On September 4, 2010 Roane County was blessed to have some of the region's best geocachers attend the kickoff event for the geotrail. Cachers from Northern Virginia to Dayton, Ohio descended on Spencer to take in the trail and its caches. Numerous families visited from the Buckeye state and there were Mountaineers from Boone County, Harrison County, Greenbrier County and more.

The day began at 10:00 am sharp when it was announced that our hardworking volunteer Groundspeak Reviewer - MountainStateReviewer - pushed the big red button and published the ten caches making up the trail. PilotJ worked feverishly on his laptop to get the caches ready for folks to download into their GPSr's (thanks Pilot) while others were about the business of downloading the information into their smartphones. There were also paper copies of the caches available for those who wanted to hand load their units on the fly.

Before the hounds were released we had some great door prizes to give away thanks to some awesome sponsors. The City of Spencer donated mugs, glasses, cookbooks and more for prizes. The Arnott House Bed and Breakfast donated some handmade Russian Nesting Dolls and a hand painted gift bag. The Cunningham House donated some 25% off coupons (and I still have a few more to sporadically chum into some caches as SWAG so if you are interested, let me know and I may clue you in on where one of these great coupons may be). Gary's Sporting donated some $10 gift certificates (I have a few more of them too that will make it out as SWAG real soon). I also donated a DVD of the Find Me movie signed by the producer. Hailing from Columbus, OH-10, iphone-cachers was quick to step up to the plate to help me out with the door prize drawing. (You guys are welcome at my events ANYTIME! Thanks for the help.)

After the door prizes and a few brief announcements folks were set loose to Cannonball Run the trail. As I expected, almost every team developed a different strategy in order to grab at least one FTF (First to Find). It was big fun to see how strategies played out. Also, it was good to see a lot of teams pairing up to make new friends and spend the day caching together. I took my two geokids out to stops #7 and #8 and met up with KJCachers at #7 to lend them a few hints. Then we made our way up to #8 with KJCachers and Wintz50 who had already snagged an FTF coming from a different direction.

At 6:00 pm I headed back to Washington Park where cachers were anxiously awaiting the giving out of geocoins. Everyone was very appreciative and comments were great. It was one of the most rewarding geocaching days I've ever had to not only see so many folks caching in my home county, but to hear that they really enjoyed it too.