Vegas Winners!

Monday, March 11^th, 2024 – Safeway

Our first walk of the week and, as it turned out, our last. But that’s a story. Today was a comfortable day at 40°F (4.4°C). Again, we found no roadkill and we found money.

Janet again raided her favorite drive-thru and came up with a quarter, a dime, and a penny. The white “coin” on the left is only a spot on the pavement.

We picked up a pair of glasses.

They didn’t have any correction, so they are another pair of safety glasses like we’ve found before. But these will make you look more sophisticated, like Clark Kent.

We don’t feel very welcome anymore.

The Welcome to Bothell sign at the bottom of Norway Hill. Someone really hated that sign.

And at the top of the hill,

Someone got leied. Welcome to Bothell.

And that ended the last walk of the week. For the rest of the week, we visited some friends camping at Lake Mead, Nevada. We did this last year and visited Hoover Dam, some museums and went on some hikes. This year, it was cold, rainy and very windy. We spent most of the time visiting and doing some sightseeing. We visited Las Vegas one day and it has changed significantly since the last time we were there.

The Strat (Stratosphere), a casino-hotel with an observation tower eleven-hundred feet high with some thrill rides on top. A little too thrilling for us.

Fremont Street used to be the main drag through downtown Las Vegas.

Now it’s closed to traffic and has a canopy over it running a continuous lightshow. There are all sorts of shops and casinos and people trying to extract money from you.

There were about a dozen pairs of these girls in different costumes trying to get people to pay to get a photo with them. Chuck was willing, but Janet disapproved. No photo.

Also, there is the new three-hundred-foot Sphere Experience.

Inside the venue they host concerts, light shows and other events. It has seating for over eighteen-thousand people and the average ticket price is $197.17. You do the math. We imagine the shows are spectacular and the exterior is not bad either.

Back at the campsite, “meep-meep.”

No coyote, though.

Unlike most folks who visit Las Vegas, we came away winners.

We found a penny in our hotel parking lot and a nickel at the Fremont Street Mall.

We were tempted to try to double our money, but what are the odds? Literally.

Our plan was to arrive back home around 4:00 pm on Friday and be ready to walk on Saturday. However, Alaska Airlines had other plans for us and cancelled our return flight. We arrived home a little after midnight, and yes, we slept through the alarm.

Monday, March 18^th, 2024 – Safeway

Our first walk of the new week was beautiful. The temperature was 43°F (6.1°C), dry and sunny when the sun finally rose. On the way to Janet’s favorite drive-thru, she found a nickel in the Safeway parking lot.

This was good because the drive-thru and the gas station were busts.

By the apartments on 112^th Ave NE, someone tossed a box of unused condoms.

Eight unused condoms from a box of twelve. Come on, buckeroo, don’t give up. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Okay, make that try, try, try, try, try again.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Right. A day late and a pot of gold short.

On Saturday, we heard some police cars racing past our house up Norway Hill. Later, we heard that a car had swerved off the road into a telephone pole.

Today we picked up parts from the wreckage. After the accident on Saturday, the car had been cleared, the area surveyed for buried cables, the pole replaced, and the power lines restrung. Great, fast work on a weekend. The cable company, not so much. They tacked the old cable distribution box to the new pole. It looks precarious.

We found a half-full bottle of pills on Norway Hill.

Sleep-Aid Softgels. Say, you don’t suppose the guy who ran off the road was using these, do you?

Also on the hill, a condom wrapper.

Say, you don’t suppose the guy who ran off the road was using these, do you?

Tuesday, March 19^th, 2024 – Park-and-Ride

Another nice TrashWalking morning. Good weather, no roadkill and some money.

Two dimes and a penny on Juanita-Woodinville Way and another penny in the park-and-ride. We did find another penny.

But it’s from north of the border so it doesn’t count.

We also found a tool.

A Stanley box cutter, but it had been disassembled by several cars. But it still counts as a tool. At least the blade was still sharp.

Some free stuff.

Being the first day of Spring, someone is doing some spring cleaning. We don’t know if this is a single household or multiple, but it seems that each year a pile of free stuff appears here. Unlike the typical put something out that nobody wants, these things have at least some value. In fact, while we were taking this photo, a pickup truck stopped and grabbed a few things.

Yet another rubber duck.

This will be the eleventh in our collection. They are made in China and may have miniature imbedded spy cameras.

