Flag Hunt Season

Excellent news, everyone!  It is flag hunt season again!  Stephanie L-O-V-E-S orienteering, and the Orienteer Kansas (OK) club has become very active in the last few years, so there are lots of races in Lawrence.  If you are unfamiliar with orienteering, it is essentially a scavenger hunt.  You choose a course, sometimes designated by color- I'm a big fan of white, because I can usually smoke the 7 year old kids that also often choose white, or they are sometimes just called "long" or "short" (at which point Mary will inevitably say, "Let's do the long course" and I stupidly agree).  You get a map, with points marked and you have to go to each point in order and "punch in".  OK uses something called e-punch, so each point can be checked into with a little key fob.  This is always Stephanie's job, and she takes it very seriously.  This weekend OK hosted an event on campus at KU, so of course we all attended.  Mary and I "raced" by ourselves, and Kevin took Stephanie in the backpack.  He claims that she is getting a little too heavy and that he is not sure that he can run with her on his back for many more races.  That being said, I think I should probably note that he finished in half the time that it took Mary and I, as we treat the word race as optional, preferring to walk and laugh and chat while finding points.  When Kevin and Stephanie finished the race, Stephanie got to indulge in cookies, raisins and pretzels provided by the club (she told me later she had "seven cookies".  Kevin said that seemed about right).  When she and Kevin finished, she asked him "What was your favorite part?".  Apparently her favorite part was dropping the e-punch key, which only happened once and she stopped him to pick it up.  There is a great picture of her using the fob on OK's website, under Sept 22 on the main page of the site: http://www.orienteerkansas.com/

Showing off her e-punch before the race

Found a cool stick after the race!

One from the archives-  This was Steph's first race-  Less than three months old-she's in the green bundle there, and Whitney carried her the whole way in the cold February air!

Back when she was small enough that I actually raced with her.

The "old" way of punching the map, before everything got cool and electronic