"July is a POP of Color, a Burst of Sunshine,
and a Promise of Adventure,"
as is SLAGA's July Adventure Awaits Winner,
brantole (Lena Dowers)!
Congratulations to Lena on her spectacular win and gift card prize. She began geocaching on the 4th of July 2010 and was immediately hooked. She chose to participate in the SLAGA monthly challenges because they keep her motivated to go out geocaching. Lena commented, "I have been participating since the beginning when I was still working full time. Work made it difficult for me to find time to geocache. Sometimes the only caches I did find for the month were the five caches necessary to complete the Adventure Awaits. Now I am working part-time and my cache finds per month have increased! I like the variation of the requirements for each month."
Lena has over 5000 geocache finds and 32 hides. She has completed her Fizzy challenge, geocached on every day of the calendar year (366 days), and cached in 5 different World Countries. It might surprise some geocachers to know that Lena's favorite type of caches are gadget caches. Her least favorite are Earthcaches. She loves tree climbing caches, but doesn't much care about getting First to Find.
Thankfully that was not a requirement for July's challenge. Instead, it was finding caches with at least 5 favorite points (FPs) and all qualifying finds had to add up to more than 40 FPs. During this July, Lena knew she would be traveling to visit family which would make it very easy to qualify. She was also on a 'mini' mission to find a lot of multi geocaches and most of her multi cache finds had significant favorite points attached to them which also helped. Her challenge entries included:
GC74ZB6: 50 Souvenirs Challenge (17 FP)
GCJVBR: Round Mound of Sound (19 FP)
GC947FC: Cascade- Goodbye 2020 (20 FP)
GCWMDF: West of the Mississippi in Illinois (37 FP)
GCAN2WG: SLAGA Summer Picnic 2024
When asked about her most memorable geocaching adventure(s), Lena expressed her thorough enjoyment in doing the extreme caches placed by Forest Ghost, such as Grant's Fear Factor and The Architect. ("Thanks Ethan!") She also fondly remembers some great geocaching road trips through the years. But said, "Although all the road trips have been a blast, I am truly thankful I took one with my mother driving up through IL, IN, and MI into Canada in 2016."
Lena is a fearless, fun and friendly geocacher and no doubt awaits more spectacular geocaching adventures, not unlike every SLAGA monthly challenge which holds a promise of a new adventure. Join the fun and find and submit your entries for the August challenge soon.