After work on Friday, March 23, I went into Lacey to meet up with Derek. I put my stuff into his car and we were on our way. We grabbed a burger on the way to I-5. We hurried to get out of town before rush hour started. We decided to take 512 through Puyallup to 167 and took Hwy 18 towards Snoqualmie/North Bend. We started our eastward journey to Spokane. The pass was quick and painless, lots of snow, thank goodness not on the roads. Every once and a while we checked in on Bob and Bev to make sure they were still alive. They left early that morning to get over to Sprague to do the Danakas loop. A power trail with 120+ caches on it. It took us over 4 hours to complete it last September. They were getting it done, slowly. We made it to Ellensburg and up the hill near the Rye Grass rest stop. We should have looked before we stopped, it wasn't there. Lame. We moved on. I noticed elk strewn along the westbound lane on the other side of the canyon. There were a bunch of stopped cars along I-90 taking pictures of the elk. There were tons of them! We reached Vantage and up the hill towards George. Once in George, we wanted to get the new TB hotel but it wasn't on the gps. Oh well. We thought we'd be hungry by Moses Lake but we weren't so we moved on. We got near Sprague and checked in with Bob and Bev again. They were almost done. We called and said we just passed Sprague and they said they just finished. We said we were gonna stop at the rest stop. We got to the rest stop and used the facilities and grabbed a cache I didn't have. We continued on towards Spokane. We stopped for three caches and saw Bob and Bev pass us. We told them we'd meet them near the Cheney/Four Lakes exit. They were at the John Deere store. We stopped and got gas then took them over to the virtual. From there we grabbed another exit cache and then went out towards the airport to another TB hotel. We were disappointed, no TB's or coins. There, we decided to get food up on the hill at the Applebee's. Afterwards, we went over to the house, unloaded the car and decided what to do from there. We powered up the laptops and logged a few caches before planning what we were gonna do tomorrow and we all went to bed.
My alarm went off at 5 a.m. Grumble grumble, too early. It was so early it was painful. I had to get up because there was a lot of caching to do. I got dressed, we packed up the car with the stuff we'd need that day and we were off to find a McDonald's for Bob and Bev's coffee. Since the cache machine had allowed more caches than daylight, we started at #38. It wasn't a true cache machine this time. TravisL changed the rules due to the past cache machines and more and more people attending them. It seemed like it was just us caching solo.
We didn't see anyone until probably our 20th cache. We got to cache #89 before we called it quits and went to the lunch that the Inland NW chapter was hosting at the park. We got there and there were a ton of people and a ton of trackables on people's cars to tag. It was the coldest picnic I've ever been on. Plus my hamburger fell on the ground. I ate it anyway. We finished up our food, stood by the propane heater for a while then decided to walk up the hill to get a non-cache machine letterbox.
We paid for it physically the next day. We walked back down and headed for the other one in the playground. We finally found it and then talked to Nuttyguy, the famous Pullman cacher. He told us plans for a cougar head logo consisting of puzzle caches. Pretty sweet. We headed to the car and Brad started talking to us. A few minutes later we were on our way to cache #90. Throughout the day we found a ton of Caitlyn caches. That's all there were, Caitlyn blah blah blah 3.0. We skipped a couple and we even guessed on a puzzle cache, go Val!
We ended up getting 83 caches on the cache machine before we decided to head on over to the dinner at Elmer's. It's a great thing we decided to do so, it was less chaotic than it could have been. We got our picture taken with the Coug gang.
Derek sold some coins and it was just about time to head back to Spokane. Along the way, since I qualified for the 1000 TB/Coin challenge we stopped at the rest stop just before Post Falls and grabbed it. It was way out there, holy cow! We headed back to Derek's house. We unloaded the car and set up our laptop stations to start logging caches. While logging, each of us took a few moments to get showered. About 11 p.m. everyone gave up and went to bed.
The next morning we got our stuff ready, dressed and headed over to the Back Yard Breakfast event hosted by Cache Advance owner Lisa. Another cold meal outside. It's free! After eating we went into her basement to check out her caching stuff. Some of the prices were good, others not. Bob and Bev bought some stuff and I think Derek got one thing. We headed to the car and off to MONTANA WE GO! The drive was actually nice. We stopped in Kellogg to get gas, literally. Derek got gas for the car, Bob and Bev wanted to get some food at McDonald's and Derek got a Shamrock shake and some french fries for me. Those gave me gas the entire trip. LOL. We didn't realize when we decided to get our Montana cache that the border would be buried in 8 feet of snow. Uh oh. Good thing there was an earthcache. We went 16 miles into Montana to the Silver Dollar.
It was a huge bar/casino/cafe/gift shop. We spent a while hanging out looking at stuff. There were over 64,000 silver dollars inside that bar. I got a sweatshirt and a few postcards. We headed off to the rest stop at the border for our Montana cache. We were so lucky the earthcache was available. It would have been very awful to drive all this way for no cache. Plus we were doing the 3 different cache types, 3 different states in one day.
Once finished with the cache, we got back into the car and headed to Wallace, Idaho. I've always wanted to come here because Dante's Peak was filmed in this little town.
The town isn't very big so we started in one area and moved onto the other grabbing all while we explored as we went. We even met up with another geocacher while at a cache zone. We visited for a bit before going our separate ways. We finished up with a park at the other edge of town. We hit the restroom and made PBJ sandwiches while we drove to Kellogg for some more caching.
We grabbed half a dozen or so before moving on to Coeur d'Alene for the Wherigo and other caches nearby. The Wherigo took us all over the marina area of Coeur d'Alene and the final was almost a mile down the road at an ice cream shop. We got the cache and had some ice cream.
Now the walk back to our car which was less than a mile. We were all tired so it made the walk longer. We grabbed a few of the Mudgy Moose challenges in town, they were moose statues, we grabbed a virtual and a few traditionals.
We were 2 min late on our 2 free hours. We had to pay 6 bucks. We headed over to Spokane Valley to grab another challenge and a few more caches. We tried to find a Sizzlers but ended up at Applebee's again. We ate our food and went back to Dere's parents house just down the road. We unloaded the car and started logging our finds. I took a shower, logged a few more and then went to bed.
We all got up around 8ish the next morning. We packed our stuff in the cars and headed off...in the rain! I was so disappointed. The weather was so awesome the entire time we were there and now on the way home, we get to get rained on. Bob and Bev grabbed some caches by Derek's parents house. I stayed in the car. I had no interest in getting soaked. We grabbed gas before getting onto I-90. Along the route, we grabbed all the off ramp caches. It stopped raining just after Ritzville...thank god. I was getting tired of it. There were about 2 caches per off ramp. We got to George and grabbed the new puzzle cache near a "homeless" shelter. We were glad we went there when it was not occupied. From there we started the new mini power trail that was published for leap day. 29 caches on the 29th, with a few extra along the way. All caches were the same and Derek and Bev drove while Bob and I jumped.
The weather was awesome for this. When we reached the end of the mini trail and we took a few pictures and decided to see what was around the corner.
We spent our lunch break near a waterfall on the gorge.
From there, we got back onto I-90 and headed to the next place for caches which was a place we already had caches but Bob and Bev did not. We headed into Ellensburg and got a few along there. From there we went our separate ways since it was getting late. Our next stop was North Bend to get gas and chicken nuggets. We got to Derek's place around 8ish and I got to my house about a half hour later. I was exhausted. I unpacked my car, got ready for bed and passed out. Next cache machine is closer to home: Longview, Washington.
