Curious Cardinals Geo Blog

We placed our first cache! It's named Happy Thanksgiving (GC1JCGQ). We named it this because we hid it during the week of Thanksgiving, a time when we are reminded of the many things for which we are thankful. We are especially thankful for this adventurous outdoor treasure-hunting game called GEOCACHING! We are also thankful that the Port of Skagit County provides several miles of trails in a location that is easily accessible at Thanksgiving time as well as all year long. There are about 10 miles of graveled trails with almost no elevation gain, thus perfect for walking, jogging, and family biking. So if you're in the area, please take a stroll out to Happy Thanksgiving and think of something you are thankful for as you explore the newest section of trail surrounding the Skagit Regional Airport.

We're getting back into the summer routine which includes combining hiking and geocaching. This weekend we geocached as we hiked to Lizard and Lilly Lakes in the Chuckanut mountains between Bellingham and Burlington, Washington. The trail starts out gently sloping for about 1/2 mile and then radically changes to a steep incline until finally reaching the plateau at the top just past the turn-off to the Bat Caves and the Oyster Dome (great side trips with views of the San Juan Islands). The trail then continues, making a loop trip passed the two lakes, through towering evergreen forests and sword fern ground covers. The flowers were out also. We passed many skunk cabbage swamps and marveled at the beauty of the yellow violets and bleeding hearts that lined the trail's edge. The total trip was between 6 and 7 miles total making for a very enjoyable afternoon.

Spring is here finally and we've been very slack in our geocaching for the last few months. It's time to get back out there and find some more caches! It's amazing how many new caches are popping up all over the place--thank you to everyone who places these caches in such interesting locations.

Welcome to the New Year! We ended 2007 with a visit to Oregon and geocached around the Portland area. We especially enjoyed the "Happy Birthday" cache in Rock Creek. We were trying so hard to be invisible behind the leafless trees, but another family out caching spotted us. Winter caching has its disadvantages!

Today, we returned to the Othello Tunnels cache in Hope, BC. This was the cache that introduced us to geocaching and was the first cache we found way back in 2004. Two years later, in September 2006, we created our own geo-name, the Curious Cardinals. We were thrilled to be visiting Hope again and have the opportunity to visit this cache. It was still in the exact same spot! We decided we should release a Travel Bug in honor of this first cache we found and soon Curious Cardinals-Canada will be out on the road, traveling first to the Othello Tunnels cache and then touring Canada.

Today we found our 100th cache. We wanted it to be a unique experience and memorable so we choose our destination carefully. Since we especially enjoy caches that are challenging to get to, we chose to hike Mount Pillchuck near Verlot, Washington. It was indeed a unique and memorable experience. The views were awesome on such a beautiful clear day. The trail was a challenge with all the rocks which just kept getting bigger and bigger until finally at the top we were crawling over boulders bigger than a car. The lookout is perched atop some of these boulders with a 100 foot drop-off on the back side.

We returned from our USA cross-country trip this week. We planned to find at least one cache in each state and were pretty successful--only missed a couple of the states we drove through (Idaho, Illinois, and Indiana). We dropped off our 8 Cardinal TB's on the east coast and see that all but one has been picked up and moved already. It is really fun to watch TB's travel!

We spent the afternoon at Washington Park near Anacortes, Washington and found 4 caches. We started on the loop trail on the south east edge of the park and hiked up and down, over clay, rocks, and through thick under brush and vine tunnels. It was a great adventure with great views of the San Juan Islands. We also saw 16 different varieties of birds on the trip.