Yakima Valley Cache Machine

For some reason when I have long distance plans somewhere work goes until after 1 p.m.  When I have no plans work gets out at 11 a.m.  Why does it do this to me?  I got called into work from Sept. 20 thru October 8, not complaining because I need the money. However, it changed my plans.  Luckily, I washed all of my clothes and got some of it ready on Wednesday.  The only thing I didn't have done was the cache machine route printed off.  I had to do that at work because I didn't want to use a lot of printer ink for 33 pages.  I basically printed it off before we left work and I didn't get a chance to look at it until later that night briefly.

Also on Fridays, we do our chores, store, chicken food when needed, mail, lunch and recycle.  That usually takes about an hour to do.  I wasn't going to leave home until at least 3.  Ugh.  We got all of that done and got home.  We took the groceries out of the car and I took the chicken food out and wheel-barrowed it into the back yard.  I changed my clothes and packed my stuff into mom's car because I didn't trust my car to go that far.

I left at around 3 and headed towards Yakima.  I really hate the Eatonville detour, I wish they would get Hwy 7 fixed.  When I got out of town, thru Elbe and onto Hwy 7, it was time to find a few caches for the day.  I grabbed two on the way to Morton.  After I got back in my car, I turned off my GPS.  It was getting late as it was and I really didn't need to stop anymore.

I followed a white Bronco-like SUV up the pass, they rode their brakes.  I desperately tried to find a way around them.  I didn't get to until we were going down the pass.  As I went down, that's when I made up my time.  I gained about 7 minutes on my estimated time of arrival.  When I got to Naches, I called Willmarth to tell him I was almost there and called mom to tell her I made it.

Wow, was it smokey.  I guess all the activities in the valley were canceled, this included high school football games, parades and other outdoor activities.  They even moved the CWU football game from Ellensburg to the west side away from the smoke.  I got to Willmarth's house and saw that they hired some kid slaves to mow their lawn.  Turns out, they asked to mow their lawn.  I walked into the house and got molested by Fletcher and Zoey.  It took them a while to settle down.  They had to be sedated with benadryl.  We visited, told stories, he showed me his new hobby/job and all the things he's collected from yard sales, craigslist and ebay.  He said he's learned a lot about the "picking" industry.  We headed down to the hill for some ice cream, from "the ice cream store" in the bad part of town.  We also grabbed some other stuff across the street at the McDonald's.  We came home and watched some tv and made fun of Shannon most of the night.  The dogs eventually passed all the way out after wanting some of our food.

At about 1 a.m. it was time to give up and go to bed.  5:50 in the morning was going to come earlier than I wanted it to, plus I had to drive 30 miles to Sunnyside...

I got ready, grabbed the stuff I needed and headed east on I-82.  My GPS decided to take me a really weird way to their hotel.  I just went with it.  I called them and told them I would be a little late because of the redirection.  They were okay with it.  I got to the hotel, we threw our stuff in Bob and Bev's car and off we went.  I don't think Bob understood the whole concept of a cache machine.  He wanted to go to the closest one first, you don't do that.  You follow the route because it is the most efficient way to get them all in the time allowed.  He had trouble accepting that during the first hour of caching.  We opted to do the route backwards, start east and work our way west.  I had to figure out the route backwards because it was different.  Eventually we got into a rhythm and things worked out in our favor.  A few of them became problems because Bob and Bev got them a few months back and they really didn't want to stop for them again.  There were a few along the route that I got and they didn't have and there were a few that weren't there.  We met a bunch of cool people along the way from different areas of Washington.  Benton City was the first location we hit up.

When we headed north on the CM, it got smokier and smokier.  You could see the haze all around the valley.  It was suppose to be 90 degrees that weekend but because of the smoke, it kept it cooler.  I wore a sweatshirt most of the day.  When we were about 10 miles north of Prossor, I looked at my route map and saw the cache that was next on the list.  "Gravity Hill."  I knew exactly what that was and was stoked.  I've heard about this place on several occasions but knew about it most from the Weird Washington book:

http://www.weirdus.com/states/washington/road_less_traveled/gravity_hill/index.php

We found the cache and drove the car to the starting line, put it in neutral and watched the car speed up over the hill.  It was insane!

