Capture the Lighthouse

Submitted by: stephdye

The Challenge: Sneak up on five tall beacons and catch them on film

Q: What did the ocean say to the lighthouse?
A: Nothing. It just waved.

Take pictures with five lighthouses during the east coast leg of your trip. Bonus points if you make it to the top of them! Keep an eye out for whales and other wildlife.

Zora's Note: I LOVE lighthouses. I like using them as navigational beacons. I love touring them.  I even love playing capture the lighthouse (like capture the flag but at night with flashlights instead of flags). I may pretend to steal all of these in the photos. This will be an excellent quest.

Challenge Accepted!

Wombat's Ruling: Sounds like fun! Remember when TGA hosted a Capture the Lighthouse on the Old Golf Course? Did you hear they're putting dorms up there? Anyway, let's call it 400 exp, 5 hours charity. Bonus 50 exp (no charity) for each one you climb. 

Update 8/19/18:

Well we aren't sure if Wombat will count these towards the total as they aren't technically East Coast lighthouses, we thought we should at least get some practice in. Those lighthouses are wily structures, always disappearing in the fog or getting swallowed by waves to avoid capture! Maybe these will be worth some pre-actual-quest bonus points! 

We had a pleasant drive up the shore of Lake Superior and got to meet the Split Rock Lighthouse (albeit from a distance), in Two Harbors, MN and the Grand Marais Light in the town of the same name. Tris did his best to climb this one (surprisingly no signs saying don't), and got to the locked hatch. Not the most impressive of lighthouses (perhaps why it was so easy to approach and scale), but an important navigational beacon nonetheless. The Quest Continues!

Wombat’s Judgement: A lighthouse is a lighthouse - full points.

Jewels... JEWELLLLLLSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!

Submitted by: Kansas City Hospice and Palliative Care

The Quest:  The Gathering of Baubles and Beads

The Challenge:  Collect jewelry and beads and spread the word to others

I volunteer for Kansas City Hospice in their resale shop, Top Drawer.  Three years ago we began a diligent effort to increase our jewelry donations.  Our customers love jewelry and we had very little to offer them when they came into the store to shop. We have been reaching out to as many people and organizations as possible to try to significantly increase our jewelry stock. 

We are looking for jewelry that is in excellent to good condition that we can immediately put out for sale.  However, if you want to add your broken jewelry, mismatched earrings, broken brooches, tarnished silver, etc. we will use that too.  

We have a jewelry making program where volunteers repair and repurpose all of the broken jewelry.  They also make new pieces from donated beads and beading supplies. We have made over 1000 original pieces for our store.  So, if you have left over beads and beading supplies from your “hobby” days you can send us those items too.

Everyone who works in Top Drawer is a volunteer and all of the proceeds go to benefit Kansas City Hospice which is a 501C3 not for profit Hospice.

There are so many people who have accumulated jewelry that they no longer like or wear. It sits in a drawer and noone gets to benefit from using it.  With our program, you can donate your jewelry, it is recycled (no landfills), and it benefits a wonderful charity like Kansas City Hospice.

All accumulated jewelry and beads can be sent to our shop:

Top Drawer, 9433 Mission Road, Leawood, KS 66206

913-642-2292

Tristan's Note: Thank you so much for your quest, we would love to take it on and spread the word about Kansas City Hospice and Palliative care. And congratulations on winning the "Heart of Hospice" award!

Also finding shinies is pretty much Zora's favorite thing in the world. We will put links on our volunteering page and also the journey map. I think we will receive xp/time based upon every medium sized box that we collect and send to you. What do you think Wombat?

Challenge Accepted!!!

Wombat's Ruling: This is a wonderful idea! You should spread the word as you travel! As for experience, let's break this into two pieces.

For each piece of nice, "ready-to-wear" jewelry you find and post a picture of, you get 100 exp, 0.5 hours charity. For each shoebox of shiny bits and bobs, let's say 400 exp, 2 hours charity. This may seem unbalanced, but I'm guessing it is easier to find a single piece of jewelry than a whole shoebox of bits.

https://www.facebook.com/kathy.corbin.334/media_set?set=a.10204222750266028.1073741829.1145525737&type=3

Our waistlines will Morph Carolina

Submitted by: Fuzzy Bear

The Quest: The Vanquishing of the Appetites

The Challenge: Good Eating in NC

Since you're swinging through North Carolina, you might as well do so on a full stomach. A really full stomach. Your challenge is to hit up some of the best places to eat along your route. They are: Bull City Burger and Brewery (Durham, NC), Backyard BBQ Pit (Durham, NC), Wimpy's Grill (Durham, NC), Crafted (Greensboro, NC) extra points there if you can suss out the new location without using their website to cheat, 5Church (Charlotte, NC, and SkyBAR (Asheville, NC). Prove you made it to each location by sharing photos, or dirty napkins. Your choice.

Zora's Note: Our friends are clearly trying to sabotage our arteries...Challenge accepted!!

Wombat's Ruling: I'm getting jealous just thinking about this! To earn any experience, you need to give us a review of your favorite restaurant in NC once you leave. It can be a blog post or a video. Answer the question "If I can only go to one restaurant in all of NC, which should it be, and why?"

Including the video, this is < 1 day, Easy "Sweat Factor", so 400 exp, 3 hours charity. 

Birding the US

Submitted by: SJ

The Quest: The Charting of the Chickens

The Challenge: Find and document (photo, note, etc) a bird in each state you visit - no repeats. I'll start you off - in Missouri, look for Eastern Bluebird.

Zora's Note: I love it! We will put our ornithological skills to the test and come up with an eagle or something. Would running into with the truck and stuffing it count as documenting?

Challenge Accepted!

Wombat's Ruling: This sounds like fun! As an additional service, you need to give us a few fun/interesting facts about each bird. Try to educate us a little about America's birds.

Drawing on my ruling for "Proof you have left!" let's say that it's 200 experience per bird, and 0.5 hour charity. Bonus 300 exp and 0 hours charity for each 10 birds you do. Bonus 1000 exp and 0 hours charity if you do all 48! (The seemingly low charity hours actually add up - if you do all 48 states, that's 24 hours of charity!). 

Update 1: Missouri

Well we failed a little bit at the initial bird challenge, but we made up for it by giving you two birds! (also see Update 3) Most of our traveling in Missouri was in the Missouri Ozarks (which are distinct from the Arkansas Ozarks). If you've ever watched the show Ozarks (we enjoyed it, but it's not for the squeamish) you'll know that turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) feature in it. And it's no surprise because they were EVERYWHERE. We also saw some black vultures (Coragyps atratus) but unless you see them side by side to compare wingspans (turkey vultures are much larger) or get a good look at the underside of the wings (turkey vultures have a silvery underside for the whole length, black vultures it limited to the tips) it's a bit hard to tell them apart. 

We saw the turkey vultures do just about everything, from soaring around on thermals, to creepily hanging around in the trees around one of our campsites making a lot of tree branch noise, to rather graphically ripping apart a roadkill raccoon (but hey! they are super important parts of the ecosystem for doing so!). We were pretty fascinated. The hard part of this challenge is that though we bought a nice camera for TGQ we didn't have enough funds for a zoom lens, so we're stuck with longer distance shots and fuzzy zoomed in iPhone photos. But here are our best attempts:

Turkey Vulture

Black Vulture

Wombat's Comment: That's actually really cool. Vultures get a bad rap, but they're important.

Update 2: Illinois 

We haven't actually spent much time in Illinois (at least not since TGQ officially hit the road), but we spent our first night there and walked around Horseshoe Lake the next morning. That is where Tristan saw his first bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)! I saw it as well, but was sadly looking the wrong way when it took a dive and tried to snag a fish out of the lake (the fish got away), he was seriously excited. Bald eagles are primarily piscivores but will also eat carrion and are kind of famous in Alaska for swarming dumps...a less than glorious image of America's national bird.

