The Best Scavenger Hunt I ever wrote!

I have had too much fun the past couple of days.

One of the girls in my daughters youth group had her 18th birthday. So, I spent Thursday and Friday writing a scavenger hunt for her surprise party.

She was totally surprised! And that scavenger hunt was the best one I have ever written! (I’ve written a lot of them!) With the kids being older, I got to make the clues really hard. Soooo fun! They had to have a flashlight, a camera or camera phone, a compass and a pen. The hunt started at 8 pm and ended at 10:30 pm.

I had those kids all over the parish! Lol I gave them my phone number as the “Hint Hot Line”, but they lost 200 points if they called. Only two teams called in and both of them were standing right next to the prize and just didn’t see it….. They were so mad to have lost those points :-)

There were 5 categories: Collect the letters, Photo gallery, Sounds shop, Trivia and the Bonus clues.

To collect the letters, they had to go to a dozen places looking for objects or words and collect one of the letters from it. Then they had to unscramble the letters in order to know where to meet at the end. (Starbucks)

Here is a sample: Find the bull’s eye, see the red and green dots. Look to your right…… Hola! Collect the 4th letter.

That was Target of course, but they had to stand in front of the entrance (green dot) and look across the interstate to see a local Mexican restaurant. One team totally missed that one.

For the Photo Gallery they had to take pictures of some crazy things…. Like the eye of the tiger, a street sign with the name of someone in the youth group on it, an alligator…. There are pictures of alligators all over the place, but one team went all the way to Bass Pro and took a picture of a real one. LOL They lost almost 40 minutes for that and it was only worth 100 points. LOL

They really got creative on the Sound Shop. Several teams went to a cop to get the sound of a siren. Only one team was able to get a whistling tea kettle…..They got 300points for it too!

Trivia was like a fill in the blank….In this town, Debbie sells insurance. What do the kids learn next door? Another one was; this church has a new chapel with pretty stained glass windows. How many down spouts does it take to keep the roof dry?

And then my favorite! I made four 1000 point bonus riddles. The theme of the party was Batman. So, I hid four pictures; Robin, Batman, Cat Woman and The Joker.

For the batman riddle the kids had to figure out that they needed to be at a shopping center in one town and from there they had to drive to the Post Office in another town. Once there, they had to find a sign that said children weren’t allowed to play in the parking lot. The team that found it took second place. Here is the clue.

Choo, Choo….. That’s where the cash is. But, somewhere in the region, you’ll find Steve. He’s right in the thick of things and with a donation. From his hanger he can see the eagles take flight. Follow the eagles to their eastern home and the site where no children play.

The choo,choo is a train on the top of a sign near the pizza house and there is a “Cash” Reality next door. Across the highway is a “Steve’s” cleaners in the Oak “Thicket” shopping center. It’s right next to the Goodwill Store. In the parking lot there is a “Regions” bank and next to that there are two priority mail boxes with “eagles” on the side.

The Robin one started with: “Holy Bat-burgers! That redhead has been hiding spies.” That took them to Wendy's.

The Riddler started with: What’s not at the beginning and surly not alive? This one was a little more tricky, but all of them found the dead end sign.

Now this one was the best! Cat Woman……this was so good.
I didn’t give them any clue as to where they were to go. It started with “Act dignified as you follow the kitty through the hedge.” The clue was about a page long and it meandered around trees and fountains and benches. I had them stop to lick their paws or scratch their ears……I would say things about the people around and at the end the kitty took a nap under a tree. Only two teams figured it out and they LOVED IT! It was in the cemetery.

What a treat for us all. I enjoyed writing it and the kids loved solving it.