Who would have thought that 162 walkers would show up on a day like today to hunt for eggs throughout Sherwood.   Well they did.  93 Credit walkers and 69 Non-credit walkers and out of the 69 there were 17 kids who participated in our annual event.  We had 3 walkers that bought New Walker Packets and we sold 8 Event Books.  We collected $72 for the Sherwood School Foundation and the sun actually came out!  We weren't sure the Easter Bunny would show up, but she did with her carrots on hand, plus pictures of the new bunny born this week.  Everyone was busy eating the delicious scones, munching on cookies, the kids eating their donuts and stopping for breakfast at Fat Milo's.  This is such a fun walk to put on, I wonder if we have more fun than the walkers!   Mary Ann and her "basket brigade" work diligently making sure all those eggs are hidden throughout Sherwood.  They did so well hidden that no one found our 2 big prizes, so for an added treat at the Crusin' Sherwood, we will have a $50 gift certificate to REI and a $100 certificate to New Balance, so make sure you come back now!  
We all did a good job and it showed with all of the great comments we got.  You Merrywalkers are the GREATEST!  You guys are the ones that make it work.  Thanks to all of the walkers who participated and we look forward to the 4th Annual Easter Egg Walk.  I wonder, if the weather was good, I wouldn't doubt that we would have had 300 walkers! Oh, there are more pictures on the picture page.

How do you like those cherry trees?  Aren't they beautiful?  Judy said they are in bloom at the Capitol, and they have to be in bloom at Tom McCall Park.  This is when you really appreciate the beauty of Oregon just starting to pop out.
We had a good turnout today, Rosie even made it in from her daughter's house, where she helped deliver her 4th grandchild, a bouncing 9+ baby boy.  Hopefully she will send a picture and I can get it up.
We had 2 Merrywalkers show up for the walk today, Vicky and Karen.  I was going to do the 5k walk, but Karen ended up accompanying the new walker, Sally, so I was able to head over to the open field with Milo.  
On the way back to the car I saw Leroy and wondered why he was headed back so soon.  Thankfully it wasn't another OMG situation, but he was experiencing some erratic heartbeats.  I thought he might just be hanging around someone who had a big magnet that was throwing his pacemaker off, but we decided to wait for the others by having coffee with the Wilsonville Walking Club.  

What a crowd and the weather wasn't as bad as we thought it would be.  And guess who was back today?  Heidi did her first walk since her operation.  She looked great!   We also had a new member join today, Dorothy, who is the gal way on the left in the banner.  She brought her new membership right with her to the walk today not even knowing what to expect.  She said she was a "snail" walker and I said if she showed up that I would walk with her.  We had a nice walk through Bridgeport looking at all of the shops and even stopping for coffee.  We pretty much figured out that she would be a perfect fit for our "snails" group and we would welcome her with open arms..  Unfortunately, we just made it back to Bridgeport Rd., right across the street from REI and I turned around to look and she was flat out on the ground.  OMG, we weren't sure what to do.  She didn't loose conciousness, but she was bleeding and had a huge bump on her head.  There must have been at least 5 cars, filled with people all in the 20s and 30s that stopped to help us.  Some of them grabbed some tissues, while others called 911.  She did go to Meridian Park, just to make sure everything was ok, but what a scare.  Spoken like a trooper she e-mailed me this afternoon and said her visit to the ER turned out to be fine, just abrasions and a lot of bumps and bruises.  AND she is looking forward to catching up with the snails in a few weeks.  And we will look forward to it!

It wasn't as warm as it has been the last few days, but you can tell the Refuge is starting to spring into life.  We saw the trilliums and the Johnny Jump Ups (I think that's what Barb called them) and even off in the distance we saw our first glimpse of an eagle, which we hadn't seen in quite a while.  By the way, this is the time when the eagles are hatching in Decorah Iowa, so click on Decorah Eagles for your own private show.
Don't forget, 3 walks this week all of them ours!  Wednesday we are walking out of REI in Bridgeport (old walk with new revisions) meeting at 9:45 a.m., Thursday the Albany Fitwalkers will be doing our Wilsonville Korean Memorial Walk at 10 a.m., and then on Saturday, THE GREAT EASTER EGG HUNT!  

Congratulations to Izzy, our Merrywalker dog from McMinnville, who gave birth this week to three pups:  Huey, Duey and Louie.  Vicky will be lost without her favorite walking companion.

It turned out to be a darned nice warm sunny day and most of us had ditched our coats by the end of the walk.  It was fun rambling through some new areas of Vancouver and exploring the paths and the parks.  We even spotted some trillium.  After the walk we had just as much fun exploring Chuck's.
I'm not sure of how many walkers there were, but there looked like a lot in the start/finish area when we were heading home.  Hopefully Jan will give me a count later (141).   We also caught up with Walter who had a nice show and tell about his operation that he had 3 weeks ago.  He  had pictures of the 90% blockage and then another picture showing where it was gone.  Pretty darned good, huh?
Temple was the SECOND NEW WALKER we saw this weekend.  We saw her sitting in a nice little spot taking a water break and just enjoying the fresh air.  She was from Portland so we gave her our card and hopefully we will see her at our Easter Egg Hunt next weekend. 
Carolyn definitely wanted to check out Chuck's, and we saw so many walkers checking it out at the end of their walk buying their produce and even eating in their deli.  We had the Hungarian mushroom soup, while Carolyn and Mike shared their sirloin tip sandwich and fries.  The pizza looked good, but the store itself, has everything, including free wine tasting on Sundays and Wednesdays.  So Joe and Dick, we gotta have a group walk out there sometime and lunch can be right at their deli. 
It's always nice to go to an event walk, you have a chance to see walkers you just don't see at the group walks and catch up.  

What a great day to get out there today and walk.  I saw the first tulips blooming and daffodils everywhere.  We had a pretty good turnout, considering they were doing some of the pre-walks up at the Gorge today, and what a day it was to be anyplace, especially if it is outside.
We welcomed a new walker, Terry today, and she wrote back immediately, saying how much she really enjoyed the walk.  She not only wrote to us, but sent a note to Joe, so I hope we see her again soon!
After the walk the Merrywalkers gathered at Famous Dave's where we were able to have the free birthday Sunday for Andrea.  And we actually ran into some Louise and Esther celebrating a Louise's birthday.  We  hadn't seen them in so long, but they used to be members years ago and they still follow us the blog.  So for Louise, Happy Birthday.
Tomorrow there is an event in Vancouver.  You can start anytime from 9:30 till 1 p.m. but you have to finish by 4 p.m.  Click here for the details of the walk.

Weird pictures, huh?  Well Andrea and I found out there is a setting on our cameras that let's you take sepia or even black and white, unfortunately we didn't know that setting was there, so you will have to imagine the beautiful colors of the daffodils.  She went out there with Pat and Sandra and they walked all the way up to the Abbey and then took the bus back.  It was their first time and they were pretty impressed with the beauty of the country roads.  It always reminds me of that movie, Witness.  We've walked that walk in all kinds of weather, and is a great way to appreciate another side of Oregon.  They ran into Rita, Larry, Anila, Nare, Kyoko just to name a few of the Merrywalkers that headed out there for the walk on Sunday.  Not only was the walk beautiful, they were able to