A Cautionary Tale

I just came across some old photos while cleaning out a closet and I thought they might serve as a cautionary tale to those of you letterboxing this autumn season.

I was on the hunt for my 100th letterbox in October of 2001. My sister had rented a car and we had driven down to the Columbia River Gorge to hike and letterbox. We were staying at the McMenamins Edgefield Inn in their hostel section. We had been having a terrific time, despite the rainy weather that year.
McMenamins Edgefield


The weather all week had been rainy and damp. We were on our way to my 100th letterbox find. It was to be The Octopus Letterbox by Funhog on the hike to Horsetail Falls. We had already planned to eat at Tad's Chicken and Dumplings for dinner to celebrate my 100th Letterbox find.
Tad's Chicken and Dumplings



Then disaster struck! We hydroplaned off the highway exit ramp and flipped the rental car. We were very very lucky and were not hurt at all. A fire engine had seen us flip and was on the scene almost immediately. Very cute, very young fire fighters, who were somewhat disappointed not to have to use the jaws of life to pry us from the vehicle helped us out of the ditch.
We waited in their rig for the cops to show up and then an Oregon State Trooper drove us back to McMenamin's Edgefield. Luckily, we have great insurance and the rental car people gave us another car the very next day and I was able to return to Horsetail Falls and find the Octopus Letterbox!

Conflicted about public transportation

I really wanted to take public transportation today to go on my hike. But, I am on a layover in Seattle and I only have 22 hours at home, those who know me well know that I will be sleeping for about 10-12 hours of that time! :-) So I only have about 10 hours to do my household errands, 1-2 hours is taken up by dressing for work and driving to and from work so I have about 8 hours left to hike for hike-a-thon, do laundry, stop for groceries, etc. I really wanted to take public transportation out to Discovery Park for a hike. So I went online to the King County Metro Transit Trip Planner and I found out that it would cost approximately $3.50 for the bus roundtrip and it would take about 3 hours round trip to get out to the park. Then I went to MapQuest and the AAA fuel cost calculator to figure out what it would take if I drove my car. It would take less than an hour round trip to drive myself and it would only take about 1/2 to 3/4 of a gallon of fuel, so let's say $4.00 would be the cost. And since I was in my own car, I could stop and run errands along the way (the post office, the library, the grocery store) without any added delays waiting for buses. So in the end, instead of taking the bus, I ended up driving out to Discovery Park. Evil, evil, bad, bad, the single car driver clogging up the roads and destroying the environment with my horrible emissions. :-) But now I have time to write up my blog about my hike.


Discovery Park was named for the English explorer Captain George Vancouver's ship, the Discovery. It was originally part of Fort Lawton. Fort Lawton was created by the Army in 1898 and the first troops were assigned to it in 1901. After the Korean War, fort activity declined and most of the fort was declared surplus by the Army. The federal government was allowed to give surplus lands to cities and states to be used for parks and recreation and the lands were transferred to the City of Seattle in 1972. Fort Lawton still exists within the park as headquarters of the U.S. Army Reserve's 70th Regional Readiness Command and a military housing site. Every time I go hiking here, I see lots of boys sporting crewcuts running the trails and today was no exception. :-)


I hiked the 2.8 mile Loop Trail. The highlight of my hike was stumbling across a lost mole. This little guy was making good time shuffling along the trail. I was very worried about him because there were so many dog walkers out and about. I hoped that he would not be eaten by a loose, off lease dog. I don't know what he was doing up above ground and on the gravely trail no less! He was definitely lost. I will continue to worry about him and wonder what happened to him. I hope he found his way off the trail and back underground.



On another subject, last year I lost 10 pounds during the month of August. Primarily this was due to my increased activity level for hike-a-thon. I did not change my eating habits at all. This year, I hope to increase my weight loss to about 15 pounds by combining all my hiking activity with sensible eating. So I DID NOT STOP at the Red Mill for a burger and a shake after my hike at Discovery Park.

Red Mill Burgers Website

This is a HUGE concession on my part. I really, really, really wanted that burger, but instead I am at home eating a sensible salad. I keep telling myself that it will be all worth it when the scale registers me 15 pounds skinnier at the end of the month. :-)

Don't forget that you can contribute to the WTA Hike-a-thon directly on their website this year, no need to mail me a check or wait to see me to hand me cash. They will be happy to take your credit card number over the internet. :-)

Click here for Amanda's WTA hike-a-thon fundraising page

Also a big thanks goes to Gollygee, Lisascenic and Robb, and Monkey Mamas for their $25 pledges. Doublesaj and Old Blue are going to have to donate an additional $30 to match their challenge. We need one more letterboxer who has not donated previously to donate at least $25 for another $10 from Doublesaj and Old Blue!

Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

As many of you already know, I have been having some car problems lately. And with Ryan giving his car away, I felt it was time to find a new and improved car. This has been a lot of work. First of all because I work and the nature of my work is that I am not home every afternoon, this has made looking at cars a real burden. I don't have that many days off anymore and to have to spend my precious days off driving all over Seattle looking at used cars was not fun.

I did some research and I decided that I wanted a Subaru Wagon. This narrowed the playing field. I went to all the Subaru dealers in the Seattle area looking at their used cars, this took two days. They were all too expensive. Only 2-5 years old and very very nice cars. I wish I could have afforded one. But not with my current budget. So I started with internet resources. Craigslist, Ebay and Autotrader.com. Here were tons of cars within my budget, but now to see them in person with all their flaws. Several times I would drive out to look at a car and find that it had already been sold. So many of the cars had outlandish mileage on them! What are these people doing?? Driving to Alaska twice a year? With a cross-country trip thrown in! Wow, I had no idea that Soccer Moms could put so much mileage on a car. I found one car that I was positive would work for me, the only thing wrong with it was it was white. I hate white cars. I was ready to forget my hatred of white paint and went to give the car a test drive. I walk up and the hood and rear hatch are open, so that I can see how gorgeous the car is inside! It looks lovely. Everything is in such great condition. I think I am ready to drive it. The owner is closing the hood and I close the rear hatch and that is when I see it. A HUGE dent in the rear hatch of the car, with cracks in the plastic of the light covers. Yuck. You know, I don't even want to drive it now. I don' t want to have to make that repair, possibly having to replace the entire rear hatch. Who knows. Sorry.

There were other cars that were gorgeous inside and outside but one smelled so badly of cigarettes that I could not stand to sit in it. There was another car that I looked at at a dealership. It had dog and/or cat hair all over the inside. I have to think that the dealer detailed the car. That hair was woven into the carpet and upholstery. It was impossible to get out. I tried to pull a piece out myself. It would have taken hours and hours to sit and pick out all the animal hair from the rear compartment walls. What a nightmare. In another car, the dog (or whatever, could've been a child) had chewed the plastic sides of the car in the rear compartment-- any kind of handle or plastic edging looked like it had been gnawed on by rats. Amazing! Some of these things could be overlooked, but often there was more wrong with the car than right.

It was a huge decision to even look at Subarus. I have always been a Volkswagen girl. I learned to drive on Volkswagens and I have driven Volkswagens all my life. I had a Sirocco in High School and a Rabbit in College, a convertible Rabbit when I first started working and when I bought my first car all by myself, it was a Golf/GTI. That car has been with me for the past 18 years. I drove it when I lived in Florida and I drove it across country when I moved to Seattle. I really hate to give it up. It is a member of the family. There are so many memories contained in that car. So many good times. But then there are the bad times, the overheating, the flat tires, the broken clutch cables and the thousands of dollars spent on repairs. Time for a change.

So I finally found a 2000 Outback Wagon. Low mileage, no crazy damage inside or out. A nice Green color. The only thing a little hinky was that it has tinted windows. Not a big fan of tinted windows, but I am willing to overlook that. I am buying this car. I drive it around a little bit. Everything is cool. I am buying this car. I can't believe it. I have bought this car. I have to change my car insurance. I need to sell my VW. I take all the stuff out of the VW. My sunglasses and my maps and my CD's and I put them in the Subaru. Oh my gosh, I have bought a car! So I drive it around on errands today. It is HUGE. I can't get used to how big it is, it is certainly going to make me a more cautious driver for a while. I have so much car behind me now. People who have ridden with me know that I could take off a curb with the back of the little VW. Now I really have to swing out wide to get this behemoth into the street!

It will take some getting used to, but I have a new car. Wow.

More Car Troubles...

But before I get to the car issues....after criss-crossing the country a few times, it was time to go across the ocean again. I was supposed to go to Glasgow, but I traded at the last minute for Munich. Gotta love the flexiblity of the Flight Attendant lifestyle.

