EMPO's National Orienteering Day event took place on Sunday, September 16, 2007 at Five Rivers Environmental Education Center in Delmar. We took advantage of Five Rivers' Fall Festival the day before to advertise the sport and raise awareness of our favorite activity among other outdoor lovers. Thanks to Reid Smalley's display board covered with photographs of EMPO members in action and copies of our park maps, we reached a number of new people, some of whom came to Five Rivers again on Sunday to try an official course. The weekend's weather contributed to the turnout, as both days dawned cool but turned sunny and bright later on. Thanks also to Craig Thompson and the staff at Five Rivers for the great buffet for Festival volunteers and for all their assistance.

On Saturday at the Festival we offered a demo course with four control points near the parking lot - two easy, one slightly harder (off a bend in a trail) and one "hardest" (a spur). At least five groups went out and three or four returned to collect the offered discount coupon, having visited all four demo points.

In addition to our standard novice and advanced novice courses on Sunday, which were sampled by a total of 22 individuals or groups (some on their second course), course designer Glen Tryson offered a twist on the conventional Score-O course (where each control is worth a stated point value and you can visit them in any order) - Poker-O! You could visit any number of controls to build the highest value poker hand you could within 90 minutes, but you were supposed to punch at no more than 5 (as in a poker hand) or you would forfeit your highest value card(s). Handouts detailing poker-hand rankings were available at registration/start, and we supplied pencils which you could use to note what card was at which control. There were 20 controls marked on the Poker-O map, each control flag having one of 20 playing cards (5 from each suit). The highest-ranked hand possible was a full house. Results are listed in order of hand ranking.

Speed certainly helped our eventual winner, Dylan Thies, who was able to visit 18 of the controls before punching five boxes corresponding to an ace-high flush in hearts. Dylan completed his course in 1:24:29. Fastest on the Novice course (White) was young Adam Bobok in 15:40, followed closely by his sister Sara in 15:53. On the Advanced Novice (Yellow) course, Tom Forbes showed he was a quick learner, turning in the fastest time, 24:32 (after having completed the white course with his son Evan, who was one of our NOD raffle winners as well).

We raffled off two Brunton compasses and two $5 EMPO-discount coupons - the winners of the compasses were Jeromy Lensky and Joshua Laramie; Evan Forbes and Jimmy Laramie won the $5-off coupons, which we hope will encourage them to try orienteering again!

Reid Smalley, Dmitri Soloviev, and Bill and Shelly Jameson joined Glen and Janet at the Fall Festival, and returned on Sunday to help out again, joined by Gabor Bobok, Bob Lange, and Dylan Thies who offered assistance ranging from instruction to registration to control pick-up. Thanks to all!

- Glen and Janet Tryson