Another fun sticker-seeker visit

Although we were sad to say goodbye to our foster dog Suki, we are so happy that we she has joined Team Mindawg and will spend the rest of her life being as spoiled as she deserves to be. We had an awesome weekend exploring some of Seattle and Tacoma's best spots and thanks to the 85 degree weather had a chance to hike up so Team Mindawg could find the Washington Ape Cache. This photo shows Suki standing in triumph atop the cache. Most of the trail was still in 2' plus deep snow, so we were pretty wet after hiking, but it was worth it.

We even managed to find a waymark for a new category and will log visits to some of the many waymarks within the Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle. (Dang you US.Globetrotters for waymarking the news stand!) The yearly cheese festival was going on in the market, which was fun (I'll try to waymark it in the festival category soon) and Team Mindawg was able to meet up with a friend at the Pike Place Starbucks location (first Starbucks store).

Hopefully they will come back and visit us soon and we can take them to some of the other awesome spots in Washington.

End of an era

Today I archived 2 of our geocaches and will archive another in a couple of weeks. My heart's just not in it anymore, but it still felt sad because it broke up a series of caches that I had created called the "Sculpture Scramble". I kept the 3 caches that are still in place - the other 2 were muggled recently - and will archive the final "mystery" cache after I give cachers that have found all of the clues a chance to find the final.

I got tired of heading out in the rain and digging through leaves, twigs and banana slugs to maintain my caches over the winter; tired of some of the pissy South Puget Sound cachers that emailed about how I could do the series better. Plus, in my area there are a ton of geocaches and good spots for caches are at a premium. I don't want to keep someone from placing a new cache because mine is still there.

In Washington you can cache year round if you don't mind getting soggy 8 months out of 12. I mind, and so our caching adventures were limited to camping trips and road trips over the summer. We'll still cache when we travel because it's a great way to stop and stretch your legs at rest areas. In fact, in the next few weeks I'll be creating routes to find caches along the roads we'll be travelling in the midwest. However, waymarking is where it's at for team Hikenutty at this point.

We had a great waymarking day trip to the Washington State Capitol and the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge this weekend. We posted 26 waymarks, with 8 in new categories. It was a waymarking bonanza! I'll post about the adventure later this week.