Early Birthday/Anniversary Weekend: Power Trails, Prescott, Pre-Cache Machine Event

It was hard to get up when our alarm went off at 8, but we needed as much day as possible to get some of the power trails done.  We got dressed and went downstairs for the free breakfast. I had a croissant, meat, cheese and strawberry yogurt.  We went back to the room to finish getting ready and grabbing the things we would need for the rest of the day. 

We hopped into the Edge and drove west on Hwy 12.  I found our first set of caches just north of a little blip on the map, Lowden. I told Ben I would be the first jumper and then we would trade later on. Erika called and I talked to her for a while as we geocached. I made sure someone else besides Doug was keeping track of the house and cats while we were gone.  We started with the LDCR series. (GC5J6K7). There were probably twenty of them at one point, but only 11 of them remained.  It was a bit foggy when we started, but that soon burned off into a very nice autumn day.

As we got further and further into the farmlands, I told Erika our service was getting spotty.  She said she would talk to me later and I hung up.  I continued hammering out the caches on the LDCR series.  We did stop short of some of them and drove past others.  We know the approximate coordinates are never perfect, especially when driving.  

The next section of caches a tad bit north of the LDCR series were the Sudberry series (GC5QJ5T) and there were 14 caches to grab along that trail. It was Ben's turn to get out and jump for this section of caches.  We ended that series with two extra ones called Sudberry Reroute (GC468T9) and Lark Song (GC3NP3B).  We were making pretty good time, even though we were having to replace a bunch of them as we went.

We hit another section of the trail, this time it was my turn to get out and jump.  We started off with Tormented Hawk (GC3NP3E) and then the 38 letterboxes I have been eyeballing for many years. This was the main reason for coming out this way because I needed to finish getting 100 letterboxes to be eligible to find some of the challenge caches that I have been waiting to do.  There aren't many letterbox power trails in Western Washington.  The letterbox series started off with Ice Cream Cone (GC66HD1) and ended with Wishing You Well (GC66RF2).  We had to replace a lot of these ones.  We were literally the only ones out there in the middle of nowhere.

At the end of this power trail, we hit the small area of Harsha along SR 124.  We pulled off to grab Road to Clyde - 1 (GCA62W0) which was, of course, a guard rail cache.  I got out, found it immediately, got our names on it and put it back. We pulled back onto SR 124 and drove east towards Prescott.  We stopped one more time along the highway to pick up Yota Crash Site (GC6F3X6), hidden at a stop sign.

The next power trail was the PettiJohn series (GC762NF) and this time it was Ben's turn to get out and jump.  There were 30 of them. PettiJohn followed the road south back towards Walla Walla until it met up with SR 125.  There were a bunch of caches we had to replace along that stretch of road as well.  I knew to bring extra containers out here so we could replace the ones that were missing.  I did not come out this way for a bunch of DNF's. 

We found a place to pullover to pee and to make some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  It was just after lunchtime, and we needed some food.  We each took turns peeing on the side of the road, obviously watching out for that random vehicle that just happened to drive by in the middle of nowhere.  Trust me, it happens. We got out our food, made two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, grabbed drinks out of the cooler and munched on our giant bag of Doritos.  We pondered which power trail we were going to end the day with.

We decided to hit up the 22 caches on Brown Road, the Brown series (GC75J2C).  That dirt road led us north into Prescott.  We drove past several hundred acres of what used to be wheat that was harvested earlier that fall.  One of the caches I jumped out for was near a section of wheat that wasn't cut down.  I picked it and held it like a bouquet of flowers, except it was a bouquet of wheat.  Ben said I was precious.  We stopped for the last cache of the Brown series, Brown 22 (GC75JJ7) and enjoyed the scenery and the Touchet River down below. 

We went into the small town of Prescott, a very small town of about 320 people, and named after C.H. Prescott, a railroad official.  We came to Prescott because I needed it for my Towns and Cities Challenge, which was slowly dwindling down every time I came to Eastern Washington.  We plugged in our first cache, The Gathering Spot (GC70W3H), into Ben's phone and he led me right to it. It would be hard to get lost in this tiny, Columbia County, town.  We parked, got out and the coord bounced all over the place.  It took us a few minutes to pull it out of its hiding spot.  We got our names on it, got a picture and put it back.

