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.
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