And Tris managed to get a photo of it looking pretty cool:

Bald Eagle

Wombat's Comment: AMERICA MOTHERTRUCKERS!

Update 3: Arkansas

The start off challenge for this quest was to find and document the eastern bluebird (Sialia sialis) in Missouri, because, well, it is the state bird. We saw zero. Not even a glimpse of a blue color bird that wasn't clearly a jay that we could pretend was an eastern bluebird! However, Arkansas was very gracious in providing a mated pair (the female having duller coloring than the male) flitting around our camper while we stayed on the grounds of Headwaters School. They played the game of stay very still until I raised the camera and then flying further away with me which was frustrating. That is, until the male discovered our rear view mirrors. Apparently this little guy has been wreaking havoc on all mirrors and ledges of the school attendees cars, he loves landing on them and pooping everywhere!! Ours were no exception. The little dude also liked attacking his own reflection in our mirrors which were probably a bit larger than he was accustomed to. Hopefully they lay some eggs in the school's box, the eggs are as pretty a shade of blue as their feathers!

Perched on the mirror, doing his worst

Admiring his smeary handywork and laughing at us

Wombat's Comment: He clearly doesn't like you.

Update 3: Louisiana

It was pretty difficult just choosing one bird for Louisiana. We saw so many! From all sorts of swamp birds to brown pelicans on the Gulf, we were spoiled for choice. So we've gone with the one we got the best photo of! Tris had a lot of luck stalking this pretty unconcerned yellow-crowned night heron (Nyctanassa violacea). We got a great look at it! Apparently they only grow those long white feathers in their crest during mating season, so I think we got lucky! In one of the photos it looks like there may be an egg? But it could also just be a rock. 

Wombat's Judgement: Very cool! Very pretty and exotic. Full points.

Update 4: Texas

This episode of choose that state bird actually comes from Tristan. He completely fell in love with these guys. It's also one of our silliest. We snuck up on these guys who were sitting on the roof of the nature blind. When they saw us and flew away they made the silliest squeaky noises! They also have very bright bills. Zora searched for squeaky orange billed ducks with long necks and...

             Not helpful.

Right. That is not the duck. 

Let's try again:

These ducks, Google. What are these ducks? Turns out they are black-bellied whistling ducks (Dendrocygna autumnalis)! They are pretty much the cutest, and Tristan may just have a new favorite bird. Check out what they sound like here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rgyCbntEAQ

Wombat's ruling: Very cute!

Doggos of America

Submitted by: Monty the Royal Corgi

The Quest: The Charting of the Hounds

The Challenge: Doggos of America

Whenever you see a dog, say "dog" out loud. Each dog sighting counts as one point. The person who has the most dog sightings by the end of the trip wins. You must say dog one time for each dog because every dog is special and unique.

Tristan's note: Playing us off against each other is kind of risky I think. It might lead to arguments... But either way:

Challenge Accepted!!!

Wombat's Ruling: This is another tricky one! How about this - when the trip is halfway finished (maybe when you switch coasts?), the person who is behind has to do 4 hours EXTRA charity, and the person ahead gets to spend 4 hours doing something incredibly relaxing. IF you do this, then this is worth 300 exp, 2 hours charity (1-4 hours, Easy "Sweat Factor" - it's easy for one of you at least!). 

Tristan's Response: I'm not sure I like this. Zora has got far superior eyesight than I do. How about she has to drive more to make up for the advantage so I am free to look for doggies?

4/24/2018 - An Update!

We have been going with the dog spotting for 2 weeks now and it is pretty much as I predicted, Zora is doing very well, and I am constantly struggling to keep up. Currently the count is Zora: 63, Tris: 45. Womp Womp.

We had a whole long stretch going through the Ozarks where we barely saw any dogs at all, just turkey vultures and road kill! However we are down into what feels like more densely suburban parts of Arkansas now so the pace is increasing. Yay dogs!

