Our First Visit To Geocaching Head Quarters

           We would like to say thank you, our return to the Blog has been overwhelming. So happy to see all of the hits. As we were planning our next post, we stumbled upon a lost draft, our first visit to Groundspeak , in 2013. We have a few posts that are a bit older we will be sharing but we feel they are too good to be lost.
     This visit was right after Balkamper13 won the Geocacher of the Month award, as a result of that honor we had an extra special visit. We were treated like "Caching Royalty."
     We loved it. Ted wrote this post in 2013 and it slipped through the cracks, so I say, better late than never. Please let us know if you have been to Head Quarters and your thoughts on the visit.
     One of the best parts of our little vacation to the pacific northwest was that we got a chance to visit Geocaching Headquarters GCK25B. Located right outside of Seattle, the new lily pad is great and we had a blast looking around.

Once inside the doors we were greeted by the sweetest

receptionist, Carly and saw the giant coveted treasure chest. After snapping a few pictures we went and looked at all the goodies inside the chest. There were three different Tupperware containers for traveling items. It was like geocache heaven. Next to the Treasure Chest was a photo booth and we took full advantage of that fun edition.

After a few minutes of looking through all the cool stuff and trading a bag of our signature swag for some others signature items we mingled with some other geocachers who were there to visit. It was cool there was a guy from Chez Republic, one from North Dakota, one from Las Vegas,
One from Montana, and a fun couple from Iowa. After introducing myself Carly was like oh you’re the geocacher of the month guy. This was a great moment for Darcey and myself.

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Everyone was super nice and told us congrats and then Carly called Adela out of her office.Adela is one of the Lackeys and is the Marketing Specialist at Groundspeak. She is the one who we were in contact with through the process of being nominated and winning the geocacher of the month in November 2012. She was awesome. Once she came out of the back area she offered to show us around. This was unreal. Normally when you visit you just get to see the lobby area, but we were getting a tour. When you first walk in to the office area there is a thinking room. Inside this room is a foosball table and some really comfortable looking chairs. Adela says they take foosball very seriously there and even have championship brackets posted on the wall. After leaving that room we were introduced to Eric. Anyone who reads the lattitude47 blog knows who this guy is. Eric was super nice and tall he gave us one of his personal coins. After that we got the chance to meet the IT department. We gave big thanks to these guys for keeping the whole site up and running for us.

After a quick chat with those guys we passed by the server room. There were so many wires running from those racks it was amazing. It was unbelievable seeing how many Different part went into keeping this game going.

One of our favorite parts of this area was the hamster and wheel that they say is the power behind the whole Geocaching thing. I would sure hate to be that little hamster. He would be running non-stop in order to power all that equipment. Poor little guy, he has to be tired.

     We then walked around and checked out the rest of the office areas. The new Lily Pad is amazing. The Lackeys have all came together to make a great place for them to work.

     They have a room with games and they are competitive, they have score boards next to the fuse ball table. The rest of the office promotes collective thinking so there are post it notes all over.

     When we entered their break room, I think our 5 yr old thought we made it to heaven. It was equipped with drawers full of snacks and candy as well as beverages. With an enviroment like that its no wonder that this game is so awesome.

     We just want to say thanks again to all of them for all they do for us. If you ever get a chance to tell them thank you please do it. Everyone there was happy to share their job function and excitement that we were visiting. We were thanked for adding to the game and they even gave Jackson a special travel bug for his birthday. We had a blast in the free photo booth and love our HQ coins.

     Thank you all for reading our blog. We hope you have enjoyed it. Here are a few more pics we took while we were at the pad.

     Please enjoy and let us know about your adventures to HQ. We love your comments!