Along Juanita-Woodinville Way we picked up a badly-runover set of keys.

One looks to be one of those round keys used on vending machines, but this one was no longer round from being run over. The other key was nondescriptive but there was a metal ID tag on it which was also runover and unreadable. Bottom line, these keys were totally useless, and we almost didn’t add them to our collection of useless keys. Almost.

On the freeway onramp, a pristine wheel cover.

We could have recycled it, but we set it against the barrier in case the owner sees it. If it is still there on Thursday, our next trip to this location, it’s toast.

Although this was a short walking week, Chuck’s vest pocket was full, so here are the contents.

We missed our Saturday walk which seems to supply the credit cards, so on the left, we start with a Minecraft Dungeons Green Menace card. Wait, Minecraft is a video game, right? Why does it have cards to go with it? Okay, we get it, it’s a profit deal, it takes all the pressure off.

Then there’s the yellow note. We think it’s a coded Russian spy message.

Google Lens interpreted this note as “Revise 7 Replace Heron twill? Big Way ok Undsay Herontand.” That make no sense, and it didn’t mention Russians at all. Our interpretation is, Heron is the code name for the Russian big wig, and he has seersucker suit that he wants replaced. He was asked if twill was okay, and he said OK. We don’t know what Undsay Heron Hand off means exactly, but it could mean “Don’t say anything to him but just give him the old suit back and tell him it’s twill.” Just a guess.

At the bottom, three unopened condoms. Chuck claims he has no recollection of how they got in his pocket.

Two religious cards in Mexican, a very small, magnetic US Bank pin. Evidently, they don’t want to brag about their bank. Next a pad of index tabs for marking files. Then there is a Yoga advertisement claiming, “I will love others as an extension of my own Self.” No thanks.

At the bottom is a piece of plastic that states, “remove & keep.” at least they got the first instruction correct.

As always, we find at least one writing utensil, but this it the shortest one we have found. Below that, an unopened bandage, which could come in handy with our next up-close-and-personal encounter with a berry bush.

A “Mama Mama Mama” hotel key tag, possibly from the Moma Hotel Cannigion, Italy. Or not. We really don’t know. A cheap, unopened USB charger, a kid’s friendship bracelet and some hair bands.

A Travalo Atomizer. It smells nice and will be a welcome addition to our trash bags. Finally at the bottom, Bullseye, the Target Store mascot.

That’s humiliating. Is this considered animal cruelty?

Wednesday, March 20^th, 2024 – Safeway & 100^th Ave NE

It was a bit warmer and overcast this morning which made for a comfortable walk. We found no money and removed a roadkill rabbit from Juanita-Woodinville Way. However, we did find some tools.

A tie-down strap and a roll of velcro tape. We use this stuff to wrap cords, so this is like a lifetime supply for us. Okay, we can leave it to our kids.

We found DVD, not in playable condition.

Disney’s 1970 movie, The Aristocats, about an evil butler that kidnaps the kittens and holds them for ransom. So, fifty years later, is it still socially correct to have a movie about kittens being catnapped? It may be a traumatic experience for children. Just a thought.

We found another ring in a parking lot.

It doesn’t have any markings on it, so it is probably not an expensive ring, but we’ll watch the media feeds for queries.

We don’t know if these are related, but we found three unopened bags of wiring devices.

The first two are obviously related, but the item on the right was found about a half mile away and appears to be a keypad backplate. Thats all well and good, but now they are recycled.

On 100^th Ave NE, we found Joesiah’s small Christmas stocking.

You don’t see many green Christmas stockings. But last Sunday was St. Patrick’s day. It was small, so do they have a tradition of hanging a leprechaun’s stocking on the mantel hoping for a stocking full of gold?

At the top of the Tolt Pipeline, someone got lucky.

Not exactly a pot of gold, but still.

Thursday, March 21^st, 2024 – 160^th to 124^th Street

The weather was about the same as yesterday, comfortable with no rain. We found no money and one small roadkill bird. Janet claims she spotted a dead cat along 112^th Ave NE while running errands yesterday, but today it was gone. A vampire, zombie cat? Time will tell.

At the park-and-ride things were boring. We did find a pair of readers with one lens missing.

Peeper’s Readers with one lens missing. For readers, they are fairly high priced in the twenty- to thirty-dollar range on Amazon. We left them on a newspaper stand by the bus stop, but with only a single lens, they are useless for most folks.

