Exploring Nashville’s Downtown Through A Strayboots Competitive Scavenger Hunt

Full disclosure, Strayboots did provide our competitive scavenger hunt, but all opinions, as always, are my own.

I first heard about stray boots sitting in the Old Absinth House in New Orleans in January 2014. Stacey and I overheard a group of women hunting for an answer to a trivia question, which I knew. After giving them the answer, my curiosity got the best of me and I had to ask them what they were doing and they told us about this scavenger hunt app called Strayboots. We immediately downloaded it and had the best time exploring New Orleans in a different way.

Fast forward to 2017, Strayboots is still offering their app tours which involve city tours, custom events and mega city tours, but they’ve also added something even bigger to their already amazing list of activities: competitive scavenger hunt. A lot of companies use this as a team building activity and they can accommodate large groups in over 50 cities worldwide.

I partnered with Strayboots to give their competitive scavenger hunt a go. Here in the FTLOW headquarters, it’s basically just me and my husband, but we brought two of my best friends, Stacey and Tyler, into the mix to give this tour a go.

How It Works:

Whoever coordinates the hunt will receive a phone call to get all the details in place. Just tell them how many teams you’ll have, provide your email, and when the competitive scavenger hunt will begin. I really like that you coordinate all of this on the phone because there was someone right there if you have any questions about how the hunt is going to work.

The morning of your competitive scavenger hunt, you receive your activation codes, and enter the email addresses of team members. You assemble teams ahead of time and decide on a team leader. The team leader is the person whose phone you’ll use to run the scavenger hunt. No app downloading in necessary, as these scavenger hunts are done in your web browser on your smart phone.

Simply enter your activation codes, and take off after that. You’re asked to find certain locations and then complete some sort of task. It’s often finding a name, object or quote and entering that to answer some sort of trivia question, but some involve taking sometimes-silly photos! The teams leave from the same location and then head in different directions.

Our Nashville Experience:

We all met up in Nashville and split into to teams. We decided on boys vs. girls. Even though this wasn’t team-building from a business point of view, it was friendship-building. My friend Tyler lives in Nashville, so I was excited that he and Matt able to get to know each other better and it gave Stacey and me plenty of girl-time to catch up since she’s in St. Louis. Of course, we had to cheese it up to make our team photos!

 vs. 

The Nashville competitive scavenger hunt takes you all around downtown near broadway. I loved getting to do the hunt in this area because it lets you dig a little deeper into a touristy area. I also love that the tours was totally doable on foot and took us right around two hours to complete. Plus, when we finished the competitive scavenger hunt we were in a good spot to celebrate with a beer.

Stacey and I kept our traditional name of PS[insertlocation] for our team name. The boys, in true form, wanted to name themselves ‘The Winners’ and made a typo! Ha! Because it was boys vs. girls we got pretty competitive and the smack talk was real. Luckily the Strayboots site that you’re on has a section made just for smack talk, or other, more normal, communication, if you’re less competitive than I am… Of course, the boys did go down and the girls won the competition!

The one thing I missed about the experience of the app, is that the two times I used their regular tours, we made something different of it. We would duck into bars or shops along the way and savor some of the experiences a little more. Our competitive nature on this one had us ready to win.

After the Competition:

One of the things I loved most about using their competitive scavenger hunt for a group is that when the competition was over, they emailed a link to all who was involved with the photos you took during the hunt, the scores of the teams and kept the fun going. I loved that everyone was able to immediately have access to not only their own photos, but also to the photos that everyone else submitted, which makes for a lot of laughs.

For the Love of Wanderlust Tips:

⋙ When choosing a team leader remember you’re using their smartphone. I would pick the person who has the fastest phone and/or mobile plan. I know using my phone led to loads of buffering because my service isn’t the best at all.

⋙ You will be walking a lot, so choose comfy shoes! I would even say wear clothing you’re comfortable walking in.

⋙ Have fun with it. Take advantage of the fun features of the competitive scavenger hunt, like the chat and map functions. It’s pretty cool!

If you’re looking for a new, interesting and fun way to really dig into a city AND get to know a group of people, team build or just compete against friends, try using a Strayboots competitive scavenger hunt!

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