After starring in countless illustrated kids books for 25 years, world-famous adventurer Waldo ditched his signature striped shirt-cap combo, got LASIK surgery and fled from the public eye. Last we heard, he was living in his native England (where he鈥檚 known as Wally) and working on a brooding memoir titled, Found Then Lost: How Aimlessly Wandering the Earth While Wearing the Same Weird Outfit Each Day Messed Me Up Pretty Good. Please respect his privacy and don鈥檛 go hunting for him. But not to worry, superfans鈥攖he ex-peripatetic lives on at Waldo-themed events around the world, including the following fun runs, bar crawls, and scavenger hunts. So don your red and white stripes and oval specs and channel your inner nomad.
Where鈥檚 Wally? Fun Run, Birmingham, England
Organized by The National Literary Trust, a non-profit dedicated to raising literacy levels in the U.K., invites participants to dress up like Waldo and run 5 or 10 kilometers through beautiful Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham.
Saturday, October 4, 2014; Registration includes a Where鈥檚 Wally? costume.
Waldo 100K, Willamette National Forest, Oregon
聽takes place each year in and around Willamette Pass Ski Area in western Oregon and is actually named for a lake that runners pass during the grueling race. But participants have been known to dress up like Waldo, and one year someone nailed a plush Waldo doll to the Fuji Mountain Trail sign that sits on part of the course. Plus, we like to think that in a different life, Waldo would have crushed an ultra.聽
August 16, 2014.
Where鈥檚 Waldo? Bar Crawl, Charlotte, North Carolina
No fictional character (not even Santa) is immune to the , and this one is the mother of all Waldo pub hops, occurring each January at the Epicentre mall in downtown Charlotte. Though it draws hundreds of bespectacled revelers, it has yet to break the Guinness World Record for the most people dressed as Waldo in one place, set in 2011 when .
Waldo NYC Explorer Pass, New York City
Heading to Gotham with the kids this summer? , which gives holders discounted access to sites Waldo himself would love to explore around the city, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Empire State Building.
Other Waldo-themed events:
; Raleigh, North Carolina; July 2014
; Bethel, Connecticut; July 2014
; Colorado Springs, Colorado; October 26, 2014