Going to Groundspeak For the First Time

The day had finally come. Weeks ago Derek emailed Groundspeak, the headquarters of geocaching, and we got an invite to go and visit HQ. That weekend was also Bloomsday. So we got together and planned out the weekend.

After work on Friday we got off earlier than we anticipated so we had some time to go home and change. I really didn't want to wear scrubs to Seattle. We made sandwiches and headed out to the Costco in Federal Way. We got to the Costco about 45 minutes later, parked the car and looked for Derek. We didn't see him. I texted him that we were here. He said, I'm passing the Tacoma Mall. I texted back, what? We really thought he would be here before us, so I was really surprised. Few minutes passed and he was near Wild Waves and then he pulled up into the parking lot. We got into his car and we were on our way to Fremont (supposedly the center of the universe) haha.

http://www.fremontseattle.com/

We found a place to park the car. Last time I was here it was New Year's Eve 2006 with Nickey, Nick and Katie and we spent it at a bar in downtown Fremont. It looks different during the day. We grabbed our gps, money and cameras and headed for Groundspeak. We could not get an accurate reading so we ended up behind the building we were suppose to go to. Some guy who works near the building asked us if we were geocachers. He introduced himself, told us where the door was and was glad to meet some other geocachers. He probably meets new ones every Friday looking for the door. We walked around the building and went up the elevator to the 3rd floor. There were some people there hanging out inside HQ. We met Sara and Nicole, who shared some information, stories and gave us each our own HQ trackable for finding HQ.



We dug through the cache, watched the huge screen of the world (where geocaches were published and logs were written in real time) logged our names in the log book and just chatted with Nicole and Sara.







We went into the photo booth for a free picture. Two copies came out and we kept one and signed the back with our caching names and the date and taped them to the wall with the hundreds of others.



We bought a few things before we left. I got a HQ t-shirt and Derek bought a shirt and a Signal and mom got a Signal. Since we are only suppose to be there for a half hour, we said our goodbyes and headed back out to Fremont. We walked around for a bit because mom wanted to go to her JP Patches statue and we wanted to go to the Troll. We started with the JP Patches statue.





We walked east and up Troll Ave to the famous troll under the bridge. It was seen in the 1999 movie, 10 Things I Hate About You.

"It all started in 1989 when our local Fremont Arts Council was approached about doing something more imaginative with the space under the Aurora bridge other than letting it turn into an urban grotto and tire dump. Encouraged by the prospect of support and funding, a national competition was organized to select the best ideas. Arts Council activists Barbara Luecke, Roger Wheeler, Peter Beavis, Peter Toms and Denise Fogelman juried the field down to five finalists who were then commissioned to create models that would be voted on by the community at the Fremont Fair.

The Troll created by a team led by sculptor Steve Badanes was voted the overwhelming favorite. A city matching grant was successful in funding the project. Thus, the Fremont Troll came to be. Made from rebar steel, wire and 2 tons of messy ferroconcrete, the Troll monument took about 7 weeks to complete."







We tried looking for the cache by the troll but came up empty. We'll have to come back this summer and nab it. We knew we had to get back to the car and get back to Federal Way because we still had a long drive to Spokane ahead of us. It took us a while to get back onto I-5 from Fremont. We got to Federal Way quicker than I thought we would. I grabbed my stuff out of mom's car and put it in Derek's. We got all situated, said bye to mom and we were on our way to I-90 via Hwy 18.

It was a breeze getting to I-90 and even up Snoqualmie Pass. We got further than mom did on I-5. She said it was horrible once she got onto I-5 in Federal Way. Stop and go, stop and go. She said she got home around 6:30 and that drive shouldn't have taken that long.



We got in between Cle Elum and Ellensburg and needed to find a cache at that rest stop, Indian John Hill. We stopped and tried to figure out the multi but couldn't, so we just settled for Stuart View Stash. That one had a ton of trackables in it.



It was really windy and it started getting cold and we wanted to get to the Vantage horses before it got dark so we left. It was a beautiful but cold day on the eastern side of the state.



We got to Vantage and I couldn't believe Derek had not been to the horses ever. He's probably driven past this a ton of times. It was time to end that. We got there and there really wasn't that many people except for a few cars here and there. We walked out to the hill and some people were on their way down. "Coming down is the hardest," the lady said. Haha, I've been up and down it before...in sandals. We hiked up the hill and got to the horses. I hated seeing people write and spray paint graffiti on them. No wonder certain parks and areas are closing to the public. We took a few pictures and then went and found the cache 500 ft+ north of us.