We continued along the route to a place called "The Badlands."  A long time ago when the glaciers covered most of Washington, there was a huge lake that covered Missoula, Montana.  When the ice dam broke it sent millions and millions of gallons of water towards the Pacific ocean.  Along the way, the water scoured a lot of the topsoil exposing the bedrock and carried along glacial erratics (large boulders) and placed them all over Washington.  So if you see random rocks here and there, they were carried by glaciers or by a huge flood.

We got all the ones along the road in this area and moved onto the next section of caches.  There were some great views of the valley.  You can even see the smoke haze.

We headed west towards Granger, Toppenish, Zillah and Grandview for the next half of the cache machine.  I believe we grabbed all of them except for two.  One was not there and one was in a really muddy mushy area and we really didn't want to get muddy at that point.  It was really dusty and the little bit of rain we got earlier in the day really didn't help.  You were covered in dust and smoke.  Bev's car was dusty with black dots on it from when it rained.  Haha, I told her that her car's mascara was running!  She just giggled.

We got into Zillah and had to see the Teapot again.  Since I've been there its been moved into town.  It used to be off of one of the freeway off ramps along I-82.

Some history about the Zillah Teapot:

http://www.everythingnorthwest.com/zillah-washington-teapot-northwest-travel.php

We got into town and found the ones along the route.  I had to go see where they put the teapot.  Willmarth told me back in June that they had moved it.  I needed to see the improvements they've made.  Wow, they made it look awesome.  They put it along main street in a small park-like area with restrooms and parking.  Pretty sweet!

I find some weird stuff when I go caching.

 We had less than 20 to go and about 2 hours to do it in.  We put the pedal to the metal as far as trying to finish all of them, not actually speeding in the car.  We grabbed the last few along the way to the end of the route, well for us the end of the route, as far as the cache machine, the beginning.  We got to this place where we drove underneath the freeway through a metal tunnel, similar to cow tunnels.  We decided to leave the one near the parking lot for last.  Bev stayed in the car while Bob and I went out on a 2 mile walk to grab the four that were out there.  We had trouble with the first one so we saved it for on the way back.  The second and third ones were easy.  The fourth one, wow, that was way out there, over the river and through the woods and over a stump and around bushes we went.  We found it with no trouble and headed back to the first one.  We found it on the second try.  We made it harder than it really was, we do that a lot.  We got back to the car and Bev was just chillin.  We decided to go for the one in the parking lot called Big Log (GC2NJTE).  Apparently no one had found it that day.  Some people earlier didn't find it so they left another cache where they thought it should go.  The cache owner got wind of all the DNF's so he archived it.  Bob found the "decoy" and I found the actual cache. The area had been under some recent bulldozing and the cache probably got caught up in all the ground displacement.  For some reason or another I was lucky enough to see the top of the lid.  I dug it out and bam, Val found a cache no one could find since June.  We wrote our name on the log and put it where Bob found the decoy.  We took the decoy to the dinner.  Several people found it after we did and were really weirded out.  The logs are hilarious.

We drove the 20-ish miles to Sunnyside to meet up at the dinner.  None of us are really into Chinese buffet food but we were so tired we didn't care.  I really wish I would have eaten some where else.  Oh well.  We talked to a bunch of people, signed the log, signed a log for an unpublished cache for a FTF, hung out for a while and then headed back over to their hotel room.  I dropped them off, loaded up my stuff and sorta went over an itinerary for tomorrow.  I headed back to Yakima.

