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.

Big Machines? Bucket, Why Not.

Submitted By: Phil, Purveyor of the Finest Trucks

The Quest: Observing the Vanquished Beasts

The Challenge: Get a picture in the Bucket of the LARGEST Electric Shovel or the LARGEST Dragline bucket in the world

How about a picture in the Bucket of the LARGEST Electric Shovel or the LARGEST Dragline bucket in the world They are all but memories, as they won't make them this big anymore..

Big Brutus -
converted to a Museum in KS. if it's on the way to another quest, why not get a picture.
http://www.bigbrutus.org/about.html

The other - my personal favorite and I was trying to help get it converted to a museum in 1999, was Big Muskie, Made in South Milwaukee, by Bucyrus Erie, "same as Big Brutus"
All that's left is the 230 Ton, 220 Cubic yard bucket....on display, just a few miles from it's working area Ohio.

The Big Muskie was a model 4250-W Bucyrus-Erie dragline (the only one ever built). With a 220-cubic-yard (170 m3) bucket, it was the largest single-bucket digging machine ever created and one of the world's largest mobile earth-moving machines. could pick a load, larger than 2 grey hound busses, and sit it more than a football field away.

The bucket is big, 
http://www.noblecountyohio.com/images/largebucket.jpg
Now look at the bucket, in relation to the machine
http://www.noblecountyohio.com/muskie3.html
When you look at the mere size of this machine in this pic, it really puts things in perspective on just how big the machine was - It was featured by "That's incredible" and it walked like a duck...
http://www.stripmine.org/wwwboard/stripmine/uploads/1_6487c3625ca7a0c5b26d515079c01d5e.jpg

I believe there is a campground near by
Directions:I-77 exit 25 (Caldwell). Head west on SR 78 -- a winding, hilly, two-lane road -- 16 miles to the Bucket in Miners Memorial Park.

Zora's Note: This is brilliant! Fun, accessible, and that's a great amount of detail. Seriously people, take a look at those links the machines are ridiculous.

Wombat's Ruling: Them things are huge! Okay, 300 exp, 2 hours charity (1-4 hours, Easy "Sweat Factor").

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!

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!