Five out of six! Today’s scavenger hunt was one for the books. We had one task; to scourer the confounds of downtown Davis and take a picture with the artwork or place in the photos we selected. We had six pictures and one hour. Throughout the 8 weeks of the course, we had to visit several locations throughout Davis.
Navigating through Davis isn’t as easy when we have no idea where we’re going. My group grabbed our pictures and we were off on the hunt. Our first stop was frat house right on the edge of campus. It was a quick find because luckily one of my group members is a Delta Gamma, so this house was a familiar house for her. The next stop was a Davis piece of artwork. It was a cylinder. Oh! Not any ordinary cylinder but one with balloons. One artwork down, and we were off to the next one. Our third stop was a tricky one. We had four locations left and no clue where to go. We remembered we passed the John Natsoulas gallery that just happens to have the Davis art walk map with all the famous Davis artworks and their locations. To our surprise, our third artwork we needed to locate was right in front of the gallery. It was a delivery crate right in front of the gallery. Three pictures and 30 minutes left. We were on the search for the hotdog bench. We used the map to get us in the general area of where the bench but we couldn’t seem to find it. We asked a local, sweeping leaves in front of the movie theater and he pointed across the street. We passed right by it! We were out of time, but we tried to squeeze one more photo in. It was a wall mural right next to the central. As we were making our way through the streets, one of our group members ended up splitting up. We decided to just give up and just make our way back to Olson when we staring right across the mural. Our 5th photo just happened to be across the street to where we were biking and then a simple act of luck, our missing member showed up at the corner of the street. Everything just came together. We all headed back to class to share our pictures.
Eight weeks, eight Fridays, eight adventures. As we shared our pictures, it really hit me how in a couple weeks, how much I really got to know Davis. Although UCD plays a large role in the community and the city itself, the city of Davis has so much more to offer outside of the campus. Whether it’s the art galleries and art works scattered throughout the city, social hotspots, café shops, museums, etc… This class really opened my eyes to why people keep coming back to Davis even after they graduate. Davis is a city built to thrive and has a warm community that makes Davis a destination spot. So for those who have yet to venture out to the great city of Davis, I urge you to “go seek YOUR OWN great perhaps” because you never know what giraffe could be waiting for you around the corner.
