A veritable orgy of geocaching

[N.B.: by "orgy" I mean "excessive indulgence."  Not the other kind.  All on the same page?  Good.  I don't want to field uncomfortable phone calls from my mom about this.]

If you happen to be a geocacher (as Captain Midnight and I are), this weekend was a cornucopia of caching goodness.  First we went to the third annual Geocaching Block Party at Groundspeak HQ (aka The Lily Pad) in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, then followed that up with the Washington State Geocaching Association's annual Going APE event in Hyak the next day.  (If you're feeling a touch of déjà vu, I blogged about both these events last year.)

Let's take a look around Fremont, shall we?

Everything was gussied up for the Block Party, even the local statues.

Gee, I hope their trolley gets here soon.

And what's that in the distance?

Why, it's the Fremont Bridge!

Which is a drawbridge, as demonstrated here.

Otherwise how would the sailboats get through?

In one of the inoperative guard towers is a neon version of Rapunzel, her long glowing tresses hanging down.

Not even close. But then again, Rapunzel's stuck with guard duty while we're free to explore the area.

We visited the temporary Geocaching Museum exhibit, which included the first geoquilt (seen here) as well as some very rare items (including the first geocoin in existence, and a trackable that had been aboard the International Space Station; I never thought I'd see that thing in person!).

There were things to do at the Lily Pad, including a mechanical bull and various crafts, but we were out to look for geocaches (and waymarks! Don't forget waymarks! Nearly everyone else does, but not me, dangit!), so we wandered further afield.

We saw "Late for the Interurban," a tribute to the long-running Seattle kids' television show J.P. Patches. Julius Pierpont Patches, the clown, was portrayed by actor and comedian Chris Wedes...

...and Bob Newman played his "girlfriend" Gertrude (and virtually all other characters on the show). J.P. Patches was mostly ad-libbed, and its funny, somewhat subversive style wasn't like anything else meant for kids at the time.

Chris Wedes passed away in July of this year, after a long battle with multiple myeloma; local fondness for the man and the character he'd popularized was such that this statue was covered in flowers and other tributes for over a month.

Let's see what else Fremont has in store for us, shall we?

There were ducks, all the better for Grok the Duckfarmer to commune with today.

Yo yourself.

There was a baby dinosaur topiary...

...and its mom, apparently suffering from a slight case of topiary baldness. Probably also wondering what all those geocachers are doing down near her tail. Crazy geocachers.

There was the Fremont Rocket.

And, conceived for grand brutalist glory of Motherland (or some other such hoo-hah), there was my buddy Lenny.

There were also some purely natural beauties.

Sometimes you just gotta stop and... well, you know.

Speaking of stopping, about this time we were getting hungry.

So we broke for lunch.  Mmmm, Mediterranean veggie plate.  Captain Midnight kept making forays into my baba ghanoush, so I stole some of his gyro meat in retaliation.  Such is the circle of life.

I think this dog was craving some of Captain Midnight's gyro meat, but it was not to be.  Sorry, buddy.

Instead we went to the Fremont branch of the Seattle Public Library.  This building is an old Carnegie Library in Mission Revival style, and a calm oasis from the day's general insanity.

I call this one "Temple of Books, With Attendant Geocachers."

And then, of course, if you're going to go to Fremont, you kinda have to go up and visit the troll.  Otherwise he gets whiny and starts complaining that you never call, etc., etc.

Caught up in the general exuberance of the day, I temporarily forgot the old wisdom "You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."

I hope I'm not off the troll's Christmas card list now.

Fremont has small spots of lovely.  One of my favorite urban cathedrals, looking down from the troll...

...the graceful arch of girders on the Aurora Avenue bridge...

... and views of the rest of the city from sailboats, tugboats and houseboats on the lake.

You never know what you'll find from visit to visit, including this statue of Sri Chinmoy pleading for world peace.

And that's not even taking the joys of the people into account (among whom The Jester and Blooming Idiot were only the most colorfully dressed examples).  So much fun.

The only thing I could have wished for to improve this day would have been a little more time to complete the challenges.  It was all over too fast!

To remedy this somewhat, we visited the Going APE event the next day.

Ah, glorious Hyak!

Complete with cute (if now defunct) train station...

...and mysterious black-furred ape with sandwich board for signing in.

This year we didn't hike the Snoqualmie Tunnel -- Captain Midnight and I weren't feeling up to it after the previous day's activities -- but we did wander around taking down numbers of every trackable we could find.  It was trackablicious!

And now, after much merriment and general buffoonery, I'm gonna hit the sack.