My cup is full, and I’m exhausted and writing this from home. Spending the better part of two weeks with my “cousins” has been amazing, and something I didn’t realize how much I needed. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
We drove from Leavenworth to Snoqualmie Falls, the 6th
tallest waterfall in Washington State (270 feet/82 meters) to start the 4th and final "chapter" of this expedition. We pulled into the
parking lot, then friends started getting out of cars and soon our group reached
30 people. We descend a much steeper hill than I’d expected and of course then
had to climb it again. The reward was a tasty group lunch.
After lunch David reminded me that he wanted to find a
certain very old cache. Did I mention that it was over 90F/32C and very humid?
And that the cache was 1.8 miles/2.9km from the nearest parking? At least the
trail was fairly flat, and the cache was easy to find, but 3.6 miles in those conditions might not have been the best choice we've ever made and by the time we
returned to the car we were both extremely tired. We foolishly tried to find
one more cache but aborted after not finding the correct parking. Then we drove
about an hour to our lodging, checked in, and I for one enjoyed a lovely shower
before having a nice dinner with friends and collapsing, having each walked
over 20,000 steps.
Plan A on Friday was to walk from the hotel to Geocaching HQ
but after a few blocks we wisely concluded that the hills we were starting to
walk up would not be fun so returned for the car. Plan B was to take the car to
run an errand then figure out where to park but it was quickly updated to Plan
C when “the hostage” (don’t ask) requested a ride to HQ. Plan D emerged and was
adopted when we found parking next to HQ for only $10 for the day. We walked a
lot in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, some just the two of us, some with
a group of 10 or so people. For the cachers in the crowd, we were doing several
Adventure Labs simultaneously, and it was interesting to see who was
comfortable with using their phones this way.
In the middle of the afternoon, David and I got to take our scheduled
HQ tour open only to volunteers and plus-ones. HQ has had several locations over
the years, and I’ve seen all of them except the first which was someone’s
garage, but this was David’s first visit and it was great to see it through his
eyes and be reminded of the sense of wonder and awe I had on my first visit 15
or so years ago.
Friday evening was the highlight of our Seattle visit, a
dinner for volunteers and HQ employees (“lackeys”). I got to visit with
long-time friends, people I’d seen once or twice in other places, and some new
folks. We were delighted to hear that a long-time reviewer and the woman he met
at Geowoodstock in 2018 had gotten married that day in Seattle, officiated by HQ’s
president. One of the most fun conversations was friends from Australia, Canada,
England, and Switzerland during which I learned a bit about the direct impact
of Brexit on the Swiss – seems the EU was a bit hard on the UK and realized
they should be consistent with another friendly and usually neutral non-EU
member neighbor (Switzerland).
It's not surprising that after 18,000+ steps on Friday I was
quite tired, though it took me a bit of time to unwind enough to be able to go
to sleep.
Saturday was the big event, the 20(+2) year celebration of
geocaching, held at Seattle Center. I had the privilege of being one of 7
volunteer reviewers on the reviewer panel – collectively from 6 countries
(Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and 2 of us from the US).
Surprisingly I wasn’t too nervous, and I’m pleased to say that I’m pretty sure
I managed not to embarrass myself.
After walking around a bit, we decided to go back to our room to relax for awhile before meeting friends for dinner at Ivars which is a bit of a Seattle institution. Dinner with 10 friends, most of whom we’d shared lodging with at some point during our trip, was the perfect “farewell” activity of the trip before Sunday’s drive home.
Sunday morning started we left the hotel and I'm pleased to say that we successfully found the cache we didn't look for on Thursday, in much better weather conditions. We did a few other things on our way home and decided to delay grocery shopping until today, though I'm grateful to David for doing our trip laundry before going to bed.
I’d been looking forward to the Geowoodstock/HQ celebration
events ever since they were first announced, back in the "before times" as they were scheduled for 2020. To say it didn’t disappoint
would be an understatement! Just as it was a thrill to get to see and hug
friends for the first time after we all became “fully vaccinated” in 2021, it was equally wonderful to get to
see international friends on this trip, and not just any international friends,
but my geocaching reviewer “cousins.”
The plan now is to recover from the adventure that just
concluded and use some of what we learned to prepare for the next one which will be a cruise down the
Danube river from Vienna, Austria, to Bucharest, Romania, in a few weeks preceded (for me but
not David) by several days in Ireland and (for David but not me) by 28 hours in
London before we reconnect in Vienna.
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