2006 Jeep 4x4 Geocaching Challenge
http://jeep.geocaching.com/

The past few months, I have been searching for Green Jeep Travel Bugs in order to participate in the Challenge. I have enjoyed taking photos of travel bugs over the past year that I have been participating in my new hobby, geocaching, and I wanted the chance to compete through photographs for the chance at a new Garmin GPS and/or a new 2007 Jeep Compass. I would really like to have a Garmin GPS instead of the crappy old Magellan that I use, and I would love to upgrade Jeeps as well.
I had some rotten luck initially. Everytime I did a search for the Green Jeeps in my area, by the time I got to the cache, they would have just been taken out or were not actually there. There was one time that I made it through a difficult puzzle cache, which took me all day to solve, and then got out to the coordinates and could not even find the cache. When I got home, I saw that some Beaumont cachers had just beaten me to it anyways that day. After a month or so of this rotten luck, my friends "The Popeteers" (on the geocaching website, people go by handles, or team names) gave me one of the Jeeps they had picked up, since they knew I was interested in competing in the contest and they weren't.

In fact, most of my geocaching friends could care less about the contest, and only wanted the Jeeps for their icons. Because of this trend, I really didn't expect many people to enter the contest. I mean, first you had to find a cache with a Jeep in it, then take the photo with the monthly theme, then submit it online. How many other people were into the same things I was?

Turns out, quite a lot. The first month I entered the contest, I scanned the other entries, and was surprised at how many there were. I think my total count was around 750 entries. In just one month! Granted, there were 5600 Jeeps released for the contest, and the same Jeep could be entered more than once by other cachers, but each team or person could only enter one time per month. There are that many other Jeep crazed cachers who like to take theme photos out there? Apparently so.

I was quite disappointed about not winning the contest in September or October, especially when I compared my photos to the winning photo. I had a lot of fun taking the pictures, though.

Here is the winning photos versus my entries.

Winning Entry on left--

September -- Monthly Theme "Freedom"--

My Entry on right--Symbols of Freedom

One of the rules was you could not alter or doctor the photos in any way, even in terms of cropping. Otherwise I would have had fun playing around with them a little.

I am going to place my October entry and the winning entry on here, but for some reason it is not working well in this post.

I was very disappointed with my entry for December. Without having a digital camera, it becomes very difficult to judge if you are getting the photo just right, without it needing any cropping and conveying the exact image you want to convey. I waited until the very last day to enter the contest to begin taking the shot, because of a lot of reasons really. Here is the photo I ended up with.

The Theme was "Heritage", and my idea was to make a postcard collage of our family's heritage. In this photo, we have a Green Jeep moving from both my husband and I's hometowns to the mountains of Bend, OR, where we plan on moving this summer. The top of the photo shows places important in my family heritage, like where my parents grew up, where they met, where they had their honeymoon, and then on the left in the middle row we have the place where my husband and I met, where we initially lived together (Colorado Springs, CO). In the middle is Houston, where we live now, and on the right is Tulelake, CA, his hometown, where we lived together when we were first married. On the bottom row on the left is where my family lives, the middle where we want to live, and on the right where his family lives. I couldn't explain all that to the judges though!

They were supposed to announce December's winner today, but I don't see it posted. I will post the winning entry when it is announced. Wish me luck! (Haha!)