Fall Take It Outside Challenge offers plenty of prizes and a myriad of missions
If you haven’t tackled the Take It Outside Challenge yet or if you're raring to go for another session, get ready for the Fall Frolic, which begins Sunday, Oct. 6.
Challenge participants will have until Saturday, Dec. 14, to complete nature-themed missions to earn points and win prizes.
To get started, download the free Goosechase app from the App Store or Google Play to your smartphone. Then, search for Take It Outside Challenge: Fall Frolic or enter the search code ED7MGP to join. This is the second year of the challenge, which was made up of one yearlong challenge last year and seasonal sessions this year.
Each week, new missions will be released that require participants to check in at specific GPS locations, take photos of flora and fauna, pose for selfies and answer trivia questions.
Point totals will be listed on a leaderboard in the Goosechase app so you can see how you and others are doing in the competition. Make sure you read the online rules before you begin competing.
Prizes
Amazon gift cards in the amounts of $500, $250 and $150 will be awarded for first, second and third places, respectively. But you can only win a seasonal cash prize once.
Forty-five addtional prizes, the most ever for a Take It Outside Challenge, will be awarded randomly to competitors. Those prizes are:
- Five prize packs provided by Wild Birds Unlimited Joliet
- Five cookie card packs (four four-card packs and one five-card pack) provided by Crumbl Cookies in Mokena
- Three Summer Fun Monee Reservoir prize packs. Each prize pack has a retail value of $94 and will include four 1-hour kayak rentals, four meal deals (sandwich, chips, pop and ice cream) and four Monee Reservoir can koozies. Valid for the 2025 season.
- Three half-day rentals of a single or tandem kayak, as well as two Monee Reservoir can koozies. Retail value $35. Valid for 2025 season.
- Two $50 Forest Preserve District gift cards
- Four $25 gift cards to the Creamery
- Four $25 gift cards to Portillos
- Two $50 Dick’s Sporting Goods gift cards
- Two $50 Bass Pro gift cards
- Four $25 Potbelly gift cards
- 10 Take It Outside prize packs (Take It Outside shirt, hat, mug)
Zoom in on some fun
In addition to more prizes, past participants will be glad to hear that the zoom feature will now be available when snapping pics.
“This is one request from participants that we've asked Goosechase for, and they’ve come through for us,” said Chad Merda, the Forest Preserve’s head of digital marketing strategy/engagement. “Having the zoom feature will open up some new opportunities for us in how we can structure missions.”
Also, the missions will continue to be geographically grouped.
“This was new in the summer version of the challenge, and the feedback we received was extremely positive,” Merda said.
Wildcard missions
There will be a big batch of wildcard missions released in the first week that will require people to be “in the right place at the right time,” Merda added.
“These wildcard missions will really require them to have an eagle eye when they are out in the preserves,” he added. “These wildcard missions could require people to take a photo of a skunk while out on the trails, find a specific bridge tag that only appears in one spot in all of the preserves, or find the tiny 3-inch-by-3-inch Willy heads.”
Since it debuted, the Take It Outside Challenge has been wildly popular and has enriched the lives of many who have joined. Many participants have said that they made new friends, learned about new preserves and improved their health while competing.
“Last year, the Take It Outside Challenge broke the record for the largest Goosechase experience ever with 117,000 missions completed by participants, and now we’re on pace to blow past that number in 2024,” Merda said. “The support we’ve received from the community, both from participants as well as sponsors, has been incredible.”
In addition to the missions, there also are two Take It Outside Meetups scheduled on Oct. 23 and Nov. 17, which provide participants an opporunity to meet others doing the challenge, exchange tips, do some missions together and form new friendships. There also is a Take It Outside guided hike on Dec. 8 at Lake Renwick Heron Rookery.
Funding for this campaign is provided by The Nature Foundation of Will County. Additional prizes are furnished by Wild Birds Unlimited in Joliet and Crumbl Cookies in Mokena.