S2, Game 4 - Scavenger Hunt

The biggest event of the season two premiere was a scavenger hunt.

I based the clues from Catelyn's journey through the Seven Kingdoms.  Because she seemed to move around a LOT through the first season, following her would kind of refresh everyone's memory about the events that took place.

I chose five different locations around my parents' house (did I mention it was held there?  it's an old farm with many fields... PERFECT location!) and hid wooden boxes that I painted in each location.   Everyone was given a different clue pointing to a different location to start.  The goal was to find the boxes which contained more clues and to bring the final box back.


THE CLUES:

THE LOCATIONS:


1.  There was definitely nothing I could find that would take the place of a heart tree.  I ended up drawing a terrible picture of a tree with a face and propped it against one of the biggest trees on the property, close to the house.  It was the easiest clue to find simply because everyone could see it as soon as they stepped off the deck.  In hindsight, I maybe could have come up with something better, but I somehow still like my terrible artwork (sorry to all the real artists out there).  I hid the box on the ground, just behind the posterboard.  

2.  "The king of this land" was simply my grandfather's house.  The box was hidden just inside his front porch door which is how everyone enters the house.

3.  The driveway to my parents' house is pretty much a dead end except that it kind of intersects another road with a small gravel area.  The mailbox is at this intersection.  Because the game was on a Sunday, I felt safe hiding the box inside the mailbox.

4.  Our version of the "aerie" was an old kid's play area, complete with metal pole and a slide.  Dad had long since converted it into a hunting stand, and it is located in the middle of a field.  Funny enough, the thing was actually called the "Eagle's Nest" and looked kind of like this.  I placed the box out in the open on the top level so everyone could reach it without having to climb in.

5.  The best part of the scavenger hunt (for me) was sending everyone to the old wooden bridge on the property.  I hid the box underneath it, and it watching everyone's face as they solved this clue was priceless.

One of the "rules" I had listed was that everyone had to mark the locations on a map once they solved the clues.  Everyone was so tired from running around, that pretty much fell by the wayside.
The winners were my sister and brother who had a clear advantage in that they grew up there.  My (at the time future) sister-in-law and my other sister and her friend ended up walking slowly through the whole thing once they realized they would have to travel some distance.