The D Team: Orienteering at EP Tom Sawyer Park

Map and a compass are the basics

So I have another race coming up on Saturday. It is Mission Lite up in Indiana. This race will be my first orienteering race with canoeing, biking, and running. Fortunately, it is a team race and my partner, aka my husband, knows how to orienteer and is trying to catch me up to speed. We checked out the orienteering course recently at EP Tom Sawyer Park.
I am part of the Louisville Orienteering facebook group so I found out about this course through them. My husband has a few orienteering races under his belt and has enjoyed them. This group helps to stay up to date on races and events relating to orienteering in the area.
What is orienteering? From the club's website, "Orienteering is a sport that involves using a detailed orienteering style topographical map to navigate one's way around a course with designated control points which are drawn on the map."

Start and finish location

The map and hints for this course are on their page. The hint page also gave safety suggestions which you should read before going out. We had trouble printing the map and ended up doing just a screen shot. It was sufficient enough for us to use. After our picnic dinner at the park, we were off chasing our first checkpoint with our 3 kids. We were able to find the first 5 checkpoints before realizing we needed to head home since it was past the kids' bedtime. Everyone was so engrossed in finding the next checkpoint we lost track of time. We look forward to doing the last half of the course soon.
We have not really explored EP Tom Sawyer Park much outside of the playground and the fitness trail. The orienteering trail gave us a nice tour of the park. We saw the RC planes, lots of huge ant hills, the creek, and more cool things. It was a fun, active thing to do with the family while learning something new - at least I was learning something new with orienteering.
I would highly recommend giving it a try for something different to do while hiking at the park. However, I would also make sure you have someone that knows what they are doing to teach you as you go along.
The Louisville Orienteering club is starting to have their summer sprint events this Tuesday evening. The first one is meeting at Brown Park. This would be a good way to meet others interested in the sport, get out into fresh air, and get a little 'fit in'.