The Pirates High Seas Adventure

This pirate flag was the event log book.

The Pirates High Seas Adventure, GC395WZ, was the greatest geocaching event ever.  It combined two of our favorite pastimes, pirates & geocaching. It took place on August 25th., 2012, when two historic tall ships, The Lady Washington and The Hawaiian Chieftain, visited the Bremerton waterfront.

The Lady Washington

The Hawaiian Chieftain

First, there was a free geocaching meet & greet, on the boardwalk in Bremerton, right beside where the beautiful ships were docked. 

Docked in Bremerton, Wa.

The event was organized by our friends & fellow geocachers, Goblindust, Shop99er & TTUMS.  There were several games with many prizes offered to keep the attending geocachers busy with fun activities. There were activities for children & adults alike that included: scratch tickets, a kid's Flat Stanley Treasure Hunt, an adult treasure hunting, caching challenges, an adult bar crawl, food, coffee & vendors.

Our treasure chests.

Each person with a tall ship ticket received a key to try in our locked treasure chest.  If the key opened the chest, the person won a nice prize.  Prizes included geocoins, geocaching equipment & gift certificates from local businesses.

Don from Geocaching Team, 'The Porters in Wa'

My husband, Don, was the pirate in charge of the treasure chest. He made sure each winner received their proper prize.

Jan from team, 'The Porters in Wa'

I handed out the scratch tickets and offered the prizes to the winners.  We tried really hard to make sure everyone was a winner.  I don't think there were many who were disappointed with our scratch tickets. I loved working the scratch ticket table because everyone visited this table to pick up their scratch ticket, I had the opportunity to say hello to everyone and see their costumes.  I don't think I missed seeing anyone.

Boarding the Hawaiian Chieftain

After the shore event, we joined our pirate friends for a fun three hour sail on the beautiful Hawaiian Chieftain.  We had a blast.  The ships crew was terrific.  They were super friendly and patiently answered all our questions about their lives and the spectacular ships.

Captain Shiney

Our ship's captain was Captain Shiney.  He was full of great stories and lots of fun.  We all enjoyed him

The Wheel

The old rustic cannon.

Ready to fire.

This hard working crew member is cleaning the barrel of the cannon after it was fired.  

The Gorgeous Lady Washington

Many of our friends were aboard the majestic Lady Washington, so we fired our cannons at them.  Just for fun. We also fired at any Washington State ferries we happened upon.  Their captains were good sports and blew their whistles back at us.

Looking up at the sails.

A crew member working on the sails.

This was such a fun day.  We spent the day with some of our favorite friends.  The events was lots of fun and the ships were amazing.  We can't wait until next summer when we can do it again.  I can't wait to see these beautiful ships again.

Best wishes & thanks for stopping by.

Scrapbooking, Geocaching & our dog, Britt

This project combines two of my favorite activities, scrapbooking and geocaching.  This scrapbook page highlights some of the adventures of our four legged geocaching team member, Britt.

Many members of our family are involved in a game called Geocaching.  Geocaching is a world wide outdoor treasure hunting game using a GPS unit.  The  coordinates are posted on the internet, usually at geocaching.com.  The GPS is used for navigating to the coordinates where the participant then tries to locate the hidden geocache.  It's a really fun activity.  Geocaches are often hidden at a beautiful view point or some other point of interest. Our hunts often lead us to interesting places, historic sites or famous buildings we would otherwise be unaware of. Some geocaches require a hike to reach the cache location.  We often geocache in a family group along with all our dogs.  Our dogs love it. It's the perfect hobby to combine with camping.  We call it geocamping. It's a lot of fun.

Geocaches are often containers filled with trinkets and small inexpensive items for trading.  Cachers are free to trade their own small item for one inside the geocache container. Trading is optional.  Each geocache contains it's own log for the cacher to sign.  The log is then returned to the cache container.  The found cache can also be logged at geocaching.com.

Britt has been geocaching with the family for several years.  She loves it.  She lives for camping & geocaching.  She has her own geocache named, 'Britt's Dog Day Afternoon," hidden in a very dog friendly area of Port Orchard, Wa.

Ammo cans are often used as geocaching containers.  Others, called Nano caches, are  really tiny and sometimes hard to spot.

Dog parks are a favorite place for geocachers to hide caches. 

For anyone looking for further information about Geocaching, please visit the geocaching.com website.  You won't be sorry.


Thanks for stopping by.


I submitted my geohound scrapbook page to the following challenges.

