the sherwood merrywalkers  the great easter egg hunt in sherwood, march 31st

I just got downloading all of the pictures from Starr and the few that I took and I thought "what a beautiful day for a walk and in such a nice neighborhood."  Then this stuff just starting beating on my windows and I thought, "thank god we made it before the hail."  
It was a beautiful walk.  Mary Ann and I decided on the 6K today and we are so glad we did.  We were able to meet a new walker, Jo, and it was her first walk.  We not only had a good time talking the whole way, but we were able to walk with Rose, and she's is a longtime volkswalker from Battle Ground, who is just getting back into it.  We walked with her at Good Sam's a few weeks ago, so it was fun meeting up with her again.
Dick picked out a great place for lunch, so us 6k'ers sat together and had a chance to meet a few walkers we had walked with before, but never had a chance to meet.  The other walkers did the walks in Savannah before, so it was fun to relive those great moments.  Turns out they will be in LaConner for the Tulip Festival and then heading over to Camano Islandsm, so we exchanged numbers and we will meet up in LaConner for the parade and lunch.  Since LaConner was featured in Sunset this month, we all have to read about the hot spots before getting there.  
Another great walk with even more new friends.  I guess it really doesn't get any better than that, does it?

The weather sure did cooperate and we sure had a blast out there today.  I don't think we've ever seen downtown Sherwood hopping as much as it was today, even the Easter Bunny made her entrance.  You could hardly find a seat at Fat Milo's, coffee shop was full, and the rest of the places were packed.  Some merchants ran out of eggs, but we had enough wine glasses so everyone received something.  The kids were really surprised to get ice cream cones, I just wish I had a picture of them opening up their egg.  We had 303 participants and over a 160 credit walkers.  We sold a few New Walker packets and that's always a great sign. 
Thanks to all of you for coming and making it a success.  Again I want to thank all of the Merrywalkers in putting this together.  I think all of us were able to see parts of Sherwood that we've never seen before and the merchants were so happy to be apart of it.  Hopefully we can call this "THE GREAT EASTER EGG HUNT OF 2010"  and next year we will have the 2011!  
See you on the trails!

It's going to be a beautiful day in the neighborhood.  Another big thanks to all of the Merrywalkers who helped put on this event, the merchants who made the event a lot more fun, and to all of the walkers who showed up!  We had a ball, I hope the rest of you did as well.  

We have such a blast, even handing out the baskets to our sponsors.  Of course, we decided on tea first at the Lavender Tea House and on the way we met Karen, a fellow Merrywalker, and her friend Linda doing our Sherwood walk.  We invited them to go with us, and now welcome our newest Member, Linda!  I hope some of the rest of the walkers top in at the Tea House sometime, their scones were amazing.  See you all at our walk! 

The 4D's got together and made up this great route.  Started out from my favorite coffee shop right in the center of the Ladd Division.  We headed out to OMSI and walked the East Esplanade up to the Steel Bridge and then we came back on the West side crossing at Hawthorne.  Blue skies and a warm day, and it still gets better than that.  On the map it says "have breakfast at Geni's".  Unfortunately you can only eat one meal and drool at everyone else's meal.  Geesh, that was a great meatloaf sandwich and the fries were the best I've had in a long time.  Dick gave us a bite of his apple sausage omelet and that was superb.  The great picture of us on the stairs was taken at a Carnegie Library.  The other picture was taken by a camera man from Channel 6, who was checking out Dick's camera for a segment they are doing on digital cameras and how to take great pictures, so he took ours!

This has become a tradition for volkswalkers in Oregon.  When St. Patrick's Day comes, the Cedarmilers do their annual event, and it was great.  They offered a 5k and an 11k and it was such a beautiful route.  We were in and out of parks and down some streets where we saw nice homes.  It was a great mix, and of course at the end, you were treated with a lucky chocolate coin.  Samantha, who is pretty new to volkswalking, did another great job designing the trail,  her last walk was the one at Jenkins Estate.  Of course, as we all know, it takes a great team to put it together a great walk and it was.  Good job.  Thanks to Starr and Carol Reed for the pictures.

Well today we had 3 different walking groups:  an 11k, 5k and an 8k that probably turned into a 10k by the time we got done.  The 11k people wanted to do the Carnegie Library, the 5k just wanted to do 5k and the 8k (10k) we wanted to see the cherry tree blossoms and they were gorgeous.  On our walk we passed this cleaners that offered free cleaning to anyone who was out of work and needed cleaning on their interview clothes.  Pretty nice, hey.  We had Rose from Battleground, Rita, Larry and Buddy from Portland, then Mary Ann Sandra and I.  After we stopped at the Nob Hill Tavern for lunch before heading back home to get ready for our corned beef and cabbage!  Happy St. Paddy's Day!

Today Sandy joined us on our walk with this great camera, so check out her pictures.  The only one I took was of the group shot, everything else was Sandy's.  She was so anxious to see the owl and she got a great shot.  It was so funny, the owl is always in the same spot and never moves, so we are always laughing thinking that it might just be a fake owl that someone put there.  But today, we saw it move!  It is real.  

"The best part of waking up," that would be having coffee at Starbucks with 4 good friends and fellow walkers after cleaning up Edy Rd.  It didn't take long, we took longer having coffee, but everyone still had a good time as we did our "civic duty".  We only clean it 4 times a year, and Joyce has it all set up for us with grabbers, bags, vests and gloves, so it makes it fun.

We didn't get to Gresham till after 10:15 and by the time we got started it was close to 10:30.  But, we weren't alone.  We met Buddy, and is he not the cutest dog?  We walked with Larry and Rita and finally met up with the others at Borcelli's.  Wow, did they have great Italian food and it happened to be right across the street from the infamous M&M bar.  Boy the things you run across when you just go for a walk!