We walked back down the hill and headed east. It got dark really fast. By the time we hit Moses Lake we were hungry. We stopped and got a burger from McDonald's. We got to Spokane around 10:15. We chatted with his mom and dad for a few minutes, brought the stuff in from the car, got ready for bed and passed out.

Derek is at 454, mom is at 110 and I am at 547.

Bloomsday 2011

I've always wanted to complete a race. It didn't matter how long it was or how I did it, I just wanted to do one. Derek mentioned that he wanted to go home and do Bloomsday this year. I decided I wanted to go too. We planned out an epic weekend of caching and Bloomsday. We expressed interest in visiting Groundspeak, the geocaching Headquarters, in Seattle, so Derek emailed them for an invite. We got the invite and they sent us the coords to find the place. We were scheduled for April 29th at 2:00. After work on Friday we met up with Derek at the Costco off of Hwy 18 in Federal Way. He picked us up and we were on our way to Groundspeak. We got there and had some help finding the place. We got inside chatted with the Lackey's, signed the log, took pictures, grabbed some coins and TB's and took our picture in the photo booth. We said our goodbyes and we went down to JP Patches and the Troll before we left Seattle to drop mom off in Federal Way. We got onto Hwy 18 and then I-90 and we were on our way to Spokane!

Our first stop was the rest stop in between Cle Elum and Ellensburg. We got a cache there. It was windy and cold so we hurried. Our next stop was in Ellensburg to get gas. From there we watched the wind farm off I-90. These are fairly new to the area. When I would go back and forth from Pullman almost four years ago these did not exist.



We got to Vantage and had to go to the horses. It's been seven years since I've been there and Derek never has. That really surprised me. We walked up the steep hill and to the horses. We found the cache up there as well. It was getting late so we walked down, without falling, and got back to the car.



We made it to Moses Lake and I was starving so we grabbed a quick hamburger and we were on our way to Spokane. We arrived to traffic just south of the Spokane Airport. They had all of the lanes blocked off except for one. Derek decided to go the other way around via 195. They were doing some construction up on the hill so we had to go around that as well. We got to his parents house around 10:15. I was exhausted. We entered the house and his mom and dad were there too greet us. I shook is dad's hand and his mom hugged me. I continued onto the family room and above the TV were some framed pictures of me and Derek from our pirate cache extravaganza. We were both shocked because we didn't know how they got the pictures. We eventually figured out they got them from the geocaching website. We spend a few minutes talking about geocaching and showing off our TB's and coins. It was getting late so we grabbed the stuff out of the car and got ready for bed. My eyes literally closed while I was logging my finds from today. A few minutes later I was out.

The next morning it was wonderful to sleep in. Derek's older sister Melanie came over with a bunch of her college friends. It was girls weekend. We sat and chatted for a while. They had to go get ready with their lunch, shopping and stuff. Then his other sister Joelle came over. We went with her to the convention center in downtown to get our Bloomsday registration stuff out of the way before tomorrow. We parked near the Perkin's restaurant and walked down the street to the convention center. There were so many people with plastic Bloomsday bags. We went up the escalator, through the hallway and into this huge room. We went to our corresponding age, gender and last name lines and picked up our stuff.



Joelle couldn't find the Corporate Cup area so we asked information to tell us where it was. We went through the area where our DTAG was activated (the strip you put on your shoe to be timed) and walked over to the other side of the building to the line Joelle needed to be in. There were so many stands with shoes and running apparel (and other random ones like Minute Rice and Safeway.) We got Joelle's stuff and stood in line for our bus passes. When we were through with that, we had Joelle activate her DTAG and we stood in line at the Safeway display because we saw Butch. He was giving out posters. We were probably in line for a good half hour until it was our turn to spin the prize wheel. Derek won a bag of Safeway chips, Joelle won a bag of groceries (chips, water, tea) and I won a Cougar shirt, which was the prize I wanted. We got our picture with Butch, something I should have done while at WSU but never had a chance.





We spent a good hour inside the convention center and decided we were done and headed out, while walking out we saw this girl who looked like she rolled in Doritos because she was so orange. We all saw her; it was pretty awful. We walked back to the car and headed back to Derek's parents house. When we got there, we found out Bob was geocaching and had a hard time finding one and Joelle was going to take us to him but we ran into him while he was coming back to the house. Derek and I jumped into Bob's car and Joelle went home. We found a few with Bob while we were out. We came back and wanted to get a few in Idaho so we can get an Idaho cache. Everyone including his mom, piled into Bob's car and we were on our way for at least one Idaho cache. We got a little turned around and it was cold and raining. We ended up at the Walmart and found five there and found one more across the street. We were running out of time so we had Joelle start the spaghetti, we had to stop by the store to pick up a few things on the way back. We got back to the house and dinner was in the atmosphere. A while later it was already and we were at the table scarfing it down. We were to have Derek's bday at Joelle's new house after we were done eating. We got our stuff together and drove over to Joelle and Brad's house just down the road. We had cake and ice cream and Derek opened his presents. We went home and got ready for Bloomsday. We set aside our clothes we wanted to wear, washed out our camelpaks, assembled our DTAGS on our shoes and logged our geocaches. It was nearing midnight and we needed to go to bed, tomorrow was going to be a long day.

