Teddy is ready to put Loudouners to the test

Third annual contest sends stuffed bear across the county to quiz residents on geography

Think you know Loudoun County's nooks and crannies? A contest sponsored by the mapping office might humble you.

Photographs of a teddy bear at 20 unidentified points throughout the county -- old, new, east and west-- went up on a Flickr page Saturday. What's that brick building in the background of the first image? Which library is behind the stuffed animal in the second? Where are the silo, community center, tractor, general store, house, cemetery and mailbox pictured in other shots?

These are clues in the third annual "Where's Teddy in Loudoun County?" game, timed to coincide with Geography Awareness Week. Residents have until Dec. 1 to e-mail guesses about where each picture was taken-- the more specific, the better -- to mapping@loudoun.gov. [A link to the pictures is at http://loudoun.gov/gis.]

"There are a lot of people who, even though they live here, don't really know much about their county," said organizer Larry Stipek, the county's director of mapping and geographic information. "There are clues in the photos. If you look closely, you'll find a few clues. It will start you off on a search to figure out exactly what and where that thing is."

Last year's images included Northern Virginia Community College, the Loudoun Heritage Farm Museum, Middleburg's Red Fox Inn, the Old Goose Creek Bridge, Leesburg Executive Airport and a George Washington University building.

"We will not be using any of those," Stipek said. "It changes every year."

The contestant with the most right answers will win a picture book, a county T-shirt and a fleece blanket with the county seal. Second- and third-place winners will get the blanket and T-shirt, from the county store. Bragging rights might be worth more than the prizes.

A little more than a dozen entries came in last year. Stipek said he hopes that more people get into it the third time around. Stipek spent Veterans Day driving around and snapping most of this year's pictures, and he's paying for the prizes out of his pocket.

Assisting him in his pet project is Kristin Brown, manager of the office's development and analysis division. She says finding the right answers for the pictures is challenging but doable.

"We're hoping maybe it will get people to open their eyes and look around," she said. "Loudoun has so many newcomers, and I don't think they all realize how diverse the county is. I'm hoping this is a way to encourage folks to drive around a bit and see parts of the county they may not normally get a chance to in their day-to-day life."

Neither Brown nor Stipek is a native Loudouner. He grew up in Chicago, and she is from Kentucky. Both live in Leesburg.

Stipek said four or five people got all the answers right last year. The most impressive was the Hess family.

Liz Hess, 46, of Ashburn decided that participating would mean quality family time. So the part-time government contractor created a PowerPoint called "Hess Teddyventure," based on brainstorming with history books and online mapping software.

Then she, her husband, Greg, and their four kids (triplets now in fifth grade and a third-grader) hopped into the family's Honda Odyssey minivan for an odyssey of their own. The kids brought stuffed animals, and Hess took pictures of them in front of each site Stipek had selected.

"I meant for it to be a two-hour thing, and it ended up being six hours," she said. "I won a teddy last year. I'm very happy with him."