7/19/2018- Halfway Mark

We’ve made it back to St. Louis for appointments and repairs so we’re calling it the halfway mark. The results are in….Tristan comes from behind and TAKES THE LEAD!! Zora was winning forever, but then we hit Southern California. California is apparently the holy place for dogs. They are everywhere. With Tris driving and paying lots of attention in the madness that is traffic around LA and Zora paying attention to navigating on the phone, Tris positively cleaned up. The total: Tristan: 342.5 dogs, Zora: 310.5. The half dogs are ones we tied on. So according to the Wombat, Zora must now do 4 extra hours of volunteer work while Tristan kicks back. Woof.

Wombat’s Interim Judgement: Wow, what a Cinderella story! Tristan has earned his 4 hours of relaxation! Now for the ultimate prize. Reset your doggo counters to 0, and the winner at the end gets 8 hours of relaxation!

Proof you have left!

Submitted by: Helen

The Quest: The Trove of Truck Travelling Trophies

The Challenge:  Take a photo with each 'Welcome to' state sign.

I have wanted to do this on our (smaller) road trips, but I end up being too busy napping: take a photo with each Welcome to State sign. So I challenge you to take a picture next to a state sign for each state that you visit, and strongly suggest you try and find something appropriate for Hawaii before you leave! https://tinyurl.com/yct5swn6

Tristan's Note: This is an excellent challenge! Unfortunately didn't take a suitable photo before we left Hawaii, I guess you just kind of know when you get there because you are either no longer flying or no longer drowning... However we do have a photo of Zora standing in front of a volcano, so maybe this will suffice:

We will treat this like 48 separate challenges I think, so we can earn the volunteer hours and xp with each state we go through, and maybe if we get all 48 we can have a bonus pay out at the end. Sound Good?

Challenge Accepted!

Wombat's Ruling: This is kind of an odd one. Let's say that it's 100 experience per road sign, and 0.5 hour charity. Bonus 300 exp and 0 hours charity for each 10 road signs they do. Bonus 1000 exp and 0 hours charity if they do all 48! (The seemingly low charity hours actually add up - if they do all 48 states, that's 24 hours of charity!). 

04/24/18 - An Update

Well we have so far crossed two state lines, the one from MO - IL wasn't really anything, plus we hadn't planned on going to IL so early and we don't have a photo, so that may not count. However our crossing from MO - AR was documented! Bear in mind that that we crossed on a tiny little lettered highway so there wasn't a grand banner or anything, but check out the photos:

05/10/18 - An Update!

We have so far crossed two more state lines! We crossed from AR to LA and we landed the missing Welcome to AR sign and also got nailed by a few fire ants. Owww! We also noted the distinct line between road qualities, little did we know how much worse they would get...

And just a few days ago we crossed LA to TX! This time we managed to cross on big enough roads to merit welcome signs. Here you go Helen!

Wombat's commentary (5-15-18): So far that's 3 signs, so 300 exp and 1.5 hours charity. I'm going to throw in 50 bonus exp for the thoughtful documentation of the state-by-state variation of road quality (suck it LA!).  

Update: 05/27/18

We got a bit stalled in Texas (the state is huge!!), but we've made a lot of miles all the same. We have now crossed through New Mexico and into Arizona. Here's the evidence! Also, New Mexico, what is up with that font?? You might as well have used Comic Sans. We almost missed the sign entirely because of the faint writing, we were so confused we took pictures with some sort of Energy Plant's sign, thinking that must be all that was there. Also, while we did our best to look enchanted (and most of the rest of the state genuinely was) the border crossing had a landfill on one side of the road, and smelly oil drilling in the midst of scrubby plants on the other. 

??

So amazing! Wow!

We didn't have a lot of road options for crossing into AZ, so unfortunately were stuck on I-10 with construction and lots of other vehicles, so we couldn't safely pull over to be in the picture with the sign. 

Wombat's Ruling: Really, New Mexico? That's the font you went with? Really? As for the Arizona sign, safety first. Full points (200 exp, 2 hours charity)!

