July 15–17, 2022 · Memphis and the CacheFest weekend
WorldWide CacheFest was the reason we were heading to Memphis. It took about as long as you’d expect for the five of us to start adding stops to the drive.
CanisMinor, djpd1023, Team Darkseid, theshyguy83 and I signed some of our finds as Team Quintessentials. My logs call us QE. The name took up less space than all five usernames, which comes in handy when a logbook is the size of a finger.
A few stops on the way to Memphis
On July 15 we made our way south through Illinois and Missouri. One of the stops was What’s Shaking? — New Madrid, MO (GC1DRVR). An EarthCache about earthquakes made for a different sort of break from the drive. Once in Memphis we found Sun Studio (GC74VEQ) on Union Avenue, where Sam Phillips recorded Elvis and a lot of the musicians who helped shape the sound of the city.
Sun Studio was one stop on our little Elvis trail. Friday’s finds also included TCB: TCB (GC9W66M), named for Elvis’s “Taking Care of Business” motto, and TCB: In the Ghetto (GC6BF17) near Lauderdale Courts, where he lived with his parents as a teenager. Between the apartment and the recording studio, we got to see a bit of the Memphis Elvis knew before Graceland.
Friday also brought us to Art Heist at the Museum (GC9NVQY), a Community Celebration Event. That was one of the things I liked about the weekend. You could go to the Mega, but the smaller events gave us reasons to see more of Memphis.
The Mega and the King
The main event, WorldWide CacheFest (GC9E5GX), was at Shelby Farms Park on Saturday, July 16. The organizers scheduled sessions on puzzles, challenges, and gadget caches. I remember it from my log as a chance to see familiar faces and meet new ones. CanisMinor thanked the volunteers and cache owners, and djpd1023 wrote that it had been years since he’d been to Memphis. Shelby Farms was a good place to get everyone together again.
Leaving my name at Graceland
We made time Saturday for TCB: Graceland — Virtual Reward (GC7B8J0). Elvis bought Graceland in 1957, and the iron gates have musical notes and silhouettes of Elvis worked into them. We got the five of us together for a picture at the gates. Then I took a marker to the stone wall beside them and added spierson82 among the messages fans had left. Signing the wall was one way to log the Virtual. It also gave me a small way to leave my mark at Graceland.
djpd1023 had been there before and still enjoyed seeing it again. I put my own feelings plainly in the log. There are Elvis people and Beatles people. I’m an Elvis person.
Across Elvis Presley Boulevard, we found Convair 880 and Lockheed Jet Star (GC8PYZ0) outside the display of Elvis’s two airplanes. The Convair was the Lisa Marie, and the smaller Lockheed was the Hound Dog II. Apparently, I felt strongly enough about being an Elvis person to put the same line in my log there, too.
Saturday’s finds also included TCB: The Burger and the King (GC6XK6C), another hide that took its cue from Elvis, this time from his taste in food.
My Saturday logs also include Big River Crossing (GC6W3EB) in Arkansas and DeSoto Trail #6 — Southaven (GC2W36H) in Mississippi. That’s what happens when our group goes to a weekend event near a state line. Sometimes there are two state lines.
A little music and a little cleanup
Saturday evening we went to GTN2022: Singing the CacheFest Blues (GC8HK0Z). The entertainment was great, and we had more time to talk with the people we’d been running into all weekend. The next morning, CacheFest TrashFest 2022 (GC9W42Q) gave us a chance to pick up some litter before the drive north.
We had gone to Memphis for geocaching and came home with a trip that felt like Memphis. There was music, time with the guys, and a handful of stops for Elvis. I’d have been happy with that even if the logbook had been full.
Field Notes
- Adventure: July 15–17, 2022
- Companions: CanisMinor, djpd1023, Team Darkseid and theshyguy83
- Group signature: Team Quintessentials (QE)
- Finds in Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi
- Main event: WorldWide CacheFest at Shelby Farms Park (GC9E5GX)
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