CityView Magazine - Fayetteville, NC
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/19024
p ublisher SEARCHING Saturday October 2nd in downtown Fayetteville. My wife and I joined in the fun and we brought our bikes because we were told that the clues covered a two-mile area in downtown. We are wise enough to know that we’re a bit old to be running from clue to clue. More than 200 people participated in the hunt and we all met at Cross Creek Park F Correction: Angels Urgent Care is open from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m., Mondays through Fridays and 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Saturdays. An advertisement in our October issue stated the hours incorrectly. on Green Street at 11 a.m. Fifty percent of the teams had bikes and the rest were ready to run. Text messages were sent to our cell phones each time we arrived at a new clue destination. Every clue earned us points and the points varied according to the difficulty of the clue. After we finished, my wife and I decided that we would not have done as well as we did if we hadn’t had our bikes. It also worked in our favor to have both a male and a female on the team, particularly when we got to a clue that required identifying five different kinds of flowers. I had no idea what any of them were and, of course, my garden club-member wife got them all correct in less than a minute. Another clue called for identifying an item on a plaque at the Market House — and spelling it correctly. (It was a cornucopia). Thank God my wife knew what it was and that my phone has spell check. After two hours of rushing around from clue to clue, all of the teams met back at Huske Hardware to drink a beer and find out the results. It turns out that a young couple won the ring and, after hearing their story, they definitely seemed to deserve it. They have been married for six years and have three kids. The husband had bought his wife a very small diamond when they were engaged and had promised her a bigger and nicer one later. But, between the struggling economy and raising three children, later never seemed to come for them. The couple ran on the hunt and did not have bikes, but still managed to answer more clues correctly than anyone else. Much to our surprise, we finished fourth in the hunt and another couple about our same age finished third, so the young people did not sweep the prizes. The thing I remember most about the day was that two young ladies in a car stopped my wife and I on Anderson Street to ask why there were so many people running around downtown wearing red t-shirts. We told them that we were participating in a scavenger hunt for a diamond ring. The ladies were surprised and told us that they didn’t know such fun events took place here. “Stick around Fayetteville,” I told them. “More of this is coming.” Bailey’s says they are doing it again next year.CV ayetteville is full of surprises. Just when I think I’ve seen it all, somebody comes up with something new. Several weeks ago Bailey’s Fine Jewelry opened a store in the Cross Creek Mall, but they didn’t just hang up a banner like you might expect for a grand opening. Instead, as a promotion for their new store, they held a high tech scavenger hunt to give away a $12,000 diamond ring on 12 | November • 2010