We drove up the road to Field View Park.  We parked, saw it wasn't super busy and went to go find the cache The Pool and Park (GC7G34P).  This one also took us a few minutes to find.  It was shoved into a hole in the road dividers that separated the park from someone's property.  A dog barked at us the entire time. We got our names on it, a quick photo and put it back.  I headed right to the swings.  We swung for a while as we enjoyed the nice day away from home and work.

We hopped back into the Edge and drove a block away, parked and got out to find Welcome to Prescott (GC44T0F).  Mom called so I talked to her while we looked for the cache. I told her what we've done so far, and she told me how exciting her day had been so far. I know, a super invigorating conversation.  I saw that the grass had been recently cut and some of the logs had said to look low...I told Ben this one may have gotten mowed.  As soon as I said that we found the bits of container and paper underneath one of the branches to the bush we were looking through. We counted it as a find and let the cache owner know that their cache had been destroyed and needed some maintenance. We got back in the Edge and told Mom I would call her later since I had no idea how the cell service was around there. 

We drove to the north of town to find Whetstone Creek Stop (GC44T0J).  It was shoved into the guardrail. It was a quick park and grab.  We drove back into town, got back on the SR 124 and headed east.  We stopped to grab one more on our way to Waitsburg, the other Welcome to Prescott (GC5EMB5) at the other end of town.  I got out and signed it.

We drove into Waitsburg, mostly so Ben could see the small town, to drive back into Walla Walla a different way and to grab an earthcache,7SOA: Nature Lover (GC5A977).  It was a quick one that talked about the layers of loess. Loess is layers of fine, mineral-rich materials mostly created by wind, but can also be formed by glaciers.  The Palouse is covered in these hills, and they are great for farming.

We made our way back into Walla Walla, entering on Hwy 12 from the east.  We found ourselves near the airport and some of the industrial buildings.  Ben stopped for "E"asy Street 02 (GC5M7BD), which was a battered film cannister.  The area wasn't too terribly busy, so we didn't have to worry about muggles seeing what we were doing.  The next one took us by the regional airport.  I had Ben park the Edge in one of the shoulders out of traffic while I ran across the street to find a Costco sized mayo jar someone turned into a cache.  Sadly, there were no travel bugs inside of the Travel Bug Airport Motel (GC4QA8F).

We drove into town and headed to Pioneer Park.  We had to waste a little bit of time before the event started in downtown. Pioneer Park was huge!  We used the restroom, took pictures of the fountain that reminded us of the one on Friends, played ping pong for a while and then did the five waypoint Pioneer Park Adventure Lab.  Then we looked at all the ducks, birds and pheasants in the bird enclosure.  We found Park of the Pioneers (GC7WH9F) as we walked back towards the Edge.  It was an ammo can hidden under the bushes by the large cannon.  We took some pictures of the trees because the fall foliage was pretty.  We got back to the Edge and decided it was time to go downtown for the event, Friday the 13th Gathering (Pre CM & Solar Eclipse) (GCAER5M). We were at the park for about an hour.   

We got into downtown, found a place to park near the Red Monkey, went in and found the reserved seating for the geocachers. I wasn't sure who all was coming to this cache machine or who was all there yet. I saw a couple I knew who lived north of Seattle, so we sat in the table next to them and chatted for a bit.  Our server came up to us and I ordered a strawberry milkshake and Ben got a peanut butter shake.  When our shakes arrived, we ordered our food.  I got the Mac n cheese and Ben ordered the nachos.   

More people joined us at the table Ben and I were sitting at.  We got to talk to Lucy, a lady we spoke to at Ray and Brenda's going away event, she is part of the Inland Empire region.  We chatted with everyone for almost two hours.  I paid for our food and drinks, thanked Lori for putting together the event and left.  I asked Ben if we could go to College Place so we could get a few things at the Walmart. He said sure.  We got some yogurt, chocolate milk, cream cheese, bagels and a bag of ice. 

We got back to the hotel, decided to go down to the pool and hot tub.  We changed into our swimming suits and headed down.  We relaxed in the hot tub for a while as we talked to Brad and his friends, they also, were in the same hotel.  Ben jumped in the pool for a few minutes, told everyone we would see them tomorrow and went back upstairs.  

We got some showers in, and I spent some time working on the cache machine route on my computer while Avitar played on the TV in the background.  We got ready for bed and went to bed sometime around 1 a.m. 

