Block Party and Ape Event

While I learned the sport of geocaching, I also learned about the huge events put on by Groundspeak and other major groups.  I heard about the Block Party.  Groundspeak had this huge event planned for a Saturday in August and I made sure to put it on my calender months in advance.  Groundspeak was also moving to another location just up the street in Fremont.  It was one of the coolest events I have been to so far.

We got up that morning and had all of our stuff ready from the night before, we even made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch.  We met Derek at his place and drove my mom's car because we had a Discovery Pass, which is now needed for all Washington State parks.  We were going to stay with Doug that night in Seattle because we needed to go to Snoqualmie Pass the next day for the Ape event at the tunnel.  It made more sense to stay in the area than driving all the way home and driving all the way back.  I just wanted to pop onto I-90 and drive only for 45 minutes.  We headed to Seattle that morning so we could find a decent parking spot.  We ended up parking at the Fremont Troll, which was actually a pretty nice parking spot.  We walked down the hill and to where the event was taking place.  There were tons of people here for the event.  People flew in from different countries and states to be here.  I never really realize how lucky we were only to be less than 60 miles from Groundspeak.

We got down to the action.  We weren't sure what we were going to do at this event.  We were still considered newbies at this point.  We signed the log book, which was this huge banner and there were tons of names on it already! 

 We stood in line for a t-shirt and other random stuff.  We walked around where all the vendors were.  They had some cool stuff.  Lots of tags and coins for sale.  Too bad I didn't have a lot of extra money.

We were given a small square package with a chain and a map in it.  Since they were bringing challenges into the thick of things they tried them out on us first.  There were 5 different events scattered around Fremont and we had to do the task and the volunteers would give us a puzzle piece.  We found caches as we did the challenges.  We finally found the troll cache after looking for it several times.  Apparently it was moved from its original location.  We did a few caches and a few challenges as we walked around Fremont.

The first challenge we did was figuring out what the hidden message was with flags.  Each flag had a different shape and color with a corresponding letter.  We quickly worked the hidden puzzle and were given our puzzle piece.  We headed to the next one.

 We had to take apart chocolate beans and throw them into a container until we had enough ounces and the volunteer would give us a second puzzle piece.  The third one we had to either scoot around or dress up in skiing/snowboarding gear and take a picture.

 The fourth one involve answering questions about the Fremont area, which the history of it was pretty weird.  For some reason we could not find the fifth one and we even walked past it twice!  It was at Freemont Mischief. a alcohol distillery.  We had to fill up a bottle with water and cork it.  If your cork came out, you had to do it again.  Afterwards, we walked around the waterfront getting the caches we didn't have.

We went back to the Block Party to take the picture and to see who won the raffle drawings.  We didn't win.

 We headed over to Doug's place in Shoreline for the night since we were going to the Ape Event in Snoqualmie.  Shauna could not use her Storm tickets so she emailed them to me and we printed them out.  It took us an hour to go 7 miles!!!   Traffic was horrible for some reason.  We got there just before the game started.  The Storm played pretty well and beat the Liberty.  We grabbed a few caches while we waited for Doug and mom to come get us since they dropped us off earlier.

 The next morning we got our stuff ready and headed out to Snoqualmie via I-90.  We got there pretty early and started discovering people's cars. 

We saw that Mike and Bob made it and headed for the tunnel.  That tunnel was awesome!  It's a 2.5 mile tunnel and it is pitch black through most of it.  You need a flashlight at a sweatshirt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snoqualmie_Tunnel

We grabbed all of the caches inside and on the other side of the tunnel.  I really wished we would have brought our bikes, we could have gone further.  Maybe next year?

We headed back and wow, my feet and legs were exhausted.   But definitely worth it.

Bob and Mike left and we stuck around a little while, used the bathroom and headed out.  We got stuck in the hour long back up headed west on I-90.  I was so upset.  It was hot and I wanted to be home.  We put it into park, shut it off and wandered around I-90 to find out what was happening and how long we were going to be there.  People rode their bikes, played football, catch and pulled out some lawn chairs and drank beer in the middle of the freeway.

An hour later people started to go back to their vehicles.  I was happy!  We found out the cause of the back-up.  It was bad.  It looked like a camper and a truck saw better days...

We stopped for a few more caches before making it home late that Sunday night.

Very excited for next year's Block Party and Ape Event.