Callie asked for a scavenger hunt for her 11th birthday celebration. We thought that this was a great idea, but of course we needed to take it up a couple of notches. We decided to combine a scavenger hunt with the show Amazing Race, which has always been one of our favorites. It took some time and intricate planning, along with the help of a few friends, but we pulled it off and were ready to go.
We had fourteen girls split up into four different teams. As you can see here, the teams were indicated by the color of their headbands, and their first task was to come up with team names. Once that job was done everyone jumped into cars and headed to the Summit at Fritz Farm.
Once everyone had gathered at the Summit, we took a group photo and prepared to descend on the various businesses, most of whom had given their approval ahead of time. We had Jessica Johnson as one of the game masters, and she was set up in the Barn for an ice cream taste testing with Crank and Boom. John and Patrick Lakin held down the fort on the Whole Foods patio with a Connect-4 challenge. And those were just two of eleven total tasks in honor of the new eleven-year-old.
Teams had to complete each task given in order to get the next clue, and we made sure the compile the lists so the teams were not all doing the same task at the same time. You can see the yellow team completing the task of finding five different animal sculptures throughout the Summit and getting a picture with each one. To appease our family's Captain Caution, teams were penalized if they were caught using poor judgment when crossing streets or putting their team in jeopardy at any point during the race.
Blind taste tests are never as easy as one might think. Each team had to have a member correctly identify three different kinds of Crank and Boom ice cream. Here we have the red teams' Amelia guessing a flavor. We were very kind and had ice cream as the blind taste test portion when we could have picked the wheat grass juice bar at Whole Foods.
If you have ever watched Amazing Race, they have things called Detours, where teams have a choice of tasks. In this case, a team could choose between 1) dressing up in the gear we provided and running around the green space in the center of the Summit singing a tune from the Greatest Showman or 2) answering a Fritz Farm history question. Needless to say, the history professor in our household was disappointed to hear so many Greatest Showman tunes that afternoon.
Another major decision of the game was deciding between juggling a hacky sack eleven times or counting the number of glasses frames displayed on the walls of the Warby Parker store nearby. Surprisingly enough, even though we had numerous soccer players at the party, the hacky sack was not the big winner here. And there were over four hundred glasses frames on the wall of the store. We finally let teams pass the task if they got within one hundred of the correct number.
As teams were finishing the race, the girls were hanging out and talking through their strategies. They also had a chance to debrief the funniest moments, especially for those who had to go in to the Kentucky Spirit store with Groucho Marx glasses to ask if they sold any Louisville gear.
Although all the times that finished were winners, the team that completed the tasks first was the yellow team. You might be able to tell by looking at this picture that not everyone was living by the "we are all winners" attitude.
The crew headed back to the Bowes residence for one final fun activity - build your own ice cream sundaes. No tasks needed to get the sundae other than saying please and thank you. It was a great group of girls and we had a lot of fun.
Based on Callie's smile, we are pretty sure she had fun too. We hope she has a great year ahead.
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