Name: Eliza B
Box Name(s): Carkeek Salmon Series
date placed: August 17, 2002
location: Carkeek Park
city: Seattle WA
county: King
difficulty: relatively easy clues/hikes (short, some uphill)

The other Carkeek boxes are in a different section of the park. Get those
first. (You do have the clues, right? If not, go get them, I'll
wait.....got them now? Good. Go get those first.)

One sidenote before we begin: Bring a light color of ink and a dark color,
if you prefer, since one of the boxes is a two-color stamp. (Actually,
there are two stamps, one for the light color, one for the black. A
highlighter pen is provided in the box as the light color, if all you've
got is black, but it might run out. Bring a blue one of your own to replace
it with, and I'll send you a replacement, if the old one was dry.)

From those boxes, follow the park access road up the right fork. Follow it
around to the parking lot next to the play area and beach access and park.
Find the bathrooms. (I don't know why I always start at the bathrooms, but
I do.)

Behind the bathroom is a set of stone stairs that go up and across a small
play bridge. Go up and across, then take a left to follow that path that
goes up the hill and into the shadowy woods.

Go left at the T-junction, down and across what looks like it might be a
dry creek bed. When you get to a dissecting path with a lookout just ahead,
take a right onto the gravelly path. Stay on this path, even when you see
offshoots going left or right.

You'll come to a bunch of stairs. Go up the first set of three, and look to
your right. There is a small path that seems to lead under a natural "arch"
of foliage. Go that way about four steps, untill you're right under the
"arch". The young maple to your left side is the sentinel for the first box
-- IDA's behind this tree at the roots, covered with sticks and leaves.
(Ida, by the way, is one native american word for salmon. Literally, Idaho
means salmon-eaters. How cool is that?)

From the first box, get back on the path and head up three more sets of
stairs. The path going uphill will curve slightly left. Stay on the main path.

At another pausing place, the path turns right. Follow it uphill without
turning for a long way.

At a square, wooden lookout, go straight across without turning. You'll
come to a wooden rail fence on your left. There will be a path just past a
tree on your right that allows you to turn right before the fence veers
uphill. Take the right path that goes downhill.

There may be offshoot trails, but stay on the main one (and at a
particularly confusing "Y" junction, you can just stay to the right, and
you'll be fine.) At the bottom of the hill, there is a junction with
another path. At the giant overturned tree, take the left that goes back
uphill.

Stay straight at the 3 way, 20 paces or so past the junction. The path will
abruptly end and turn left. Stop, turn around, and take about three paces
back the way you came. On your left, there is a small path that goes into a
little shaded clearing that has two thin, oddly shaped trees growing into a
"U" shape. On the right, under a piece of plywood and lots of bark and
sticks, is the King Salmon box.

Go back to the trail and follow its abrupt left. It'll go sharply up hill
and up some stairs, past a huge rock and another overturned tree. At those
stairs, take a right. It goes around a switchback and up the hill further,
over an earthen bridge and empties out into the North Meadow. (This is a
perfect resting place and picnic spot. Grab the lone bench and look out
over the Olympic Peninsula and dream of paths not yet taken for awhile.
It'll restore the soul.)

When you're done, go back the way you came. On the side of the earthen
bridge with the stone embedded in the path, take the path through growth to
the LEFT. It goes up a small hill into a sun-dappled clearing, roughly 17
paces from the trail. At the place where the trail splits in 3, in the
center is a strange tree that looks like it may be two trees with a gap in
the center. In the larger of these two trees, in a hollow in the middle, on
the ground under some bark and sticks, is the Salmon Run Box.

Go back to the path and head back down the way you came and be sure to stop
at some of the lookouts you went past on your way up -- it's gorgeous
around here.