Anyone going to Geowoodstock????

[Shotgun & Peashooter]

We are going to Geowoodstock, wondering if anyone else is going to make the trip?

[tomfuller]

Quill and I are driving up on 7/2 visiting the luau in Sammamish staying overnight in Bellevue and will be at GW8 the next day.
I have to be back at the lookout tower by 0930 on Sunday 7/4 for 8 hours of double time.

[Suzyfishn]

Me and the hubby are headed that way. Driving halfway after work on July 1, grabbing a cheap motel, get up early and drive rest of the way in time for the luau event Friday. Housesitting for family in Issaquah (wasn't it nice of them to plan a vacay during GW so we had a place to stay!!). Will be up there entire weekend for all the various festivities and watch fireworks on Sunday with a friend who lives in Sammamish! Gonna be a busy weekend!!

[PMOGUY]

Well...did everyone have a good time up there? How bout some stories??

[Shotgun & Peashooter]

That's funny, you noticed some silence.....

i'm still processing the weekend (Mrs.) Or letting some nightmares settle before my stories come out.

So more silence is neccessary from me for a while yet.

There was a second "anarchy" type item we picked up and "paid" someone to deliver we may hear about.

Tom and I are heading out for our final camp event of vacation at La Pine..if anyone wants to hit and purge the area for caches Friday, our Artic Fox trailer will be out there (with an American flag flying? And maybe Tom's TB truck )if anyone want's to hook up with me, the "golf" widow and cache let us know, or if you just want to bask in the sun or shade and hit the liquor cabinet while he is gone, we might be able to regal a few storeis from me too. Sat evening is a commited dinner and bunco so we will be tied up then. Jill

[bigeddy]

Well...did everyone have a good time up there? How bout some stories??

Hard not to have a good time with numerous events, caches, challenges and 4th of July festivities. Besides GW8 we attended 3 other events and hiked to the APE cache. It rained a bit during the weekend but with much of the country baking in 100-degree temperatures there were few complaints.

The Lost & Found Celebration in Seattle the day after GeoWoodstock was a fun bonus. Got to meet many of the lackeys. There was a lot of cool gear available but I had no budget for that so had to just look. It seemed like every third person or vehicle was trackable--in looking at my photos I can see over 50 tracking codes!

Hard to pick out all the Central Oregon cachers in the crowd but here are a few familiar faces we ran into...

[Suzyfishn]

Thanks for the pics BigEddy! Never did run into Tom Fuller! I think my highlight of the weekend was the Midnight Geocoin Madness event...what fun madness that was. Lotsa noise and furious coin/pathtag trading going on. I took about 30 tradeable coins and got rid of almost every one of them. Now I have a new selection of coins to enjoy and add to my small, but growing collection. Those hard core coiners are NUTS!! But overall a great bunch of folks.

The TBs wandering around GW, on cars, etc was too much for me. I wrote down about a dozen and then gave up! I think some were making it their mission to find them all.

Never made it to the APE cache or the Lost & Found event. The hubby and I spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the (sometimes rainy) weather, fishing and drinking cold beer with a friend who lives in the area. Even had front row seats to a great fireworks display that took place right over his property. Too cool!

I have a few pictures, and will try and get them posted.

[Shotgun & Peashooter]

Mrs. Shotgun's recap:
Friday 8am.Drove up to Ape cache with Dadison, & 8 and 13 year old daughters. Asked what the long line was for...1st bus group getting their coins. Ran past that and start the trail to beat the Group...4 more full busees behind us, just barely beat them all. Up, Up and up switchbacks we went, no mud, no crowds, met six people up, 18 down. Down, the mud was beginning to develop, just one hour into the day. The youngest girl will be scared from hiking in the wooded NW for awhile as this was the day of the event and there were apes and gorillas aboound. Who would guess they'd be out at this altitude or in this leftover wet forest land? But, it was an Ape event afterall. did one more cache up on the trail, but, as it was handed over cache machine style to us...that was that and we took off before the onslaught of busses!

