Today we completed the Batona 500, an orienteering event held at Batsto in Wharton State Forest. Unlike most of the competitors, I knew the lay of the land pretty well as I have hiked this area extensively over the last five years.
My mother is visiting from sunny Florida and I put her to work. The 3.9 km course took us about five miles of bushwhacking to complete in an hour and twenty minutes. We found all 14 stations on this extremely warm fall day.
Mom has never orienteered before. Her thinking, like mine originally, was this is a compass sport. It has not proven to be that yet. Instead, it is a map reading sport. The orienteering maps are very detailed. Over 300 runners participated today. We kept to the non-competitive course. There was a ton of scouts here. We helped out one boy who was able to outrun us old folks, but who sometimes didn’t have a feel for where he was.
We did well today. Unlike a couple weeks ago, we didn’t blow any of the stations. We did walk by #2, but not by much. We did not approach station 12 optimally. We circled around a loop instead of cutting directly to it. The rest of the course was completed rather directly, although we did not run.
Surprisingly, there was water at several of the stations. That was welcomed on this very warm day. We completed the course proudly and then toured the Batsto Visitor Center where the “new” displays are.
We celebrated the completion of the course with a 12-pack of Yeungling.
