So Long As It's Just Pretend

Submitted by: Lady Tannerlot of Stonehurst Glen

The Challenge: Play on a fire truck

Contact and meet Cheryl Lamerson and Dr. Will. Tour their personal fire station and go on a drive on one of Dr.Will's Fire Trucks, have you picture taken, opposite Lunenburg on Tannery Road, with Tristan at the wheel wearing the fireman's cap with Zora hanging off the side.

Tristan's Note: This is a great idea. Simple, fun, and something I haven't done before!

Challenge Accepted!

Wombat’s Ruling: This is too much fun for a quest! Bah. Kids these days. 200 experience points, 3 hours charity.

This Otter Be Good!

Submitted by: Zoe Emery

The Quest: The Finding of the Aquatic Fuzzballs

The Challenge: Spot a Sea Otter!

Find and photograph a wonderful sea otter. These are my favourite animals and I wish I could be one.
Extra points for getting a photo of them holding hands. So cute!! 
Fun otter facts are also appreciated.

Tristan's Note: I don't think you could find anyone who didn't think that otters are adorable (although in the Brian Jacques books they are also pretty badass (Finnbarr Galedeep is a personal hero of mine)), and we would be more than excited to go and find them! Of course there will be fun otter facts, have you met Zora!?

Challenge Accepted!

Wombat's Ruling: Otters are adorable and badass - not always an easy combination to pull off! Let's call this 400 exp, 2 hours charity. 

A mighty warrior otter.

The Manateaser

Submitted by: Fire Donkey

The Quest: Voyage Through the Swamp

The Challenge: Swim with a Manatee...

Hi guys! This is based on googling stuff... HOWEVER! Why not head to the Everglades national park? (Everglades National Park protects an unparalleled landscape that provides important habitat for numerous rare and endangered species like the manatee, American crocodile, and the elusive Florida panther <-- ELUSIVE PANTHER!). 

The challenge would be to find a manatee and possibly swim with it. Or, find the Panther haha. It looks like a great place to visit and in terms of giving back to the community as there are lots of endangered species you could maybe find some kind of volunteer research based thing about. Who knows! If I find more info I'll send it on to you. 

Tristan's Note: I don't know how legal it is to go bothering the Manatee over there, plus you did also mention crocodiles... I'm going to say that we will get a photo from in front of a sign in the everglades to complete the easy part of the challenge. Wombat, how about giving us a massive bonus if we see the Manatee or the Panther?

Challenge kind of accepted!

Zora's Note: So I did the research on how to swim with manatees in a legal and respectful way, and it is permitted in a certain area! Here are the details: Manatee Manners

So we will definitely do our best to go see them, it would be amazing! 

Wombat's Ruling: This would be really cool! It sounds like a lot of work, though, so let's call it a whopping 800 exp, 5 hours charity (<1 day, Difficult "Sweat Factor"). Bonus points for not getting eaten.

Doing the Truckle Shuffle

Submitted by: Nicole

The Quest: Marching in the footsteps of giants

The Challenge: Goonies adventure!

Find the location of the Fratelli's hideout/restaurant from "The Goonies" and take the 100 steps to it together like the kids in the film did. (hint: the building no longer exists).
Ecola State Park, Cannon Beach, OR
http://oregonstateparks.org/index.cfm?do=parkPage.dsp_parkPage&parkId=136

Tristan's Note: This will be a fun one! I'm always up for finding film locations!

Challenge Accepted!

Wombat's Ruling: Okay, you two are on the honor code. If you look up the location online and just go there, this is worth 300 exp, 2 hours charity (1-4 hrs, Easy "Sweat Factor"). If you actually figure out where it is yourselves, 600 exp, 4 hours charity (<1 day, Moderate "Sweat Factor"). 

Update: 8/7/2018: It is to our deep regret that we have to inform eveyone that we missed this challenge. We were in Portland for the sour beer quest, and just didn't have time to make it out to the coast. We were looking forward to this one. We will just have to come back, or have another quester take it on.

There better be a lady in this lake...

Submitted by: Fuzzy Bear

The Quest: The Observance of the Water

The Challenge: Following in Burgoyne’s Footsteps

As you head to NS from New York, your task is to enjoy one of the better views of Lake Champlain. However, I'm not going to tell you where that is. To find out stop at Fort Ticonderoga and take the tour. The docent's might know where you should go. Here's a hint though, if you get the right information you'll be able to "defy" the odds I've stacked against you. Post a picture to prove you were successful. For extra points put the history of the path you took in the photo's caption (that's another hint as to where to go by the way).

