When the Oktoberfest medallion hunts is tradition, finding it is only half the fun

Peggy Manson created this monster. A family that’s determined with being together and finding the Oktoberfest medallion — even when they can’t be together.

For the second time in nearly two decades of hunting, Manson, one of her daughters, Sarah, and their dog Roscoe found the Oktoberfest medallion Thursday taped under the rail of a footbridge near Forest Hills Golf Course.

Then the fun began, like it did all those years ago, when Manson and both her daughters found it the first time.

“We found it 16 years ago,” she said excitedly on La Crosse Talk PM. “I looked back at those pictures. I can’t believe how young the kids were.

“And, my older daughter, who bossed her sister to make her look harder. She said, ‘You get behind me. We’re both going to look.’ And, boom, there it was. It’s just such a fun family thing to do. We love doing that, and we had a blast. Sixteen years ago, we just went crazy.”

Part of that having a blast was then taping the medallion to one of the kid’s legs and going to Gundersen, where Peggy’s husband worked, telling him she actually hurt her leg while looking for the medallion. Of course, when the pant leg came up, there’s the treasure — a good laugh they’ll remember forever.

Next they went to Shopko, where their son was working. Told a co-worker there was a delivery. They hid by the clothes and watched him open a box with the medallion. More laughs. More memories.

“It was a blast, and we just learned a ton about La Crosse,” Manson said, adding the hunt even continued when the kids weren’t in town. “They would send me clues, at like 6 in the morning. ‘Mom, get out of bed and go out to here.’ … ‘You gotta get up!’ And I’d be like, ‘I have a life here. I can’t be looking for this alone.’”

This year, the whole family, together for breakfast but only mom and daughter — Roscoe hadn’t a clue — knew they had the medallion. And they hid it under one of a dozen doughnuts in a box for the daughter that missed out on the morning hunt.

“And she took that first doughnut and did not see the medallion,” Manson said. “And her husband saw it from across the room, and her friend Kaitlin saw it. But she said, ‘What are you looking at? What?’ And then she looked down and just screamed!”

After finding it, Manson did get some questions from friends.

“Somebody asked me today, ‘Do you have any advice for people looking for it?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely not!,” Munson exclaimed.

But what she hadn’t realized, as she told the story of finding the medallion, she was giving away their family methodology over the air — how they dissected the clues to find it on that footbridge.

It took three clues 16 years ago and four clues this time.

With the $500 prize, Manson said, since Roscoe only got about a 5-minute walk, because they found the medallion so quickly, there are some treats in store for him with some of that money.