Tacoma/Pierce County Habitat for Humanity

Beyond The Backyard

Tacoma, WA

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This adventure challenge is designed to bring your squad closer together and get you to explore the surrounding area while having fun and staying safe. Please follow all local and state laws and be respectful of anyone or any business you interact with along the way.

Here Are The Rules

1. Read each challenge carefully and click on any provided links to view helpful pictures, videos, and requirements for each challenge.

2. Complete as many challenges as you can between 10am and 1pm. Challenges can be completed in any order. Challenges are often designed to bring you together through fun, meaningful, difficult, or embarrassing experiences, so complete whatever challenges you and your group are comfortable with. Just be sure to create some unforgettable moments and content that your group will cherish forever!

3. Some challenges may require a few basic supplies to complete them. Figuring out how to obtain these supplies somewhere in the area is part of the strategy so work together and use what you’ve got to get what you need.

4. Team members need to stay together throughout the adventure, however, if you are all at the same location and searching for an item you can spread out until it is found and then regroup to take the necessary picture/video.  

5. Each challenge will require you to take either a picture or video and submit it to our live HQ throughout the race via the Bonfyre app. Our HQ will review every submission and either verify it or give you guidance on how to complete the challenge correctly.

6. Capture as many team members in your picture or video as possible. When out in the community, teams often ask a kind stranger to take their picture or video so that the entire team can get on film. If it's necessary to have someone on your own team film certain challenges be sure to rotate who that person is so that everyone is actively involved in completing challenges throughout the adventure.

PHYSICAL

#1: Madison Meadow, Tacoma Habitat’s current construction project, will include the affiliate’s 300th new construction home! To celebrate this incredible milestone, and honor every volunteer over the years that helped build each home, get to the worksite and complete the “Nail Driving Challenge” (work together as a team to hammer a certain number of nails into a board). Click HERE for details on how to get to the site and where to park. Once on site, find the staff member in charge of the challenge for instructions. After you’re done, submit a fun team picture flexing your muscles while holding up the designated challenge completed sign.

#2: A number of teams in today’s race are made up of Girl Scouts! Part of the Girl Scout Law is to “use resources wisely, and make the world a better place”. So to honor this important commitment to our planet, anywhere around the area find a canister of some sort that has the triangular recycling symbol on it. You are looking for an actual recycling disposal can, where someone would get rid of recyclable materials, and not just any product that has the recycling symbol on it such as a plastic bottle. Once you’ve found one, take a picture of your entire team all completing any variation of the "Tree Pose" while the canister with the recycling symbol on it is clearly visible in the background. To view a picture of someone properly performing a variation of the Tree Pose click HERE.

#3: Get your team to the location of the sunken car seen HERE, which is located at a former Coca Cola bottling plant. Once there, find the buckets filled with cold soapy water stationed along the sidewalk to the right of the sunken car. The buckets are roughly 20 feet apart from each other so have some team members at each end. Then soak the sponge in the bucket and toss it from behind one bucket to the teammate standing somewhere behind the other buckets. Take a video, or multiple videos if needed, of at least half your team members successfully catching a tossed sponge (using their hands) that traveled the full length from bucket to bucket in the air. In addition to your videos, after you are finished please take a fun (hopefully somewhat soaked) team picture with the sunken car to remember this experience.

#4: Crabbing is one of Puget Sound’s most popular recreational fisheries. Each year, sport fishers catch more than 1.5 million pounds of Dungeness crab, using pots, ring nets, and – in the case of wade and dive fishers – their bare hands. Located somewhere around Tacoma, find the huge crab seen HERE. Once you’ve found it, take a video of your team all “Crab Walking” at least 10 feet forward or backward while the monster-sized crab is visible in the background. To learn how to properly crab walk you can click HERE.

SKILL

#5: Get your team to Tinkertopia (located at 1914 Pacific Ave), which is a creative shop that works with local businesses to capture safe, reusable materials from the wastestream, and reimagines them as unusual arts and craft supplies. Upon arriving find Ms. Darcy who will help you get started. Then as a team, work together to build a model of a home that you would all love to live in together! Each team member needs to imagine, create and contribute at least one unique feature to the project that they consider important towards making it feel like a home. Whether that’s a garden, a pool, a large dinner table, etc, is up to each team member. Work quickly but also make sure you’re creating something meaningful that represents the collaboration between everyone on your team and the conversations you’ll have about what makes a building feel like a home for each person. When finished, take a memorable team picture with your home.

#6: On any flat outdoor surface create a tower of 20 plastic Solo cups (or similar style) by placing the first one upside down, the second one right side up, the third one upside down, the fourth one right side up, and so on. As you follow that pattern every cup will either balance rim to rim, or bottom to bottom. To see an example of what the tower should look like click HERE. The cups should be completely balanced and free standing (not held together with anything or supported in any way). Once you’ve successfully built your tower to be 20 cups high take a quick team picture with your structure before it falls down.

