A letter from the mayor of Jacksonville

In March 2013 we enjoyed a vacation in the USA. We drove along the east coast from Washington D.C. to Miami with several overnight stops. Just like other tourists we visited historic places, did the usual sightseeing and found a cache now and then. But during our vacations we also try to plan a bit of time to do some activities a regular tourist doesn't get around to.
This time it was a visit to the city Jacksonville, in the north of the state Florida.

In our travel guide wasn't much written about the city, but on the geocaching forum we had read about the JaxParks Challenge. For this challenge the city is divided in 6 districts and in every district you'll have to visit at least 4 parks. We were surprised by the great diversity of parks: from beach parks at the sea side to nature and sports parks all over town and historic parks in the west. And in the middle, of course the hearth of the city, with its sky scrapers, but also special sights like the Friendship Fountain, once the biggest fountain in the world.

We visited 27 parks in Jacksonville. We "only" needed to find code words in 24 parks, but because in 3 parks the caches were gone, we visited some more to complete the challenge.
The caches were mostly traditionals and we found them easily. Walking distances were small, so the challenge is also very suitable for families with smaller children. And we had enough time left to explore the areas, instead of just spending time to search for one cache.

After we had found all the code words, we sent an e-mail to the organizer.
We soon got an e-mail back in which we were congratulated with completing the challenge. Unfortunately all the JaxParks geocoins (present for the first 100 cachers to complete the challenge) were already gone. We didn't know this because this info wasn't updated on the website, so we were a bit disappointed but since we had a great time by seeing the city the way the locals see it in their free time we didn't really mind.

But the next day another email in our inbox: he had told our story to the management and the director was so impressed that geocachers all the way from the Netherlands had completed this challenge that she wanted to give us her coin! It would be sent to us in a couple of weeks. Wow, that was great news, without doubt this would become the best souvenir from this vacation!

A few weeks later we got very special mail.....a letter from the mayor of Jacksonville, what a surprise!

No idea what we like more, the beautiful coin or this special letter, but a memorable experience it definitely is:

Now there is a new challenge: the JaxParks Challenge 2013 and we wish everyone who is enjoying Jacksonville a great time with memories to last, just like we did.