2024 Winner. . .
The Eye was Found late on Monday, September 2nd, by Dylan Rief, who was visiting the area for labor day from Montana, and happened to be exploring an out-of-the way corner that he’d once wandered to at a previous visit. He was unaware of the hunt, amazed to learn about it, and really excited – he said he was going to put the prize money towards gas money home, and the rest into his retirement.
We have decided that though there was a winner and the prize was honored, the hunt didn’t last long enough. We still want to have our event, and encourage people to go out and explore, be active, and have fun. Because of that, we have left the Eye hidden. While we can’t fund a second prize, we will still post clues, and registered participants who want to still hunt will get as their prize a steeply discounted registration for next year’s hunt, as a way of saying thank you for signing up to help support the event.
2024 Updates
Our lauch in 2023 was fun, but also educational. . .
There are some changes we’re making this year:
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- online payment at the time of registration! That’s right, you won’t have to physically come in to register. Our registration form has changed a bit to try to accommodate this.
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- Pre-ordering/registering. Last year we ended up ordering way too many shirts because we assumed there would be a lot more people wanting to participate. This year we hope to bring down excess cost by getting closer to the number of shirts we’ll need. We expect shirts to arrive late in August, just before we start posting clues.
- Discounted early registration – we’ve lowered the cost of registration so it isn’t as much of a cost burden to register and support the event! But the cost decrease will only be around during pre-registration. Later registrants will have a higher cost – the hope is that we can make a large order for t-shirts for all pre-registrants, which will bring costs down.
- Staff Participation – Tillamook Vision Center staff still aren’t eligible to find and win the prize, but they’ll be given exclusive clues, and if you run into them while you’re out hunting, they can give you an extra clue in exchange for a picture and a social media post!
- Pre-ordering/registering. Last year we ended up ordering way too many shirts because we assumed there would be a lot more people wanting to participate. This year we hope to bring down excess cost by getting closer to the number of shirts we’ll need. We expect shirts to arrive late in August, just before we start posting clues.
Why the changes?
We’ve never run an event like this before, and in many ways we didn’t know what to expect. We made assumptions going in, and this year we have information from experience and can run and plan this a little better.
First, last year we didn’t have as much participation as we were hoping for – at all. Hey, we really thought that a treasure in the woods would attract more people! But regardless, because of participation was low, the event last year ended up costing way more than it generated (shirts are expensive, aside from the prize itself). We’d really wanted and expected to raise excess money and be able to make a cool, meaningful donation somewhere – in the end we were able to make a donation in the form of a bunch of extra shirts. Not really what we were hoping for, but hey, it was something.
Because of that experience, this year we’re planning ahead of time to make at least a minimum of a $500 donation with this event, in the form of a scholarship to someone in the Graduating Class of 2025, which will be open to all residents of Tillamook County. If we have enough participants in the contest that the event exceeds it’s cost and raises money, any excess will increase the amount of that scholarship.
So share this with other people and invite them to register!