The first one we stopped for, we drove by the other day, we found out was along the trail with very limited parking access. Well Bob made his own parking spot and we were less than 100 feet from the cache. We looked for it for a while, we touched the GZ at least twice, before realizing, oh here it is. It was a clever hide but didn't fool us. We went back to the truck and went for the next one.
I really needed one in South Prairie for the 120 cities and towns challenge. He stopped at one for me while he used the restroom. The coords were off a bit but I found it. I took a cool picture of the Carbonado River nearby.
We headed into Wilkeson, a small mountain town, one of the gateways to Mount Rainier. At this point, I really wanted it to be summer. So many pretty views we could of had of the mountain all snuffed out because of the overcast drizzle. We grabbed a not-so-traditional guardrail. The only thing that gave it away was the edges, they were a bit weathered. Pretty neat idea though. We wet to the next one called What's That?! Indeed, what was that?
We thought it was some sort of a bunker. This area was a huge mining area. Maybe it had something to do with that? We found the cache pretty quickly and Bob had to retrieve it because I was too short.
We found a couple more along the road that took us into the actual town of Wilkeson but first we did a cemetery multi. It was a straight forward multi, fill in numbers and go find it. The only annoying part was the cache final was on the other side of the fence and we couldn't climb it. We had to walk all the way around. Poo. The cache was in good shape though.
Now into the actual town of Wilkeson, Washington.
It didn't surprise me that ohjoy had a bunch of caches in town due to the train trail and the caboose down the road. We went to one near a neighborhood first and found out it was missing so we replaced it with a new container and log. We didn't want her to come all this way to fix one cache. Turns out when we got home she archived it because the lady across the street didn't want people around. At least we got the find. We moved onto the caboose and we had trouble finding parking for Bob's truck.
We found it quickly and went to the other one just down the road at the Wilkeson Coke Oven Park. We actually didn't know it was a park until we saw the sign and the old falling apart coke ovens. It would have been cool to see old pictures of the times they were being used.
We walked along the pathway and into the woods where the cache was underneath a tree root system with old coke oven bricks on top of it. We even saw a sock.
We headed down the road to one that published a couple of days ago near a graveyard, specifically behind a memorial from miners who have died while working in the mines. Wow, we should have found this one within minutes of arrival. We circled the area at least a thousand times. About 20 minutes into it, we heard a voice behind us, it was RodyH, a cacher, we met a few months back on the Foothills Trail in Orting-ish. He searched with us for a little bit and then it started raining. I walked back out towards the cemetery and back in to get another fresh reading. I saw two other people wandering towards us, I said outloud, "Hey, Bob, there are other cachers here to do what we're doing!" Everyone laughed. Terpnurse and Besparza helped in more of the forest circles. A few minutes later we heard, "found it!" Yes! The misery is over! We all touched that area at least twice and it magically appeared for him. We were so glad we were done and could move on without a DNF.
We all went our separate ways. We continued down the road grabbing ones that didn't require a lot of walking or climbing. We had a hard time with one near the Fairfax Bridge. It was very cold, it was raining and the coords were terrible. We had to DNF this one.
More info on the bridge:
The Fairfax Bridge (formerly known as the O'Farrell Bridge) is a steel-lattice three-hinged arch bridge spanning the Carbon River on State Route 165 in Pierce County, Washington. Previous to the construction of the bridge in 1921, the only route south to the area around Fairfax was by train. At a total cost of $80,000, the bridge's deck sits 250 feet (76 m) above the river, which made it the tallest structure in Washington at the time it was built.
The bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
We drove further up and the rain turned into snow. I would have loved to have seen Mount Rainier from this location. We'll have to drive up to Lake Mowich this summer. We grabbed an easy one and then sat and ate our lunch. Lays chips sure hit the spot.
We drove back through town and over to Buckley for a few on the paved walk/bike trail. We parked the truck at the parking coords and grabbed the four within walking distance. We were freezing. I checked the temp on my phone, it was 38 degrees, wind blowing and rain coming down. We decided it was time for a bathroom break at the Shell Station up the street.
For an even 20 for the day, we took the Buckley-Sumner road to Bonney Lake and picked up three more along the way. Two of them were very creative. We got home and I was very glad to get out of my wet clothes and into the hot shower. Ahhh.
Next Adventure: Legend of the Falls, Highway 8.
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