[Shotgun & Peashooter]

(I have to do these in short segments, otherwise the "camp set up" ases it all before sending..no fun for the typer!)

We then hit, spur of the moment, hadn't heard about it till someone mentioned it to us, the Luah(sp) event at Lake Sammamish park. Glad to have a local cacher as our navigator as, he snuck us in the backdoor route in and we did not have to wait in the line of waiting traffic. We asked what the second big line was for...but as that was for those that bought food tickets in advance, and we were not hungery..we skipped that too!! No ape coins being sold, they were hanging on to them for the main GW event. We browsed the vendor booth, people watched, hung around to meet other NW cachers we might run into. Big Eddy's name kept copming up, but we just were'nt seeing him, always was told, he's just right there , always right in the direction we left, never saw him. Saw Suzi several times saw Tom, but he was gone in the blink of an eye. Like Suzi saw far too many TB vehicles, and yes, people were frantically trying to record them all! We skapoodled outta there.
Crowds not bad yet, People seemed to come and go in waves so it was never the thousand attendees all at once.

[Shotgun & Peashooter]

Final take on this:
Now at the main event in Carnation, again glad to have the local cacher/brother with us, but our locals were beginning to think he was our hired buddy guard as he mysteriously hung back looking like he would step in at any attempt on our lives. No back door parking, but he got us front row and close. Walking in we saw a couple of standouts we met enroute. the hyper 8 year old boy that was wearing not one, but two tb around his neck, we called him ta-ta since one of his tb started with tt, so we gave a shout out," ta-ta"!...but isn't that what you say when you leave each other, not greet each other? I could tell this was going to be a tough day for me. And leaving the event we noted we had parked right by the Michigan couple that we met at a roadside cache on the pass on the way here. Again...backwards. We left our calling card on their dash.

At the event, we whizzed right thru the entrance missing the giant ammo can, asked what the third long line was for, food again, bypassed it, did the vendor route, more than the past two events, each time they seemed to double up, met old cachers, played the Paul Bunyan event, gave our name off for bingo players to use...and kept running into Suzi but never the elusive Bigeddy. This is where we saw Tom Fuller, but we turned and he was gone, we had gotten a hello in tho'. I joined aother lady off to the side for my smoke...turned out she was an old college friend, living in Canada..and a cacher. Nice surpise. Finally ran into Bigeddy and Zot. chatted, but kept finding ourselves turning into a big line...three or four times before we figured it out. .....Lunch was over and it was the potty line. Damn those lines..but that ended it for us. time to get out. Great location. not bad crowds...again they spread themselves out...I even thought it might have been under attended.

[Shotgun & Peashooter]

ok, so I gotta add this highlight.
Remember, we met familiar NW cachers WA, OR, MT, Canada? Remember, we whizzed by the giant ammo can to enter, and had looked at three events for Niels and Karen? I had said goodbye to them, and ran back to ask if she knew where the log book was. She told me it was a Paul Bunyan size log book by the world's largest (Paul Bunyan) ammo can right at the entrance. We went and logged, but a young (20-30 yr old) Cacher leanned over and whispered in my ear, asking me, " do you know what that is??? ", in his softly accented voice. He was from Denmark. We answered as best we could, shook hands and parted ways. 'He' wondering why a military box might be used for a cache hide container, and all tiers of Americans have access to 'em,we think so little of them and their affiliation with wars, just annoying trash to be recycled . "We" left discussing with our eyes now open how apparently some parts of the world are still so innocent, they do not have the history of wars, or modern day warfare. They must think, if that is the world's largest ammo can, fitting our largest gun bullets, then this must be the country best set for war. We were silent for part of our walk back, but we shared many thoughts about the innocence of others, how this event reminded us of others' more simpler and innocent lives. Suddenly the crowds dissapeared, the rain was rainbows, and we never noticed the traffic up in that "Seattle" area...We saw it more in the eyes of my heritage, the viking fjords, the old growth timbers, the hanging moss. Much calmer for the time spent.