Update: 07/7/18

Goodness, it's been ages since we cashed in our sign xp! Here's where we've been!

First: Utah! We definitely didn't get to spend enough time here, but between it being tourist season in the National Parks here, and it also being HOT, we just had to love it and leave it. What we saw was beautiful. Lots of good rocks, Utah. A+

Next up: Nevada!

Ok folks, not going to lie here. We didn't really like Nevada. To be fair we only saw a tiny part of Nevada mostly because we were sprinting through it because it was HELLISHLY HOT. A hot like I've never known before. 110-116F hot. With 30mph winds that just drove the hot deeper into your skin instead of cooling you off. Awful. Also this heat almost killed our rats even though we were driving pretty fast (luckily Leaky lost some trim on the highway and we realized just how hot it was). So forever grudge Nevada, no one messes with the fuzzballs. We were very glad to leave, see below.

Running out of Nevada, and into California. Oh California, we didn't want to like you as much as we did. You have too many people and too much traffic. Much of our rig spontaneously combusted within your borders. But goodness, your nature! We begrudgingly add you to places we could see ourselves living one day...

And now, suddenly (well sort of), we find ourselves in Oregon for what will unfortunately be a flying visit. But still, so far, so good! Nice trees! Also, this is our 10th state! Crazy.

Wombat's Judgement (7-24-18): Okay, that's 400 exp and 4 hours charity (reflecting new charity rules). Yay California!

Update: 8/3/18

Well, since we just had to blitz back to St. Louis from Washington, we have a lot of state signs to upload all in a rush! Let's start with Washington:

Google Maps has started welcoming us into a place now, so that's cool I guess?

After our super fast WA visits, we began the long distance 5 day sprint back to St. Louis beginning with a quick scoot through the skinny part of Idaho. We enjoyed it and its trains.

Next up was Montana. Montana made it as difficult as possible by placing their sign up on an overpass where you could not pose with it. However we caught on to this deviousness in time so we could take the exit before and get it in the background from an embankment. So there Montana! Shots from driving underneath it to prove it is the same sign in both photos. You can also admire the numerous bugs smashed on our windshield, and the fact the Montana rather grimly demarcates every single road death with a cross.  

Wyoming was next, and also pretty sneaky (read: boring) with their 'welcome' sign. We crossed into Wyoming initially while driving through Yellowstone. We couldn't pull over on that particular bit of road and the sign was entirely missable. Small, green, and all it said was "Entering Wyoming." We vowed to catch it on the exit, and we did, and the sign was equally uninspiring. 

Surprisingly Nebraska, for being the most boring state we've driven through thus far, had a pretty good welcome sign. Who knew they were the ones to found Arbor Day? Tristan was excited, and pulled his best tree impression (I'd give it a 6/10, can do better). There was also a funny little abandoned gas station that straddled the state line. The highway we crossed on used to be the main road between the two, but now there's a big interstate running parallel and is probably what killed business. 

The last state before crossing back into home territory was Iowa. I think we spent about 15 minutes here before being back in Missouri. There were A LOT of bugs. And we felt like we were going to get eaten by snakes and we were slightly delirious after doing a 700 mile day. But Iowa, here we were. And that's all for now! Next leg of the trip takes us north and east and into Canada!

Wombat's Ongoing Judgement: Good work! I don't have something clever to say about each state, but I think you've hit 15 states so far? But you've certainly hit 10 states, so bonus 300 exp for you guys!

A Tristan & Zora by any other face

Submitted by: Roscoe Young

The Quest: The Doppelgangers Destiny

The Challenge: Dave Gorman Namesakes.

Find another Tristan Williams and Zora McGinnis (failing that just Zora) and have a photo taken. I.D. Required as evidence.

Status: Challenge accepted sir!

Wombat's Ruling: This could be a really tough one! 1+ days, Moderate "Sweat Factor"  = 800 exp, 5 hours charity