My first time to Groundspeak was about last year right around this time.
The night before I did not sleep very well because I thought it would rain and our trip to Seattle would be ruined. When my alarm went off, ugh...it's 7:30 already? I got up, got ready, made sure I had food with me and put away the dishes and took out the garbage. By that time, Bob and Bev were out in the driveway waiting.
We headed out to our first spot. Near Angle Lake, a L-Shaped lake in between Pacific Highway and I-5. Bev found the first cache near the block facade. I went to take a picture of the lake and low and behold, socks! Side note: every time we go geocaching or have gone geocaching we've found socks near or around the cache zone. We headed off to the next one.
Now we were getting closer to SeaTac, you could hear the airplanes taking off and landing in the distance. The next one was on a fire hydrant near a hotel off of Pacific. Just as we were signing the log, we heard a truck slam on its brakes and screetch their tires to prevent them sliding into the intersection. This was at the intersection of 176th and 32nd street. As we were putting the cache back we heard pedestrians, "woah, did you see that truck? It almost hit someone...OMG, WOAH"...
We got back to the car and headed off to our others nearby. we found one near a library, a small park that didn't look like a park but someone's back yard and a really cool botanical garden.
By this time, we figured it was time to head to Seattle via the Nuvi. From where we were, it was easy to avoid I-5. Plus, we forgot about the riots that were about to happen downtown Seattle. Luckily those happened after we were in Seattle. We got stuck behind a train on our way to Pike's Place. We got to the piers and found a parking spot, paid our money and headed up to the market. We did all of the challenges that were on our list for that area. I took them to the gum wall.
Only to find out that the hiding place and the cache were changed since I was there last June. That was frustrating. Another side note: I emailed the cachers who found it yesterday, that's how I found out. Our time on the meter was running out so we had to abandon the gum wall cache for another day. On our way out the traffic was terrible and the train was ruining the flow, so we did something crazy that made my heart stop. We drove over the railroad tracks just as the lights and the gate came down. In other words, you probably should not have crossed the railroad tracks at that time.
It was getting to be lunch time and I had one more place on the list I thought everyone would enjoy. Up on Queen Ann Hill, Kerry Park!! I've always wanted to go there but for some reason other things got in the way or we ran out of time to go. This time we had plenty of time to go. We had the Nuvi direct us through downtown and up on Queen Ann. We found a place to park the car, grabbed our lunch and headed to the view. Wow. Why haven't we come here before now!! We ooed and awwed and sat down on one of the benches and ate our sandwiches. We noticed the helicopter hovering over the Seattle center/downtown area. We had totally forgotten about the crazy stuff going on downtown. We had just left the area that the riots had started up in. We took our pictures, looked for a few caches and decided that it was time to move on to Fremont.
Nuvi guided us over Queen Ann and to the bridge that takes you to Fremont. We drove to the address that the GPS was taking us to just to see where we were going. I knew it would be one of the buildings where the Block Party was last summer. We spend some time looking for a parking spot so we can go down to our appointment at Groundspeak. We found a place and walked down the hill. We looked at our time, oh man we're 45 minutes early. Let's go find the new traditional up the road. And that's what we did. It was near the library and it didn't take us long to find. We decided to do the Colorful Fremont multi. We had a hard time at first until I looked something up on my phone. Thank goodness for smart phones. So far it has gotten me out of some binds. We found the first waypoint, the second and the third but didn't have enough time to look for the final. It will have to wait until we were done at Groundspeak.
We walked into the building and took the elevator up to the 3rd floor. Their new office was so pretty...for lack of a better word. The lights and glass made it pretty. The lackey at the front desk greeted us and told us to sign our name and look at the trackables inside the chest. That's what we did for a few minutes. Then a kid from Denmark came in so we got to talk to him for a while. We took pictures, some with the Lackey's, some around the building and so on.
A couple from Michigan came in and was digging through the chest. We did our photo booth picture and were given a trackable for visiting. We finished the math on our multi and one of the lackey's gave us a hint on how to get to it easier. We said our goodbye's and were on our way to the final. We walked down the trail near the house boats towards the cache. We found the tree and started looking. The people who were here before us did not find the cache. But we kept on looking because the Lackey told us it WAS there. We looked and looked and looked. Circled the tree a few times. Got down on our hands and knees and dug through the tall grass. A few moments later, Bob came up with it. Yes!
We walked back to the car and headed out before the traffic got bad. Once on the freeway, it was stop and go until we got out of Seattle. It got slow around Federal Way and near Hwy 16 in Tacoma. We listened to some of the destruction caused by the May Day Riot on Seattle. I can't believe how stupid people are. Oh well. It was slow through Dupont and near Nisqually getting on to 510 to Yelm. The whole day it did not rain until we got on the freeway to come home. Go us. Next trip: Possibly Scappoose and St. Helens, Oregon on Monday May 7, 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment