A Pair of CITOs

We had the opportunity this weekend to hit a pair of CITO events which were very different from each other. The "Garlic Mustard Grab at Friendship Woods" (GC22RD8) by Cyclops on Saturday was one of the newer style CITO events where you work with a park on removal of an invasive species. For this CITO we worked to rid the small 37.5 acre Friendship Woods Nature Center of their Garlic Mustard – an edible plant which has been spreading in North America for hundreds of years. Many parks have given up and allow the weed to spread unchecked but most are still fighting the battle against the immigrant from Europe. Even with more than 30 Geocachers pulling Garlic Mustard for more than an hour we only made a dent. That means we'll have a chance to go back soon for another similar CITO event and pull even more Garlic Mustard.

The Sunday event was the more traditional trash out event, but with a little twist. The "Spring Pool Party 2010" (GC255MN) by South Lyon Trekkers aimed to clean-up a "Park-n-Ride" lot which the Michigan Department of Transportation has not adopted out for clean-ups to this point. Again we had more than 30 Cachers show up to pick-up trash for MDOT's first such adoption. Despite the dirty work collecting the garbage and creating piles of trash bags we really enjoyed the time with our caching friends and that feeling of accomplishment when you look around the parking lot without seeing the cans, cups, and bottles popping up out of the grass and laying against the curbs.

So we didn't rack up big numbers this weekend, we're still eight caches from our 3,400th find, but we did score some big points. We helped get rid of unwanted stuff on our game field, grabbed a couple more finds on an icon type we don't see very often, and best of all spent time with our fellow Geocachers. If we weren't already booked for next weekend we'd hit another one planed for Saturday. Too bad, but how about some the rest of the year?