Business

• Event checklist still needs some revisions. Will ask John to use this during the Winter Potluck for further input.
• Award Coins are still unavailable at this time. 
  • Currently need 1 - 1,000 and 7 - 5,000 milestone coins.
  • Patricia reached out to Geocaching headquarters and was able to get a response stating that they are hoping to roll out their new coin design by the end of February 2020 to March 2020
  • Further explored the idea of designing our own milestone award coins. Steve will reach out to Jesse Tuttle from AFK Geocaching to discuss pricing and simple designs of a milestone engravable coin.
    • Possibly use one design and different metals to designate between the milestones.
    • Could also sell these to members who have already received their if they would like the new design.
    • Possibly do our own pins as well for the lower milestones. Will check into pricing for that as well.
    • Concerns voiced about what happens to the die: how long is it valid for (1 year, 2 years, possibly more)? How much does it cost?
    • Would it also be possible to to get customized icons for the coins? Cost on this as well?
• 20th Anniversary geocoins are a go.
  • No delivery date is available as of right now.

New Business

• Meeting will be moved to the first Monday of the month, except for when it coincides with a holiday.

Other Business

• GC101 class will be taken over by Michael. Bill will be doing the training.
• SLAGA CITO event between March 1, 2020 - May 31, 2020
  • We were contacted about helping to sponsor an event at Rend Lake, site of the 2011 MOGA for both a CITO and cache maintenance. 
    • We will donate a CITO coin for the event
    • We could do a lunch event after the CITO event as this does NOT constitute “event stacking”
    • Event to take place most probably at the beginning of May.
• Boone’s Lick Road geotrail and geocoins. 
  • Carolyn now has 4 BLR coins. 
    • David believes there may be more. He will be looking into it.
  • New email was received regarding the rules on obtaining the coin. Currently there are some caches in the geotrail that are no longer active and would make fulfilling the requirements difficult.
  • Steve to reach out to the owner of the geotrial to ask if he would be ok with us changing the requirements to claim the coin.
    • New requirement would be to find 75% of the active caches.

Meeting ended at 7:57 pm

NEXT MONTH’S INFORMATION

6:00 pm, February 3rd, 2020 at the St. Louis County Library Grant’s View Branch, 9700 Musick Avenue, St Louis MO