August in SLAGA-Land brought us sunshine and heat with days as long as 14 hours, temperatures over 90*F for 11 days, and 0% precipitation recorded. But it also brought us our August Adventure Awaits Winner, Denise Muskopf, better known as 6dancer.
Denise has been caching exactly 16 years to the day that she was notified of her August challenge win! She started geocaching when her sister, Deborah, returned home from a Colorado visit and the two of them went on a picnic in Valmeyer, IL. Deborah had been caching for about 5 years by then, and as they were picnicking, she told Denise that there was a geocache under their table! Denise was amazed! The following day she found a cemetery cache and after that was hooked. She has since found 6850 geocaches to date, has cached as far north as Alaska and as far south as Argentina. She has cached across the Pacific ocean west in Hawaii and across the Atlantic ocean east in Germany. She's missing only one day to fill her calendar grid, so everyone wish her a Merry Christmas on December 25th with a reminder to go out and grab a cache that day! (HoHoHo)
But back to the summer heat and her August accomplishment. Denise endured the heat to complete her task of finding five different geocaching types with one event in the mix. These are her qualifying geocaches.
Cache 1: GC6QGW4 Wherigo - aLieNs
Cache 2: GC4MT9J Multi - Red Corvette
Cache 3: GCB9W73 Event - The Gateway to Finland
Cache 4: GCB7972 Traditional - LesMar's Little Library on Lansdowne
Cache 5: GCBATRM Mystery - DDH US # 35 - 100 Field Puzzles Challenge
When interviewed about why she chose to participate in this month's SLAGA's Adventure Awaits challenge, Denise said, "I chose to participate in this one because they were my recent finds, so the challenge was easy since I had the ones I needed to qualify. I'd previously sent in qualifying caches for maybe eight months."
A worst geocaching experience that Denise shared in the interview, was when she " got lost in the woods trying to find Misi-ziibi (GC8KRWQ) a D3/T4 in Cliff Cave Park. [She] was lost wandering for a good hour and finally prayed for help. About 5 minutes later, a young man stepped in the path. [She] asked if he knew the way out and he said sure. He was an Angel." That was brave (or maybe a little risky) of Denise to attempt a T4 with needed TOTT solo. Happily she made it out of the woods, but sadly she never got that smiley. Another geo-fear she shared is that she is a bit scared about going down steep hills, because falling is always on her mind.
Nevertheless, geocaching is Denise's favorite hobby! She goes out with her friends 3Nina and NEgirl every week. Her favorite geocache is one she owns and is in her yard, GC89GP7 "GNOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS." She also enjoys reading and playing games.
CONGRATULATIONS 6DANCER ON YOUR AUGUST CHALLENGE WIN!