Earlier that day I recieved a text message from Willmarth saying they had to go to the Tri-Cities and then to La Grande for a family emergency and not to freak out when I see that my bed was missing.  he told me he would tell me the story later.  It was going to be weird spending the night in someone's house without them being there.  He did give me a key to their house.  I was exhausted, I had to use the bathroom, I needed a shower and come to find out the key did not fit any of the locks on the house.  I didn't know what to do.  I tried the other doors in the back yard, did not fit.  Uh oh.  What do I do? They are in La Grande, almost 200 miles away.  I got desperate so I was hoping they did not lock the bedroom, I was staying in, window.  I took the screen off the window frame, please please be unlocked.  The window slid up, YES!  I grabbed my stuff and put it inside and I climbed through.  I went outside and put the screen back in.  I showered, logged some of my finds and passed out.

The next day I just wanted to sleep in.  I really didn't want to drive east and then west again so I opted not to drive around with Bob and Bev in the Union Gap/Moxee area.  At around 10, I started getting my stuff together and put in the car.  We had a plan to meet up at the Subway down by Hwy 12.  Bob and Bev drove by it.  I was to meet them at a cafe in Naches.  I had to wait in a huge line at the Subway.  I got my food and headed to the cafe.  We wanted to do Waterworks Canyon at the intersection of Hwy 410 and Hwy 12.

We should have come prepared.  I have no idea why we didn't bring water with us.  We headed up the trail.  It gradually gained elevation as we headed north.  It was smoky, hot and dry.  Bob brought his walking stick just in case we came across any rattlesnakes and he liked hiking with a stick.

 The caches were pretty easy to find.  One of them gave us trouble.  The hint is the only thing that gave it away and the only logical spot was 60 feet from the coords.  I was getting tired and thirsty.  We did one that was probably the hardest one I have done in a very long time. It was harder than Psycho Vertigo in my opinion.  The terrain should have been at least a 4.5 if not a 5.  Great view though.  We didn't get all of them but we had a good run without water.

 We hustled back so we could have enough time to get home.  We decided not to stop for the caches we didn't have or we would be on the road for a long time and we would get home late.  We gotta save some for next time right?  Along the way, as the sun went down, we saw some really pretty views of the sun with the Wenatchee wildfire smoke haze in the distance.  I took this picture right outside of McKenna.  We got home around 7.

Next Adventure:  TBA

Ape Caves, Mount St. Helens

I got a phone call Sunday morning stating that I get out of bed and get ready to go to the Ape Caves near Mt. St. Helens and that I had an hour before they arrived.  We’ve been talking about going to the Ape Caves for a few weeks now.  We wanted to head down before the weather turned and it started snowing.  That area closes from Nov to May because of the snow. 

We made a sandwich, put some snackies together and some water/drinks.  We grabbed our sweatshirts, a flashlight and put some walking shoes on.  By that time, Bob and Bev rolled up.  We tossed our stuff in the car and we were on our way to Woodland down I-5.

The car needed gas so we stopped at the Safeway for a few minutes.  Mom needed some AA batteries and Bev wanted some candy and I just went in for the sake of going into the store.  Moments later, I needed some maple bars.  Safeway has the best maple bars hands down!  There were only two maple bars left and I took them both smiling from ear to ear.  Haha! I took the last of the maple bars!  This has happened to me several times.  I want a maple bar and they were all gone.  I paid and walked back to the car.  Everyone thought I bought them all for myself and that I was rude for not buying them a doughnut.  First off, I had no idea I was going in for doughnuts, secondly, I had no idea what kind everyone liked, also, I only had enough cash on me for two of them, plus, I had the intention of sharing them and everyone getting half of a maple bar.  Everyone enjoyed their half of a doughnut.

We turned the GPS on to see which ones we haven’t gotten yet.  There were only a few of them.  We took care of the place a few months back when we did the 503 loop.  We grabbed one of the Wood to Coug to BG caches.  We figured it must have not been there when we were here last.  It was an easy guard rail grab.  The next one was a few miles down the road.  When we got there we all remembered which one it was.  For being a 1.5/1.5 park and grab, it’s been hard for everyone who DNF’d it, which is most of the recent people who have been there.  We gave it a good educated look and moved on.  The next few were up by the Ape Caves.

