This cache placement was approved by Discovery Park. The park is open daily between the hours of 6:00 am to 11:00 pm. Please park in approved parking areas and stay on trails.
Now that I have geocached a while, I realized just how few parks I had been to before I did so, including Discovery Park which I have been to almost 10 times now. This challenge was inspired by the fact that there are many large parks near the Puget Sound that have numerous geocaches that folks should experience.
To qualify for this challenge, you need to find a cache (traditional, multi, mystery, wherigo, letterbox hybrid) or do a CITO or Earth Cache in 26 of the potential 33 following parks which is comprised of 8 counties between Olympia and the Washington - BC border. You must also find at least one park cache in all of the 8 counties mentioned. Past finds of course count, I am not going to penalize folks for doing it before the challenge. If you own and created a cache before the publication date of this challenge, that is okay as well as far as qualifying goes. No San Juan County parks qualified in my book.
Island County
1. Camano Forest Preserve on Camano Island
2. Deception Pass State Park on Whidbey Island
3. Elger Bay Preserve on Camano Island
4. Fort Ebey State Park on Whidbey Island
5. Saratoga Woods in Langley (Whidbey)
King County
6. Arboretum Park in Seattle
7. Carkeek Park in Seattle
8. Discovery Park in Seattle
9. Hamlin Park in Shoreline
10. Magnuson Park in Seattle
11. Marymoor Park in Redmond
12. Redmond Watershed Preserve
13. Seward Park in Seattle
14. Soaring Eagle Regional Park in Sammamish
Kitsap County
15. Buck Lake County Park in Hansville
16. North Kitsap Heritage Park in Kingston
Pierce County
17. Fort Steilacoom Park in Steilacoom
18. McCormick Forest Park in Gig Harbor
19. Point Defiance Park in Tacoma
Skagit County
20. Guemes Mountain Conservation Area on Guemes Island
21. Washington Park in Anacortes
Snohomish County
22. Bob Heirman Wildlife Preserve in Snohomish/Maltby
23. Lord Hill Regional Park in Snohomish
24. Paradise Valley Conservation Area in Woodinville
25. Spencer Island Regional Park in Everett
26. Terrace Creek Park in Mountlake Terrace
Thurston County
27. Priest Point Park in Olympia
28. Woodard Bay Conservation Area in Olympia
Whatcom County
29. Berthuson Park in Lynden
30. Lake Padden Park in Bellingham
31. Larrabee State Park in Bellingham
32. Whatcom Falls Park in Bellingham
and lastly
33. Any cache in the huge park area consisting of Cougar Mountain or Squak Mountain State Park Natural Area in the Issaquah area, which I believe is all King County. These 2 parks just seemed too close together to count as 2.
I have attached a bookmark list called Puget Sound Park Challenge which shows some common caches in those parks to help you see if you qualify or how to find these parks if you are not familiar with them. Any cache that looks like its in the park boundaries is okay with me. Puzzles or multis must obviously end in the park to be okay in the challenge.
Lastly, after the FTF has found the cache, I will add up to 2 more parks to the challenge based on reasonable suggestions if any come to make this challenge a bit easier but not too easy. This challenge is not meant to have every great park, just ~25-30 of the most notable I could find which also have a number of geocaches in them (at least 7 at the time of this listing) to enjoy.
Feel free to sign this cache if you are in the area and intend to perhaps do this challenge some day, but one cannot log this cache as a find until you have met the criteria. You can show proof in a bookmark list, a note, your log entry, your call. Cache is a small lock n lock just a couple of steps off the trail, behind a small log. Its between the top stair and the next to the top stair where you take the few steps off.