#7: Doing well in this adventure race will not only require teamwork, but also the ability to focus. Click HERE to get to the brain puzzles and then select “Memory”. Then, anywhere along the way have at least two team members achieve a score of 50 or more points. Once you have your two super focused teammates, take a celebratory picture of them while they’re displaying their phone screens and the point totals are clearly visible. You can submit an additional close-up picture of the two devices to clearly show the point totals if necessary.

#8: Get your team to Titlow Beach, where some of the lowest tides of the year are occurring right now. Once there, take a video of any member of your team successfully skipping a rock across the water and getting it to skip at least 5 times before going under. Make sure to cheer your fellow teammates on as everyone attempts it, and do your best to capture the skips on video so our HQ can properly verify it. There is another free event happening along the beach during this race that will offer locals the chance to learn about tide pool life from a certified naturalist, so feel free to check it out if interested.

FIND

#9: Please note this challenge opens at 11am. This week was Turn Beauty Inside Out Day, an annual holiday aimed at motivating women and young girls to appreciate their individualism and unique qualities and traits, and not to be swayed by the media on how a woman’s beauty should be measured. To celebrate this powerful mission, get your team to 7 Seas Brewery and Taproom, located at 2101 Jefferson Ave, and complete the “Beautiful Person Challenge”. Upon arriving, approach people in the establishment and tell them “we think you are beautiful”. Make sure to say it with sincerity but continue moving throughout the space, approaching strangers, employees, or anyone you think should know just how beautiful they are. You are searching for a secret under cover agent (the “Beautiful Person”) and once you say the 5 word phrase to them they will respond by saying “not nearly as beautiful as a family getting to move into a Habitat home”. Once you have found them, celebrate and take a beautiful team selfie with the secret person for verification.

#10: Grizzly bears are an endangered species here in Washington, with only a few hundred believed to be remaining and the last confirmed sighting of one was in 1996. That is, until today, when your team finds the grizzly seen HERE, and you take a dramatic selfie with it while acting like it’s chasing you through the South End Tacoma store that it calls home.

#11: Get your team to any hardware store around the area (excluding the Habitat Store next to the starting location). Once there, grab a measuring tape and start measuring employees heights (after asking their permission of course) until you find someone that is between 5’4” and 5’8” tall. This person should be wearing some sort of attire or an ID badge to prove they work there. Then take a fun team picture with your perfectly sized friend and the measuring tape stretched vertically next to them so their height can be verified. If HQ can’t verify the height from a distance you might be asked to take a closer picture of them or film a video actually measuring them.

#12: In just a few weeks Taylor Swift and her Eras Tour will be in Seattle! To get Ready For It, take a team picture with any parked vehicle that has a license plate which contains numerical digits that add up to Taylor’s lucky number, no more, no less. So if Taylor’s lucky number were 18 (it’s not) and the plate were "CF7H 5K6" it would be acceptable because those numbers add up to 18 and there aren't any additional numbers.

FUN

#13: Get to any location where you can make a photocopy. Then use the machine to make a hilarious image of each team member’s face pressed onto (or hovering over) the glass surface. If possible, have two or more people packed in together to one copy, as long as everyone's faces can be captured and the staff on site allows it. When finished, take a fun picture of everyone together, holding/displaying their memorable photocopies.

#14: The Seattle Seahawks were one of the few teams that had multiple 1st Round picks in the recent NFL Draft, so there is excitement around the upcoming season and their new teammates! Anywhere around the city find a logo of the Seattle Seahawks proudly being displayed, worn, flown, etc. Then take a video of your group pretending to spike an imaginary football and immediately breaking into your very best celebratory touchdown dance while the logo is clearly visible in the background. If you need some inspiration for your performance you can click HERE.

#15: Anywhere around the area find a Porta Potty. Then wrap any one member of your team from head to toe in toilet paper (or multiple team members if they want to get in on the fun) leaving as few gaps as possible except around their nose/mouth so they can breathe easily. Then take a fun team picture with your newly wrapped teammate while the Porta Potty is visible in the background. It is recommended that you buy your own roll of strong toilet paper for this challenge not only because it wraps around a teammate better but also because you don’t want to use up all of the toilet paper in the actual Porta Potty.

#16: If you participated in Beyond The Backyard races in past years, you may still have a bad garlic taste in your mouth, or your lips might still be burning from hot sauce. Well, don’t worry, this challenge will help eliminate that. Anywhere around the area find and purchase a package of flat fillet anchovies or rolled anchovies, not the paste kind. Then take a video of your team members, at the same time, all consuming a separate bite-sized piece of this unique food. Make sure to film for at least 30 seconds after you all put it in your mouth, to document your reaction. Disclaimer, this will likely not be pleasant, which is exactly the point. Because a team that suffers together, grows together.