Top Tip Tuesday's -- Challenge #81--It's all about Circles

Divas By Design -- Challenge #44 -- Anything Goes

Scrap Fit Blog -- Workout #72 --Color Inspiration

One Stop Craft Challenge #192 -- Olympics or Sports

A Year in the Life of an Art Journal -- Summertime

The Pink Elephant Challenge --TPE 158 -- Summer

Camping & Geocaching by beautiful Lake Cushman.

We were looking for a quiet place to spend the 4th. of July.  We decided to stay at Big Creek Campground by Lake Cushman.  That turned out to be a great choice.  It's a beautiful, well maintained county campground.  It's one of our favorites. We spent five wonderful days there.

The area is breathtakingly beautiful.

Lake Cushman

We heard very few fireworks. It was nice and quiet.  We enjoyed it.

Don, my mountain man.

If we ever decide to sell our house and move, this is the area we would like to go to.  That my happen after retirement.

A pretty little waterfall on the way up to Mt. Eleanor.  There are a couple of geocaches on the hiking trail up to Mt. Eleanor we had hoped to find that day. Unfortunately, the trail is currently closed due to aggressive Mountain Goats.  The goats have approached & challenged hikers.  They can be very dangerous.  You can drive up, but posted signs warn people not to hike up.  

We were visiting with Mart Twain while finding a geocache at the Hoodsport Timberland Library.  It's a beautiful little library.

Geocaching -- Did we find it????

There it is.

Britt & Laya are all tired out after a long day of geocaching.  They live too cache.

We spent the week, geocaching, reading, garage saling & we visited the cute little town of Hoodsport.

Muggle & Abigail
Our camping cats think the best part of our trip was bird watching.

Laya is fairly new to the whole camping & geocaching thing, but she loves every minute of it, including her own camping chair.

I hope everyone had a happy & safe 4th. of July.

Thanks for stopping by.

Fathom's o' Fun Murder Mystery Event in Port Orchard

May 26th & 27th was the 7th annual Murder Mystery Event in downtown Port Orchard.  It was a super fun way to spend Memorial Weekend.  We are always looking for an excuse to dress up in our pirate garb  and this was a perfect opportunity.  It was cool to have an event in our hometown.  Many local businesses participated in the event.  Some businesses handed out clues, while others offered crimes scenes.  All the characters were available for interviews.  We met some great people & visited some fun businesses that were new to us.

The cast & crew for the Murder Mystery Event.  Everyone in this picture is a possible suspect in the murder of the town Cartographer.  This is the first year it was put on by Fathom's of Fun.  They did a great job.

Sarah, the carpenter's daughter, & her mother, Rebecca.  They are both lovely & repected women, but are still considered suspects in the murder.

The candle maker & the butcher.  The butcher always seems to carry her meat cleaver with her.  Hmmmmmmm.....kinda makes you wonder........

This pirate pup is a 15 month old Newfoundland. He's a huge puppy.  He's adorable and so entertaining.  He looks like a big teddy bear.  Everyone loves him.  His mistress is first mate on one of the pirate ships and a suspect in the murder case.

Constable scot performed a complete investigation & interviewed all the suspects.  She did a fine job.

The carpenter with his wife & daughter.

The town's people discussing the murder.

Who could have committed this terrible crime??  Was it a pirate????

The town's people were convinced it was a pirate from one of  the three newly docked pirate ships.  The pirates were sure it was a land dweller.

Finally.......Constable Scot has finished the investigation & is ready to announce her conclusions.

Oh, no.  It's Sarah. The sweet & friendly daughter of the carpenter.  She  is heartbroken over her lost love who  went down with a ship that was following a  badly written map drawn by the Cartographer.  Her broken heart drove her to his murder.

Sadly, Sarah is arrested for the crime.

The Cartographer was very unpopular in the community.  He owed many of the town's people money.  He really had a shameful character.  Personally, I think Sarah did the town a favor.  

Our friends, Lady Dee Dee & her captain, Jim. They are two of the nicest pirates you'll ever meet.  They are the owners of, 'The Golden Fleece.'  Dee Dee makes absolutely gorgeous pirate clothing for men & women.

He's harmless.  Really!!

Me & Captain Don.

Having fun on the Port Orchard waterfront while waiting for clues to help solve this terrible crime.

Tawnya & Ryan looked fantastic.  They had a blast.

They were a great deal of help during the murder investigation.  

At Moondog's for dinner after the Events.  Ryan is concentrating hard on what had been a huge plate of nachos.  We've nick named him, 'Nacho Man.'

Tawnya, looking cute at the Moondog.

Pirate Ryan thinks he's tough, but.............

.....she showed him, he's not so tough.

We want to thank everyone who participated in this wonderful & fun filled weekend.  They were all volunteers and offered their time to help make this weekend special.  We thought it was perfect.  We can't wait to do it again next year.