Once in Munich, the weather was cloudy and dreary, not unlike what it had been like in Seattle. So what to do on a dreary day in Munich? Take the train to Dachau. Now, I was surprised that more people don't know about the WWII Concentration Camp at Dachau, Germany. I thought that when I said I was going to Dachau, that people would automatically know that I was going there to see the Concentration Camp Memorial. But that was not the case, so I am going to give you guys a little history lesson for a moment.

Dachau was the first Concentration Camp to open for business in March 1933 and it operated as a prison, work camp, extermination center and training camp for the SS Guards until it was liberated by U.S. Troops on April 29, 1945. It was actually the model for all the Nazi concentration camps that would come after it. The ironwork on the gate when you enter the camp says Arbeit Macht Frei, "Work will make you Free." At this camp the prisoners were exterminated through work. They were slaves for Hitler's war effort. I was amazed by the size of the facility. It was on the grounds of a abandoned munitions factory from the First World War. It served as a refugee camp after the war and until the 1960's when Holocaust survivers initiated the drive to make the site a memorial. The entire place has been turned into a museum and memorial to the people who died there. It is free to enter the memoria and a lot of new exhibits opened in 2003 with everything labeled in German and English. Except for this stone located by the crematoriums it says in German: "Think about how we died here"

Back in the USA, I had a day off and hiked the Lake to Lake Trail for hike-a-thon. This trail is located over in Bellevue, WA. It was a dreary day here in Seattle. It just would never stop raining, so I decided not to let a few raindrops stop me from getting in some mileage. The thing about a rainy day in Seattle, you generally get the trails and playgrounds to yourself. I hiked from Robinswood Park all the way to the Lake Hills King County Library. The Library is a great place to stop and turn around. I got to check out the books for sale to support the library and they have nice clean bathrooms. It had been about a year since I had last hiked along the Lake to Lake trail and there was a new Farm Stand near the P-Patch Garden just past Phantom Lake. On my return, I had to stop and buy some flowers for my apartment.

This week, I decided to go down to check out Point Defiance Park in Tacoma. Since my car had been having trouble, I decided to give it a break and I drove Ryan's car down to Point Defiance. I parked at the Rustic Picnic Area and decided to hike the Outer Perimeter Loop Trail. It is marked by squares on the tiny little trail signs. And it can get kind of confusing in the interior areas of the park when the Outer Trail merges with the Inner Trail and crosses and joins the Spine Trail! All are represented by symbols on these tiny little trail signs, as you can see in this photo. If you are walking at a quick pace, you can sometimes miss a trail intersection. The trail meanders along the cliffs above Puget Sound and there are great views of the Tacoma Narrows Bridges. These Bridges are at the site of the famous Galloping Gertie Bridge that collasped in 1940 after being in service for only 4 months! The newer bridges are nicknamed Sturdy Gertie. The newest bridge opened this summer and I believe it is a toll bridge, but I don't know for sure because I have not been over it yet.

I also saw some wildlife while I was hiking around Point Defiance Park. A mama raccoon and her 3 babies were trying to cross the road. I caught this photo of Mama and one of her babies!

So I know you are wondering about the car troubles that I alluded to in the title of this post. Well, I'm out at Point Defiance Park and I had driven Ryan's car, which I don't do that often. Ryan's car has automatic locks. My car is older and has manual locks, plus my Volkswagen won't let you lock the driver's door from inside, you have to lock it with the key from the outside. Can you see where this is heading?

I was out on the trail when I first noticed that I was missing the car keys. I was frantic. I thought I had dropped them somewhere along the way. I backtracked for quite a while. I didn't see anything. I was convinced it was hopeless and the keys were lost in the woods. But wait, maybe the keys fell when I got out of the car and are lying in the parking lot beside the car. So I hike back to the car and look all around the driver's door. No keys on the ground. I am really frantic now. I look inside the car and there are the keys hanging from the ignition. Boy, do I feel like a dummy. I'm gonna have to put AAA on speed dial. Well, all's well that ends well. The AAA locksmith was out there in less than 30 minutes and I was able to drive back to Seattle without any further incident.

I have 49 miles under my belt for hike-a-thon. Only one mile to go. And pledges are up to $1105. Thanks so much to everyone who pledged this year! Don't forget, I need your money (checks made out to WTA) by September 3rd. If you want to paypal me, just drop me an email and I can give you the info for that.