Car Club – Scavenger Hunt

Last weekend we hosted a scavenger hunt for the car club we are members of.  We put so much work into the preparation and to say I was nervous is an understatement.  It’s always difficult for me to put myself out there.  We heard someone at the meeting point mention that they hoped it wasn’t boring.  Together we mapped out the route, visited each location and found some challenges, put together clue packets and even bought some prizes.  We kept the locations a secret from everyone. Even the final location where we all met for lunch. 

Each car was given a pack of clues that would lead them around the hunt and get them to get some pictures or find answers to questions.  I was so impressed by the engagement by every single member.  It definitely wasn’t boring.  The faces on our members said it all. They all had a great time and laughed heaps.  Some of their pictures were just fantastic.  We were only sad we didn’t get to participate!!

While we were preparing everything, I did a fair bit of research.  I wasn’t able to find very many articles that gave some suggestions so here we go.  Tips for what we learnt

Tips for Planning a Scavenger Hunt

1. Scout out locations – this is the most important step.  Before you even try to plan the route, your hunt will take look around the area and find popular locations.  We found high profile locations that locals would know.
2. Plan the route – once we had decided which locations, we were going to include we then planned the route that would make it easiest for the club members.  Remembering that most members were in Historic cars without power steering we tried to make sure they had wide open spaces to turn their vehicles.  While we didn’t hide anything for them to find we did ask them to take pictures of either themselves or their cars in the location.
3. Clue writing – this was the fun bit.  Working out how to describe somewhere or something without saying its name. 
4. Distribute the clues – we decided to put each individual clue it’s in own envelope and had out a package at the beginning of the hunt.  Each team received ten envelopes marked 1 through to 10.
5. Rules of the hunt – our most important rule was to make sure you “don’t speed”.  We asked each team to remember they were representing the club.  The first clue directed each team to the starting location.  At this point we held a quick meeting to explain the rules.
6. Keep an eye on the team – we set up in a location after the first clue and once all teams had, passed through we set up at the middle point.
7. Scoring – this is important.  How are you going to score and find the winner if you are having prizes.  Each clue and its subsequent tasks had a point value. At the completion of the hunt, we marked each one and tallied up their points.  As we also recorded their time to complete the hunt these were ranking 11 down to 1 in order of fastest and each team received the corresponding point.

All that stress and anxiety but in the end a great day was had by all!!