Lakeside Park CITO

In celebration of Earth Day, this weekend has been declared the Official 2014 CITO Weekend by Groundspeak.

In that spirit I took the wife and kids over to Lakeside Park in Granite Falls North Carolina to join some fellow geocachers, and some Boy Scouts, at a CITO event.

If you are not familar, CITO stands for Cache In, Trash Out.  They are events where geocachers get together and improve our gameboard by either picking up trash, or maintaining trails, removing invasive species, planting trees etc.

This event was all about trash removal.  Approximately 20-25 people attended this event, including a park employee (who provided trash hauling services). We spent 3 hours picking up trash, and there was a lot of it.

I picked up a lot of Budweiser and Miller beer bottles, and I started feeling a little artistic so I staged and took this shot.  I spent the next while ruminating about how I wished litterers took a little more pride in their work and left bottles from a higher class of beer. It seems the least they can do. Our litterers, apparently, have low standards.

The trail ran along the edge of Lake Rhodhiss, so we got to spend a lot of time close to the water.

It was a gorgeous day to be by a lake.

Over the course of three hours we packed up and hauled away an estimated 3 pick-up truck loads worth of garbage.

We left our game board much shinier and happier than when we found it, making this a pretty good day.

Did you CITO this weekend?  Tell me about it in the comments below.