The Mean Streets of Seattle

Oh, yes, we cached. There were tons of Adventure Labs on site, but we got out and got to the job and then some. First, we stopped at the Space Needle grounds at a totem pole with a cache attached. It was easy enough to find because, as you can see, there were already cachers there who had it in their hands. And this was before we even made it to the car! But then my eagle eye noticed something … unusual. Remember I mentioned there’s an Unknown Cache here, and you need to go to the top of the Space Needle to solve it?

Well, imagine my surprise to see this in the windows of an office building across the street! I guess someone thought this might be better than thousands of cachers coming up to the top for it! Of course, I’m not giving this one away. You should have been there! I took notes, corrected coordinates, and ended up snagging it as we traveled about over the afternoon (though I forgot to photograph it because there were just so many to grab!). We continued on to another Unknown that Buckandi had solved before we arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Considering what he had to do to solve it, there was no way it was going to be left alone. It probably required writing a program to solve since it stated that you needed to be a hacker, but he and his lovely wife managed to do it with the help of a bogglingly complex Excel spreadsheet. We made it to a park with the most amazing view of the city.

I kid thee not when I use the word “breathtaking.” Of course, it was a nano under a park table and bench, and there were muggles having a cookout there! Under any other circumstances, we probably would have let it go, but not this time… Buck went right up to them and told them what we were doing and why we needed to search their table! SoaringEagle and I chatted with them while he looked. He found it, and we all signed it. Sure, it was stolen valor because he did all the work, and I just stood around and looked pretty. But, as I have often said, victory requires no explanation!

We grabbed more caches and Adventure Labs!

We stopped for artisanal chocolate and got more caches!

We saw stunning views and got even more caches! In the end, they ended up with eleven types, thanks to the elusive HQ Celebration we had just attended and the judicious use of the newly activated Locationless Cache GC8FAVE. As part of some of those types, we completed the remaining caches for the HQ GeoTour. We went on until the sun went down, grabbing I don’t even know how many caches! And, after 15,000+ steps (7,000 at the HQ Celebration and 8,000 around the city), we finished it off with a nice dinner and, after taking SoaringEagle back to his car, a good (though short) night’s rest. All good things must end. Buck and I had a flight back to Austin to catch at an obscene hour of the morning. We reversed all our arrival steps and got on a plane back to the city of my birth.

Except…