We just took a road trip through Washington,
Oregon, Wyoming, and Idaho. We brought clues
to a handful of letterboxes in the area, hoping
to get as many as we could on our trip.
Unfortunately, we tried to fit too much into our
limited schedule on the first part of the trip, and
then had car trouble, so it turned out we only
found one letterbox - the Devil's Lake box near
Lincoln City, Oregon.

It was a nice easy letterbox, the clues were clear
and accurate. The box itself was quite soggy,
both inside and out, but the zipper baggie inside
kept the contents dry. It's either a new book,
or we were the first to locate the Devil's Lake
box! We stamped up and then dried the box as
well as we could before replacing it, but it was
clear the box wasn't weather-tight. I plan to use
the same types of boxes, but don't have a problem
with wet in my area.

We also planned to get the Ft. Canby boxes near
Ilwaco, Washington, but ran into a couple snags.
At the North Head Lighthouse, clues were a bit
confusing, as there were two benches on the
trail. We took what looked like "an immediate
path to the right" of the first bench past the keeper's

house, but it turned out not to be a path at all, but
a deer trail, as we later found. After some initial
confusion, we took the paved walkway with a
few stairs located up the trail 150+ feet or so,
nearer to the second bench, but before it. Then
we saw "Big Bonsai", so finally figured that
was it. This area was profusely overgrown with
brush and tall grass, which made it difficult to
locate anything specific once a compass reading
was made. Further hampering our efforts, but
making it more enjoyable, we came face to face
with (nearly stumbled over) a deer, who had set
up housekeeping - probably on the exact spot the
box may also have been hiding. She was quite
reluctant to give up her spot - maybe she had
a fawn nearby. We left our gloves at the hotel,
so that made it impossible to lift up any branches
on those extremely prickly pines. I'm sure it
was there somewhere, but we left empty handed.
I would love to see a picture of the stamp if
anyone has posted a digital image of it. Anyhow,
it was a great view, so we were glad we stopped
there - we probably would not have otherwise.
By that time, we had run out of time to stop at
the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse.

We may be back up in that area again soon,
and I'm going to leave plenty of time for
letterboxing this time. All in all, a wonderful
week spent in the Pacific northwest. We
were promised some rain, but it was completely
dry and sunny all week. Even the Olympic
rainforest was dry.

Thank you to Amanda and John for hosting
these boxes. Since we didn't have a lot of time,
and I'm still somewhat limited in my mobility,
the "easy" boxes are the perfect way to see some
great sights and stretch our legs on our road
trip along the coast.

We also planned to get Mitch's Raptor box in Idaho
and/or the Green River Wyoming box (on our way
back to Colorado), but our battery died, so we
ended up spending a couple hours in Utah at a
Pep Boys instead. Oh well, again - next time.

Michelle