We got up, put our clothes on, gathered our stuff, ate a small amount of breakfast, watched some of the Bloomsday coverage on the TV and talked to Bob and Connie, who were wearing past Bloomsday shirts, about Bloomsday and the clothes that were stripped off at the starting line. They worried that I wasn't wearing any sweats that morning because it was pretty chilly. Bob went and found some sweats that they got from the Goodwill just for Bloomsday. They insisted I wear them; so I did. We met up with Joelle at Ferris High School, one of the many satellites the Spokane Transit Bus System hit up that morning. We went early with Joelle, her race started an hour before ours did. We got to downtown and there were probably 10,000 people running around, a little over half were actual participants. Since we had an hour and a half to kill, we did some virtual caches in the downtown area. We had time to find three that morning. We ended with the carousel about fifteen minutes before we had to get in line. We found our line and inched our way to the front.





I ended up eating my powerbar and taking my pants off in downtown. I wanted to throw them into the trees but they didn't stick, so they fell down and hit the kids in front of us in the head. We got closer and closer to the start. We took a few pictures near the start line and then the fifteen second count started up. BANG! We were off. At first you had to dodge and weave in and out of the foot traffic so it was hard going a normal pace. Just before we got out of down town, Derek had to take his sweat pants off. I waited for him as I shuffled down the road. He caught up and we continued on our way. The first mile went insanely fast. I really was surprised how fast it went.



We encountered our first hill. I ran most of it and decided when I got to the top I’d wait for Derek. I got to the top and looked for him. I had no idea how far ahead of him I got. I finally saw him and we ran most of that mile and the miles before Doomsday Hill together. We ran past the first check point and the first water station near the cemetery. We saw some weird costumes, people dressed up and one lady wearing some crazy spandex.



We reached mile marker two, I honestly couldn’t believe how fast the miles were going. Maybe there was more to watch while you ran so the miles didn’t seem as long? Maybe the hype? Or the fact that it was Bloomsday?



We ran past mike marker 3, 4, the Spokane Community College and down the hill to the bridge.



We saw the famous Nuns. We could see Doomsday Hill ahead of us. I took off just to see how far I could get before I had to stop. I got more than halfway up the hill until I had to walk. I walked briskly and had Derek catch up to me. I had no idea how far behind he was. About five minutes later, I spotted him in the crowd behind me. We found mile marker 5 and took pictures with it to commemorate that we indeed survived Doomsday Hill. To our right was the Doomsday vulture. When I heard about it I thought it was a stuffed animal or a guy in a vulture suit. No, it was a guy in a huge vulture suit. It was to pick up and eat the dead bodies that didn’t make it up the hill. It was one of the many traditions of Bloomsday.









Once we got completely up the hill it leveled out making the race a little easier. We ran through the neighborhood for a little over a mile. We saw mile marker 6 and lots of people who had finished the race already.



We saw what color the shirts were. I was really hoping for a color other than pink and purple. It was a light yellow color. It reminded us of an Easter yellow or a pastel yellow. Thank God it wasn’t purple!

We reached mile marker 7 and we picked up our pace and so did everyone else.



It got a bit more crowded as we turned the corner. I saw the finish line on the Monroe Street Bridge. Yes! The end is near! My feet and calves were burning and I was starving.



During the entire race there were several people performing. Banjos being played, a choir at the church, several bands, people clapping, cheerleaders, radios, Bloomsday parties, several mascots and a bunch of radio stations. It was the place to be in Spokane.

I sped up as the finish line got closer and closer. I crossed and it was a great feeling that I finished a 7 mile race with little preparation. Overall I had a blast.



This is the route we took:



We met up with Joelle, took some pictures for our virtual and earthcaches near the Spokane River.



We rode the bus back up to Ferris High School. We said bye to Joelle and walked to the car in the other parking lot. There it was, someone had dropped a ten dollar bill in the parking lot! That’s the second time we’ve found money in the parking lot, this time more.



