Leap, Leap, Leaping

February 29th.
It only comes once every 4 years. For most of the world it is just an extra day in the year but for a geo-cacher February 29th represents the 366th day. The chance to fill that elusive square in your 'Each Day of the Year Calendar'. It's a huge motivation to take the day off!

And that's just what a whole bunch of us did this year on February 29, 2012. Our fellow cacher, Adroit Seeker, planned an event called "Leaping From Cache to Cache" that took us along the Suiattle River in Washington State. The plan was to hike the trail and then get as many caches as we could along the road on our way back. This power trail includes more than 100+ caches in all. It meant that many of us would break records that day. It sounded like a whole lot of fun.

5am is so early!! but it still astonishes me what I will put myself through just for a whole whack of smilies on my caching profile page. I met tabbywmn at the border, we picked up Fisher007 just across the line and then we made our way to Bellingham where we met Adroit Seeker, Cyclepath Cacher, sweet-marie, 32fordroadster & Team ItTakesTwo. From Bellingham we travelled an hour & a half to the Snoqualmie National Forest where we met our American cacher friends. It was time we got started on our Leap Day!!

The road to the Buck Creek Campground has been closed for about 7 years but if you're up for an easy 5km hike then I highly recommend it. We were treated to beautiful views of the river, waterfalls along the way and towering trees. We had lunch at the end of the trail in a great log shelter with a view of the river, watching the snow drift down as we ate. It doesn't get much better than this.

 I had never cached on a power trail before but now I know what "power trail" means! With about 20 of us we literally leapt from cache to cache and we made short work of the series and a bunch of us broke our 'most caches in a day' record. On top of that we also had the privilege of watching fisher007 find his 1000th cache. As you can see he was pretty excited!

After we finished the trail and the road (in record time I might add) we made our way back to Bellingham for one more event hosted by the Three Bottles family. Yummy Mexican fare, an ice cold Corona and meeting more cachers. What a perfect way to end the day.

Thanks again to Adroit Seeker for planning such a great day for us and thanks to all my caching friends, those kindred spirits, who made the day so fun and enjoyable. I had an awesome time. Hope you did too! I'm sure we'll all remember Leap Year for a long time....too bad we have to wait 4 years to do it all over again.