Tristan's Note: I appreciate that we get to make this quest more difficult if we choose to! 

Challenge accepted!

Wombat's Ruling: I haven't been to Fort Ticonderoga since I was a kid! It'll be great. Anyway. 300 exp, 2 hours charity for just the picture (1-4 hours, Easy "Sweat Factor"), or 400 exp, 3 hours charity (1-4 hours, Moderate "Sweat Factor") with the caption too. Lots of bonus points for doing a post/video/something about the important history of Fort Ticonderoga. (I'll award the bonus points once I see the result). 

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!

All things sour are not spoiled

Submitted by: Bromogida

The Quest: Braving The Bitter Brew

The Challenge: Drink sour beer!

To be specific, drink sour beer in Portland, OR at Cascade Brewery... changed our lives! If you have no clue, don't worry, the staff will make excellent recommendations to try. Most of their beers you can't get anywhere but in their brewery, so enjoy!

Tristan's Note: Luckily neither of us have ever had a sour beer that we liked, so this will legitimately be a challenge. Mind you if anyone out there wants to challenge us to drink more beer we could do that too. Great quest, we will provide photographic evidence once the challenge is complete!

Challenge Accepted!!!

Wombat's Ruling: Like all marsupials, I adore sour beer, and I think that getting drunk at a high-end brewery barely counts as a challenge. You must try at least a few different sour beers (I don't know what size they come in, so let's say 3 to start with - I don't want to be the cause of alcohol poisoning), and then take pictures of your faces as you drink them AND write brief descriptions of each so we know which ones are the best. This is 300 exp, 2 hours charity (< 1 hr, and I'm being generous by giving this a Moderate "Sweat Factor"). 

Update 8/1/18:

We went, we saw, we tasted... And I have to say we weren't wild about any of it. Tristan and I just aren't sour beer folks. On the upside you get to enjoy our tasting faces!

There was also an exciting development, we had our first guest quester! Everyone welcome Eric! He'll be getting his own character on the website soon. This too can be your fate if you accept any of the quests (either with us or without us!)!

So after looking at the pretty extensive menu (see photo for descriptions), we selected three samples of Cascade's finest. 

1. Midnight Bramble -Tristan

2. Peche Fume 2016 -Eric

3. Vanilla Bourbon Peach -Zora

Ok, first round, drinking our own picks. Note the trepidation on my face.

Ok, a bit of a shock to the system the first sip of sour beer. Maybe it gets better?

Bottoms up! Round 2:

Oof. Maybe not. Third times a charm?

Oooh, that's a no. Looks like you're having a hard time swallowing there, Tris. 

Sooooo yeahhhhh.... No real winners there, but here are our conclusions: While we aren't 100% sure our waitress gave me the vanilla peach and Eric the Peche to start with, whatever they were were both pretty bad. However, my pick, the vanilla bourbon peach, was basically bile. No better way to put that unfortunately. You can track its progression down the line by whomever looks the most ill. The Peche was only mildly less toxic. 

Tristan's however, wasn't all that bad. Since it was red and very raspberry flavored, the sourness made more sense. In a small dose like that, we'd even venture to say it was good...ish. We agreed it would have made a better cider minus the sour. 

We'll keep on believing people who tell us that there are good sour beers out there, but we definitely aren't converts yet. Thanks for the quest Bromogida, it certainly was a challenge!

Wombat's Judgement: That's too bad, wombats think sour beers are fantastic... oh well. Zora's face in the first picture seems to say it all. Full points!

Dad's Fave Philly

Submitted by: Bromogida

The Quest: The Conquest of the Bovine 

The Challenge: Ro's dad challenges you to go to White House in Atlantic City, and order a "Whopper". Get some laughs then have the best Philly Cheese Steak dad has ever had. Post a picture to commemorate the moment.

Tristan's Note: We will starve ourselves in preparation, because I'm pretty sure that something called  a "Whopper" is not going to be small.

Challenge Accepted!

Wombat's Ruling: You guys are so lucky. This is 100 exp, 1 hr charity (<1 hr, Trivial "Sweat Factor" - all you have to do is have lunch!).