We decided we wanted slurpies from 7-11. We stopped by the closest 7-11 and each got a slurpie. His mom called us a few minutes later to tell us to stop by the store and pick up some extra stuff for the bbq. We paid for everything with the money we found in the parking lot.

We made it home about ten minutes later. We ate food, talked about the race and enjoyed sitting in chairs. I took a shower after lunch and started putting together my stuff to put in the car. Derek got his hair cut by his dad before he took a shower. We put our stuff in the car and his mom and dad wanted pictures of the three Bloomsday finishers in the back yard. We put the rest of our stuff in the car, said our goodbyes and off we went. We stopped by one of the travel bug hotels and Derek realized he had his mom’s camera so we stopped by the house again. From there we went to REI and I realized my debit card expired the previous day. He was nice and got me one as well. We got gas and we were on our way to our first rest stop. We got two from the Sprague Rest Stop. We got back onto the freeway and stopped briefly in Ritzville for a cache. We got back on the road and stopped at the rest stop in between Ritzville and Moses Lake. We grabbed the two that were there. We got back in the car and headed to Moses Lake. We got hungry so we stopped at the Moses Lake Taco Bell. We grabbed them to go and we were now on our way home. I was dropped off at home around 9:15 and I wasn’t sure when Derek got home, probably around 10.

The weekend was fun but it’s always planned out and crazy. Maybe next time I’m in Spokane it’s less of a hectic visit. I so wanna do Bloomsday next year. I wanna beat my time.

Nisqually Pirate Cache

I saw that Saturday was going to be a beautiful day so I planned on doing the pirate cache out in the Sound by Dupont. We had to be near or going to the cache around 4:30 because that's when low tide was. Mom wanted to go so I got her in gear as we grabbed the stuff we needed for our little day outing and tossed it in the car. We got to his place, transferred my stuff into his car, went up stairs and made sure we had everything in his gps. We were on our way to Dupont. We hit up the south west part of Dupont first.

They're going to build what here? was our first find of the day. It was referencing the new golf course that was going in. It opened June 1, 2007. An excerpt from their website:

"As you play The Home Course you can't miss seeing some very unique features spread out across this historic piece of property. First there are the 150 year old apple trees that line the first fairway. Next is the fenced in area just left of the first green and across from it an area protected by a split rail fence. And on almost every hole you’ll see a concrete block, building foundation, or tracks from a narrow gauge railroad left there from a by-gone era.

Mother Nature has also blessed this piece of property. Views of Mount Rainier, Puget Sound, the Olympic Mountain Range, Old Fort Lake, Sequalitchew Creek, and glimpses of Anderson and McNeil Islands are all part of The Home Course golfing experience.

Located on a bluff about 200 feet above Puget Sound and just outside the city of DuPont, Washington, The Home Course occupies a piece of property that is rich in Pacific Northwest history. That fenced in area next to the first green is the original site of Fort Nisqually . It is here that in 1833 Archibald MacDonald of the Hudson Bay Company made his way up from Fort Vancouver (WA) and built the first European settlement in the Puget Sound area.

Of course, for several thousand years before that this land had been occupied by members on the Nisqually Indian Tribe. So when Mr. MacDonald arrived with his men Chief La-ha-let of the Nisqually’s was already here ready to meet and assist him. From 1833 to 1843 Fort Nisqually sat right there next to the first green carrying on a vibrant trading business in furs, blankets, and all manner of other items. Fort Nisqually was a place where people came together. It was a place where Europeans, Scottish gentleman, Americans, Native Americans, Canadians, Kanakas (Hawaiians), French Canadians, West Indians, and Englishmen came to share stories, trade, party, gamble, intermarry, have children., and ultimately die.

What’s behind that split rail fence across from the Fort site? That is where the Fort burial ground is located. If you find your ball in there please show your respect by retrieving it and then taking a free drop outside this hallowed ground. In 1843 the Fort was moved to a location closer to Sequalitchew Creek and just east of what is now Center Drive, where it remained until 1869 when it was finally abandoned.

Between 1869 and 1906 this land was mostly part of the Edward Huggins farm and was home to sheep, cattle, and a vast array of other farm animals. The ground itself was not much good for growing being quite rocky, but served quite well for grazing animals.

This brings us to all of those concrete foundations and concrete blocks you see around the golf course. In 1906 Huggins sold the property to the DuPont Chemical Company and by 1909 they started to manufacture black powder, dynamite, and nitroglycerine here. Due to the dangers involved in making these items the various steps in the process were carried out in different locations around the property. So that is why adjacent to the number one tee you can see what’s left of a bridge foundation from the narrow gauge railroad that served the plant and behind the fourth tee the remnants of a storage bunker or as it was known a magazine. DuPont continue making explosives until 1976 at which time they closed the plant, leveled most of the buildings, and sold the property to The Weyerhaeuser Company.