This is the day we walk down 116^th Ave NE that parallels the freeway offramp. We missed a week and there was a lot of minor trash, but not anything worthwhile. Well, there was this very small lock.

Janet termed it as “cute”, but to Chuck it was useless. Especially since there was not “cute” key to go with it.

We came across a strange, to us, drink container.

“frazil.” We’ve never found this brand, but after some research, it is a product of Freezing Point LLC, currently the fastest-growing frozen beverage in the world. Great, something to add to the Big Gulp and Slurpee cups we now pick up.

We found this in a parking lot.

There’s got to be a story here, but we’ll never find out. Another TrashWalking mystery.

Friday, March 22^nd, 2024 – 100^th Ave NE

The morning was warm and overcast. We found no roadkill and found more money.

Janet found a dime at the gas station and a dime and three pennies at her favorite drive-thru. The week’s looking good and we still have tomorrow to go.

The only other eventful things today were shopping carts.

Most of the shopping carts we find are from Safeway and we drag them back to that store. However, the first one we found was a Goodwill shopping cart at a bus stop on Juanita-Woodinville way. We pulled it over a half-mile back to Goodwill. The second was at a 7Eleven in a strip mall on 100^th Ave NE. It was probably a Safeway cart, but it didn’t have any Safeway markings, so we moved it to the parking lot and left it.

So, two good deeds today were rewarded with twenty-three cents. Seems fair to us.

Saturday, March 23^rd, 2024 – Riverside Drive

Today started out like yesterday, warm and overcast. However, the rain started about 5:30 am and continued for the rest of the walk and we arrived home soaked. We didn’t find any more money and removed a roadkill rabbit and a salamander from the street.

102^nd Ave. NE, the street into downtown Bothell, has wetlands on both sides. This morning the frogs were making a lot of noise and we noticed that there were the remains of several small frogs on the street. We saw one live frog in the gutter.

He was probably being lured to the other side of the street by a frog siren, and like the Greek sirens he is being lured to his destruction. We didn’t wait around to see if he made it.

The first thing we found this morning was a piece of stolen mail.

It was addressed to a house on 112^th Ave NE and we returned it to the house on our way back home.

We found a couple of tools this morning.

A Lenox nine-in-one screwdriver and a five-eighth-inch deep socket. We only found the screwdriver handle, so technically, it is a zero-in-one screwdriver. But we’re going to count it.

Spring is here and someone decided to put away his snow shovel.

Unfortunately, he left it in the middle of Juanita-Woodinville Way. The TrashWalking judges won’t let us count this as a tool. We checked.

We picked up a couple more articles of clothing.

A pair of socks on Riverside Drive and a light sweater in the Bothell parking lot. They’ll be washed and put into the Goodwill pile.

Another pile of trash on Woodinville Drive.

This is in Woodinville, so we can’t contact Bothell City to deal with it. We may contact Woodinville.

We found another drone on Brickyard Road.

Unlike others we’ve found this one does not appear to have collided with a vehicle. It’s forty-four dollars on Amazon. However, we don’t have a controller for it. But we did find a used controller on eBay for sixteen bucks, so we’ll let this go for twenty or best offer.

By the apartments on 112^th Ave NE, a needle.

We used to find these often, but lately, it’s been only one every month or so.

More folks parking and riding at the park-and-ride.

Someone lost their water bottle.

It was sent to the guy by Strava, a personal exercise tracking company. It shows the guy’s accomplishments for 2023.

• Total active days 224.
• Total elevation 157,935 feet.
• Total distance 3,485 miles.

That’s pretty good. Here are ours for 2023 from Garmin.

He’s got us beat, but he’s probably riding a wimpy bicycle or something.

That wraps up another TrashWalking week. Our take this week,

• 69 Cents plus a Canadian penny.
• 13 Mikes Hard Lemonade cans – below normal.
• 13 Condoms, two used – above normal.
• 6 Balls including a mixing ball.
• 5 Tools, not counting the snow shovel.
• 4 Roadkill not counting several small frogs.
• 4 Items of apparel including 1 shoe and one bra.
• 2 Pairs of glasses.
• 2 Shopping carts.
• 1 Rubber duck.
• 1 Set of keys with no lock.
• 1 Lock with no key.
• 1 Nice ring.
• 1 Out-of-control drone.
• 1 Horny frog.

Have a great week and remember, painting a dog is animal cruelty.