Ticked off

After checking out a portion of the area yesterday, I was stoked to check out the Sweetwater Trail in the Salmon Falls State Recreation Area today that had a bunch of geocaches hidden along what I figured was going to be a 5-6 mile hike. Woohoo, my State Parks parking pass was good for this parking area...an added bonus!

Today I was even accompanied by a "muggle". For those of you who are familiar with the Harry Potter books, you have heard this term before. In the geocaching world, a muggle is a non-geocacher. I don't know how many times I've been thwarted from finding a cache because I would look suspicious to a nearby muggle. The reason you don't want to be seen is because you don't want to draw attention to a hidden cache, as it can be "muggled", taken or destroyed by a non-geocacher. Part of the fun of the game is to find a cache without being seen.

My friend Kirstin has been interested in going hiking with me since I've told her about all the neat areas I've found through geocaching. She doesn't have any desire to geocache, but she is interested in hiking and photography. So she and her puppy Carlo (also a CCI pup) joined Zuleika and I on the trail today. I had scoped out the trail on a map and we stopped at Safeway and picked up sandwiches so that we could eat lunch on the trail.

The Sweetwater Trail was just that, sweet, to a hiker anyway. Single track, with a series of switchbacks up and down through the woods. It was muddy from all the rain and we had to cross a little stream and a fallen tree at one point, but with everything so green, who cares about a little mud?

Here's a picture of the "muggle-dog" and the "geo-dog" doing an "up" on the tree that had fallen across the trail. We think the tree must have just recently fallen from the storms last week from the way the trunk looked. Our dogs got to practice their commands the geocaching way, "up" on the tree, and "under" the tree, always a training opportunity, even when you're geocaching.

Things were going great, I had found three caches...then I saw it, a HUGE tick on Zucchini's head. As I looked closer, they were all over her. Kirstin took a look at Carlo and there were a ton of ticks all over him too, much easier to see because he's yellow. We walked down the trail a little more and it was then that we decided to turn around, the ticks were attaching themselves to the dogs in droves. That's all I need is another huge vet bill for lyme disease or something. I couldn't believe how bad the ticks were considering the dogs never left the trail, Kirstin held both dogs when I went off trail to find the caches.

When we got back to my house, we both used a flea comb to remove whatever ticks we could find and they both got a bath. Hopefully between the flea comb, the bath, and using my blower (used to dry them off), we found them all. I also vacuumed my car and washed my seat covers. I'll be checking Zuleika for the next couple of days to make sure I don't see any more. Good thing half her belly is shaved, easier to see any ticks if they are there. Yuck, yuck, yuck...

Even though we cut our day short, we still had a really nice 2 mile hike in a beautiful area. The plan is to come back another day, but the dogs will be staying home next time, bummer.