After several years of study, evaluation, environmental sampling, archeological investigation, negotiations with the Nisqually Tribe, and the Washington State Department of Ecology an agreement was reached that allowed for the development of the property. Due to some industrial contamination of the site during the DuPont era part of that plan included burying the contaminated material under 24” of gravel and soil and putting a golf course on top of it.

Finally in 2003 work began on remediating the site and the construction of The Home Course. Upon completion of the golf course and a final sign-off by the Department of Ecology the Weyerhaeuser Company sought out buyers for the golf course property. The successful purchaser was the Pacific Northwest Golf Association and its partner organization The Washington State Golf Association.

The PNGA and WSGA had been looking for some time for a permanent place to house their staff, constuct a hall of fame, and bring various other associated golf organizations together under one roof. Their hope is now a reality as they plan to move forward over the next several years and construct a headquarters building at The Home Course. In addition plans call for a complimentary Clubhouse, Event Pavillion, and Pro Shop to be constructed on-site as well."

We picked up a few cans in the area before heading over to the cache. There was this nice little gazebo area with numerous possibilities to hide a cache. My gps pointed to the tree but we could not seem to find it. After about 20 minutes of searching, I finally went back to the tree and started grabbing handfuls of debris, there it was.



On our way back from the cache, we grabbed some dog poo bags and put the cans in them. We drove the car back up the hill to another little park, snuggled between two sets of evergreens. Revisiting the Red Hot Little Park, was find number two. This park had some bird houses. I made the find a few moments after we arrived. This was my mom's 100th cache with a geocaching name.



We headed up the road after deciding not to go for the multi cache because we would need the internet and we didn't have access. There were two on this really nice trail. The first one was Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and the second one was "Ohjoy!'s found how many?!" We didn't realize the Ohjoy one was down the trail so after we found the first one we walked back to the car and then walked back up the trail again. Haha.





It was now finally time for the Nisqually Pirate Cache! We found the trail head and started our way down. Last time we got to the beach area from the Sequalitchew Creek trail, this time we were south of the trail. The trail was pretty nice for the most part. You could see the barge from the trail.



Then we got to the part where we had to go down the cliff. Luckily someone had installed some ropes to make the trek down and up easier.



We got to the spit and was so excited it was a great day to do this cache!



We got there and there were three kayaker's taking a break on the spit. We went right over to the barge and started taking pictures of it. It was pretty cool.















It was about that time so we put the cache back, took a few more pictures and headed back up towards shore. My mom found a shell she wanted but it was in 2 feet of water. I was wearing my Ozark Trail sandals and grabbed the shell for her. Now we gotta go back up the cliffs.



We walked back down the trail and to the car. We were up to 5 caches and I thought it would be a good idea to get a perfect 10 today. We headed over towards the old part of Dupont to the east. We tried looking for the Nanoween Cache but couldn't find it. I got scraped in the eye with a branch.



Apparently there is a Paul Bunyon series we weren't aware of. We found two of them and will have to go back for the rest on another day. We got to the cache zone and Derek told us we were looking for a nano but we didn't know the name of the cache. After a while of looking, he read us the description, Paul Bunyon's Notorious Nano. I put 2 and 2 together and got 4. We weren't looking for a nano, but a large nano. Mom found it seconds later.



The area is known for its dynamite and its dynamite trains. The next on our list was an Ohjoy's Addiction Cache #27, at the Dupont Museum. I took some pamphlets from the kiosk.





We went for the second Paul Bunyon cache down the road from the Dynamite Train. This one was called Paul Bunyon's Flapjack Flipper. We walked to the cache zone, a place that could have been an area for a cemetery, I saw something laying on the ground that looked like a sign. I grabbed it and then it made sense, it was a giant pancake spatula with a cache tied to it. Haha.



We drove to Barksdale Station, an area off the freeway with a few dentists, restaurants and of course a Starbucks, to retrieve Coffee and a Nano. You could see it from the car, how disappointing. I grabbed it and we took it over to the benches and enjoyed the sun while we logged our names.



We needed one more for our perfect 10 for the day. We drove to the Intel building's parking lot because there was one near there. It was called TU CASA TIENE LUCES TRASERAS (your house has tail lights) and it had to do with white trash when we looked at the cache page. We walked down the trail and found the stump it was stashed in.


We walked back to the car and headed back towards Lacey. Derek popped in the lasagna while we logged our finds. It was a fun and beautiful day of caching and I hope more nice days are on their way.

Mom is at 109 and I am at 544.