Notes on the day:

We crossed off Prescott and now I have 10 more towns and cities left to go.

We found 129 caches.

An Adventure Lab with 5 waypoints. 

For a total of 134 caches for the day.

A two-day total of 156 caches. 

Next Adventure:  Early Birthday/Anniversary Weekend:  Walla Walla Cache Machine and a Solar Eclipse

Early Birthday/Anniversary Weekend: Lacey to Walla Walla

I wanted to do something exciting for my 40th birthday.  I was hoping to go to Hawaii or something like that, but we were not in a place to do stuff like that, at least not quite yet.  November is historically known for rain and terrible weather so I asked Ben if we could possibly do it in August or September and go to Utah.  He said sure but it, unfortunately, didn't work out with his work schedule.  We had to put Utah on the back burner for a while.  Instead, I decided to go to Walla Walla for a few days and it corresponded with the cache machine and a partial eclipse.  

We were going to take Ben's Edge, he booked us a hotel for four days, I went grocery shopping for light breakfasts, lunches, snacks and drinks, I planned the activities and routes for each day, we got our laundry washed and dried and packed up most everything the night before so we could leave at a decent time the next day. 

We got up at 7, we got ready, packed up the rest of the stuff into Ben's Edge, I ate a half a bagel just to get me by and Ben brought one of his overnight oatmeal to eat later.  We didn't leave the house until 8:30. We noticed that the gutter was falling off of the front of the house, so Ben put in a work order to Hometown. Ben wanted to stop at Cutter's Point Coffee so we went through the drive thru and he was able to suffice his coffee fix.  

Doug caused some problems (which always happened when we went on vacation) and I had to chat with Erika while we drove through Yelm and McKenna.  We got it worked out and she was going to come over to check on the cats while we were gone.  Ben ate his yogurt mixture as we headed to Eatonville. The traffic was minimal, which was nice.  Ben was able to find some service as we were driving near Eatonville and found out that Lester came over to fix the gutter and they closed out the ticket.  We also let Willmarth know we were on our way over if he had some time to hang out. 

From Elbe to Packwood, we had to follow several slow semi-trucks, cars and trucks.  We were able to get around some of them, so we didn't have to follow them for miles and miles.  I saw there was a new cache in Packwood, so I directed Ben to Cola Truck (GCADQMN).  It was near the gas station, so we parked at the gas station, did some stretching and found the cache.  It was an easy find. 

We got back onto Hwy 12 and had to follow a semi-truck up the pass, he did eventually pull over and let us pass but then we were slowed down by other slow cars and trucks. I thought that if we went over Hwy 12 during the early morning, we would not get stuck behind slow vehicles, apparently, we were wrong.  

We finally got to the junction where Hwy 410 meets up with Hwy 12 and we let Willmarth know we were in town.  He did get back to us and told us he was currently in a doctor's appointment, and he didn't know how much time we had to wait around.  We let him know we would check in again the next time we came through.

I asked Ben if he was hungry, and he said yes.  I asked what sounded good and we came up with sandwiches.  We traveled to Union Gap to grab a cache, Pioneer Cemetery Old Bones (GC78TEN) and while I looked for it, Ben found a place to pee. There were several signs that talked about the history of this old cemetery.  

I found the closest sandwich place and it was a Bruchi's.  We pulled in and went inside. I haven't been to a Bruchi's in a very long time since it is an Eastern Washington franchise. We perused the menu, and I got a turkey and cheese, and Ben got a Philly cheesesteak.  We both had chips and a drink.  We sat in a booth and ate our sandwiches.  

Once we were done, we made our way to the freeway and headed towards Prosser.  We talked about missing this drive every June because the TriCities Geocoin Challenge was no more.  What were we going to do with our June's now?  

We stopped in Prosser at the Love's to get gas and ice.  I used the restroom really quickly and I asked Ben if we wanted to actually go into Prosser and do some caching and he said yes.  We found a place to park near the old train station.  We walked over to do Prosser's Slide Whistle (GCAC4J1) first.  It took us a few minutes to figure out where to look since the coords took us all over the place.  We did eventually zero in on it.  

We opened up the two Adventure Labs, Horse-ing Around and Paint the Town and did them both at the same time so we didn't have to back track. We learned a lot about this small town, and it was fun seeing all of the different types of horse statues sprinkled about.  We even saw a Hitler frog, that was painted on the side of a building.  

