Cowlitz Caching

The last few days new caches have been popping up down by Vader.  So we decided to do them before they disappeared, since that happens often.  Bob and Bev have already been down here several times so it was hard to decipher which ones they already had, which ones I didn't have and which ones we didn't have together.

They got here around 7 and I grabbed all my stuff and headed to the car.  We headed out towards Tenino and Scotty B's.  When we got there Kenny and Mike were already there waiting in the booth.  We shared breakfast and conversation with them.  Today I tried the french toast.  It was excellent.

We headed towards I-5 and drove south to the Toledo-Winlock exit.  There, we started the I-5 Series by "bearsandme".    We didn't know what to expect.  Most of the series in the area are micros, either film canisters or bison tubes, hiding in trees or stumps.  It was a relief to see some creativity in these ones.

We came across shoes, a teddy bear, cows, bugs, bees, an other assortments of containers throughout our day.  My favorite was the first cow one we found.  It actually mooed.

We continued south down the side road parallel to I-5, stopping along the side of the road grabbing the series.  I had no idea this road was here and it wasn't used very much so that was an advantage for us when we pulled the car over.  We headed towards Toledo and down a road that we couldn't help make fun of.  I kinda wish I knew someone who lived down Fluckinger Road.  We came up with several jokes and some fun names for caches if we lived nearby to hide them along this road.  Fluck yeah!

This is my favorite picture of Bob to date.

Here are a few of the containers we found that day:

 Most of them were pretty easy.  The picture at the bottom, the spider, was hard to find.  We had no hints or clues in the logs so we were just looking for something out of place.  The only thing we knew was that it blended in well.   This was under the trees so our coords bounced all over the place.  We were all over the place too.  I had to leave the trees several times just to get my GPS to stop bouncing around.  It actually worked.  I was within 5 feet of the cache once Bob found it by accident.  This place had so much trash and a very questionable plastic bag.

The next few caches was in an area we've been to so we kind of knew our way around.  There were 6 new ones off of Barnes Drive, west of the Toutle rest stop off of I-5.  This time we drove the roads instead of walked them.  We had a discussion on why we didn't drive them last time.  Bob said the gate was closed.  Bev and I didn't recall there being a closed gate.  I think we just assumed we had to walk around the loop. So we did with two other people and a dog last spring.

 We drove towards the first few.  The first one made us go down a steep hill, the next few were difficult and we managed to find one of them.  The other two were difficulty 5.  We gave them a good search but came up empty handed.  One of them still hasn't been found and it's been out since May.  Here, is where the weather started to improve and the sun came out.  We drove back grabbed two more, one was inside of a bone, which is not an unusual hiding spot in the woods covered in bones and animal carcases.

 

We finished up the woods and moved on towards Castle Rock.  There were still a few Bob and Bev hadn't gotten to yet.  They stopped at the Aloha TB Hotel since it was gone the last time I was in the area.  I dropped off about 12 TB's.  Too bad it was a temporary container, I would have liked to see the original.  We went into downtown Castle Rock and did about three of them, one was a unique multi about a fake missing dog, one was inside a black electrical box and one was at a garden nursery up the hill.  Bob got frustrated because there weren't any more in the area on our GPS's so we headed to Toledo for a few.  There was this park nestled up against the Cowlitz River.

We parked the car and walked the short trail around the lake.  We grabbed the first cache quickly.  We saw tons and tons of small Canadian geese just up ahead.  They were laying along the shoreline.  I had to run and chase them into the water.

They were so upset.  The noise coming from at least a couple thousand geese was deafening.  We headed to the second cache and found it with no problem.

Bob laid down in the grass and was picking sticker bush out of his socks and shoes.  You can see him in the background.  Haha.  We put it back and headed back to the car.  Along the way were five white geese who were very used to being around people.  They expected that we give them food.  We didn't have any so they were really upset with us for walking away.  As a kid, my grandparents had geese similar to them that they let wander the yard, so when we came over to visit we didn't want to get out of the car.  We were chased by them and feared them.  I was hoping that these Toledo geese would not chase me.  Four of them were normal looking and this other one looked like it got stuck in a rototiller or hit by a truck.  It's feathers were all over the place on its body.

 We got back to the car and got a few more before heading back towards home.  We stopped at the Rush Road McDonalds for some dinner.  We got home around 6:30.

Next Adventure:  Eatonville, Wash. for an earthcache for International Earthcache Day.