Just before we left, we walked over to an ice cream place to find Kakashi's Favorite Malt (GCABJX4).  It was a tricky find but we got it!  We signed our names, carefully put it back and made our way back to the Edge, looking at the rest of the colorful horse statues around town. 

We drove back towards the freeway, decided to stop at the park and ride/rest area to use the restroom before we continued on our journey.  As we drove towards the TriCities, Ben called the person on shift to let them know that he was not going to be at training that evening.  That person told us that Jed's mother-in-law passed away that morning.  We wrapped up our conversation with him and immediately called Jed to let him know we were thinking of him and his family.  He said there would be a celebration of life soon and would let us know when it was.

We continued down I-82 and crossed into Oregon at Umatilla.  I have never gone this way before, so we decided to try a new route.  We got off of the freeway and onto Hwy 730.  We stopped along the way to grab a cache, Wanaket Wildlife Area (GC4T43Y).  It was a big fake rock hidden in the corner of the parking lot.  I found it quickly, got our names on it and got back on the highway.  We followed the highway along the south side of the Columbia River heading towards the Wallula Gap.

We drove back into Washington and hit the Hwy 12 junction.  We continued east on Hwy 12 towards Walla Walla. We got into town, and I directed Ben towards the middle of town.  I wanted to walk around and do a couple of caches and Adventure Labs.  We started off with the virtual cache in town, Windows of the Past (GC7B6CG).  That one was difficult figuring out what we were supposed to do because they had the park closed off due to construction.  We did eventually find a way to get close enough to it to get a photo. 

We did the Adventure Lab, Art of Main Street, while we walked into a couple shops.  I bought a magnet and some stickers from one shop.  Some protesters were peacefully protesting the free Palestine movement. Their chant was catchy. We tried staying out of their way as we finished up the Adventure Lab.  We walked back to the Edge and noticed all the hoity-toity people all dressed up going to the wine bars.  We laughed at them.

We left downtown so we could check into our hotel.  But first, I wanted to stop one more time to grab one more cache, since we were driving past it anyway. We pulled into JoAnne's and went to the back of the store.  Crafty Hide (GC41H7F) was a crafty hide.  We were there longer than I thought we would be.  The only reason why I saw it was because I could see the edge of the handmade pouch. Ben was like, how did you find that?  I told him, I've seen a bunch of these over the years and it's the only possibility besides a nano and a magnetic hide-a-key. We got our names on it while the dog behind the fence barked at us. 

We drove down the road to our hotel, the Super 8, Ben checked us in, and we parked to get the stuff out of the Edge.  I managed to step on a random hook in the parking lot, pried it out of my shoe, stacked all of our stuff onto the hotel cart and went up to our room on the third floor.  We unloaded the cart and decided on what we wanted to do for dinner.  We checked our options on our phones.  We decided on a place called BH Brewhouse Pub on Main/Palouse Street.

We drove down, found a parking spot right in front of the place, went in and was seated right away.  It wasn't that busy for a Thursday night.  We were handed menus and picked out what we wanted to drink.  Both Ben and I wanted to try the award-winning Walla Walla Wheat.  We ordered a pitcher. When the waitress came back with our beer, we ordered our food.  I got the chicken strips and fries, and Ben had the pulled pork and tots.  We watched the Chiefs beat the Broncos on Thursday Night Football.  We ate our food and enjoyed not being at home.

We went back to the hotel, showered, got comfortable, had Family Feud playing in the background while we played 10,000 and Rummy.  Ben beat me in the dice game, and I beat him at Rummy - he was a sore loser!  We got ready for bed and went to sleep around midnight.     

Notes on the Day:

We were able to get Walla Walla checked off the list for the Towns and Cities Challenge. Eleven more towns and cities to go!   

We grabbed seven geocaches, did three Adventure Labs, which totals to 15 waypoints.  A grand total of 22 geocaches altogether. 

Next Adventure:  Early Birthday/Anniversary Weekend:  Power Trails, Prescott, Pre-Cache Machine Event

The Pumpkin Patch with Trish, Amy and Ed

I got a hold of Trish and asked her if she wanted to go to the pumpkin patch again this year.  She said that would be fun but asked why this early?  I told her that every weekend was filled up with stuff already and that the Sunday was the only available day to go.  She said okay. I told her Ben was on shift at the fire station on that Saturday so it would just be us coming up on Sunday and going home the same day, but no overnight this time.  I asked her if we wanted to do dinner while we were there and she said yeah, we can do dinner and suggested chili.  I asked her what we could bring, and she said some sort of dessert. I told her we would see her on Sunday.

Early afternoon on Saturday, I went over to Erika and Zac's and got some bags of sticks from when they cut down trees because I needed some more kindling for our fire pit.  It was the perfect size, and it was dry.  Erika came out a few times to hang out with me.  We ended up watching one of the homeless people have some sort of medical emergency and the ambulance and Olympia cops came out to do an assessment on them.  Erika said it was always like that and she had to call the cops often.  

When I was done, I made run to the store for a few things and called Trish really quick to ask her about some dessert options.  I had no idea what or how much to get because I didn't know if Ed was coming over or not. I quickly grabbed some brownies from Safeway on the way home.  I put the groceries away and then I mowed the back yard before it got dark. 

Ben got off of shift and once I got up, we got ready to go and jumped into the Escape and headed out.  I wasn't sure how the traffic would be, but we let Trish know we were on our way.  We actually didn't hit any traffic, and we were able to get to Bonney Lake at a decent time.  We arrived in town just after noon and we called to ask if she needed anything before we got to the house, she said she had everything.  We asked Trish which pumpkin patch we wanted to go to, and she said we could just go down the hill to Spooner's.  It was the one we went to the year before in the smoke.  Ed and his truck were there.    

It was another nice fall weekend and hit almost 80 degrees.  I was able to wear shorts again to pick out my pumpkin.  We all got ready to go and we made fun of Amy for putting on rain boots to go get a pumpkin.  We told her it was so dry that we weren't going to see any mud until it rained. She didn't care, she was going to be the weirdo who wore boots.  We all crammed into Trish's Tucson and drove down the hill into the Orting valley. 

It was busy, like we thought it might be.  The Seahawks were on a bye that week, so that might be why it was busier than it would be if they were playing that afternoon.  Either way, it was crazy, and we had to be patient.  We turned into the overflow parking and Trish nabbed the first spot she saw.  I made fun of her because she parked us near sticker bushes, so we had to watch out where we were walking.  We grabbed another person's wheelbarrow as we walked towards the entrance to go in.  We had to dodge people and cars. 

We made our way over to the rows of pumpkins and spent some time trying to find the perfect one. I picked out three, one for me, one for Mom and one for Dad because I told them I would get one for them.  Ben picked himself out one, Amy was reluctant, but eventually was a good sport about it and even got one for David.  Trish picked out a good one and Ed found one he liked. We had eight pumpkins balancing in our wheelbarrow.  I got a few pictures and Trish took a couple.  

We weaved our wheelbarrow full of pumpkins in and out of the busy walkways full of people to the weigh stations, where we stood in line for a while until it was our turn.  I admired the various produce and the different kinds and sizes of the mini pumpkins. It was our turn to finally weigh our pumpkins and we had to adjust it, so everyone got theirs weighed appropriately.  We got our tickets and went and paid at the payment shed.

We wheelbarrowed them out to Trish's Tucson.  We placed them gently in the back so they wouldn't roll.  No one wants a busted steam.  We went back because Trish wanted to slingshot tiny pumpkins into the car they had in the slingshot area.  We each put in a couple bucks and we each got to fling pumpkins into the field, trying to hit the targets.  It took some trial and error to figure out how to fling them. Once we did, it was fun watching them fly! 

We walked back to the Tucson, got through the crappy traffic and back up the hill. Ben and I transferred our pumpkins into his Edge and went inside to hang out for a little bit.  We played a couple card and dice games until we were tired of them, which was quickly playing with Ed, and Trish started in on the chili, corn bread and I helped get the salad together. 

Once the food was done, we ate, chatted about random things as we ate and thanked her for making food.  For dessert, we each had a brownie.  It was sad we couldn't stay very long but she knew we couldn't.  We had to get home and get ready for the work week just like they all did. We gave out hugs and thank yous, jumped into the Edge and headed home. It didn't take us long to get home which was nice.

We got home just before 7, did a few chores, got cleaned up and ready for bed.  I really wish the weekends were longer.      

Next Adventure:  Early Birthday/Anniversary Weekend: Lacey to Walla Walla