I have not been to the Ape Caves since at least 1995.  That trip was with my Girl Scout Troop.  We hit up the entire mountain that day.  I really don’t remember much about it but I do remember being in the caves and all the trees on the north side that looked like tooth picks.  Before that, it was with my family in 1992.

We got into Cougar and noticed there were a lot of people camping out in their RV’s, tents and people with boats and fishing gear.  It was such a change in only a few months.  We headed up the road towards the caches we had planned to do.  Our first earthcache was about when the lava came through the forest and burnt the trees from where they stood.  Now, there are holes, in a few places very deep holes.  We walked around the boardwalk gathering information that we needed off the info panels.  Some of the information was pretty interesting.   

We made it to a place known as “the Crawl.”  Bob went down the ladder first and checked out the hole.  He wasn’t going to bend that way.  I went down the ladder and luckily Bev had a flashlight.   I crawled inside and headed towards the end where Bev and mom were waiting.  I hit my hand on the side of the cave when I came out but it was fun crawling through the tube. 

We walked around the rest of the boardwalk and back to our car.  Some Asians approached us and asked us about the mountain and where to go to actually see it.  The north side you can, where we are you really can’t see it.  This area is mostly for camping, hiking, boating and going inside the Ape Cave.  They looked disappointed.  They wanted to see the mountain.  We directed them towards Johnston Ridge.  They were going to Mount Rainier the next day. 

We hopped into the car and headed towards the Ape Caves parking lot.  Everyone in the world was there.  There was a sign that said Ape Cave Closed.  How could a cave close?  We assumed it was the parking lot after driving past several vehicles parked along the side of the road.  There were tons of people here today!  I then realized it was Memorial Day weekend, there are suppose to be people everywhere!  We went down to the lower parking area and amazingly by luck we found a great spot under the shade.  We grabbed flashlights, a sweatshirt and a few waters and headed towards the cave. 

 We walked past the information building, for some reason I remember it being bigger, and headed down the trail to the cave.  We kept in mind what we needed to do while in the cave to log the earthcache.  We descended down the rock staircase and into the darkness.  It was at least 40 degrees cooler than it was outside.  We took the lower cave walk because it was shorter (.75 mi, 1 hr round trip) and we really weren’t prepared for the upper cave section (1.5 mi, 3 hours round trip).  Maybe another time.

Some info about the cave:

The Ape Caves formed about 1,900 years ago but it wasn’t discovered until 1947 by a logger named Lawrence Johnson.  In 1951, a local youth group lead by Harry Reese extensively explored the cave.  Leaving footprints where no one ever had, these lucky early explorers were able to travel through a pristine lava tube full of amazingly shaped and fragile formations.  The youth group dubbed themselves the St. Helens Apes, in memory of a 1924 hoax perpetrated by tow boy scouts.  The scouts decided to throw large, lightweight pumice rocks in to the canyon.  Unbeknownst to them, there was a cabin below with two miners inside.  Seeing what looked like two small ape like figures high up the canyon, makes ape noises and hurling big ricks, the miners reported that apes attacked them.  From this legend, Ape Cave received its name.

Ape Cave marks an unusual part of Mount St. Helen’s eruptive history.  It was the only time in its 40,000 year existence the volcano erupted red, hot flowing lava, like Hawaii’s volcanoes.  Eruptions of fluid lava, called basalt, are rare in the Cascade mountain range because magma rising below the Cascades have high silica content.  The more silica in the magma, the less fluid it becomes.  Thicker magma with suspended gasses in it makes eruptions more explosive.  About 1,900 years ago, fluid basalt lava poured down the southern flank of the volcano and entered a stream channel.  As the lava flowed, its surface cooled, creating a hardened crust.  This crust insulated the molten lava beneath, allowing it to travel a great distance.  The flowing lava beneath the crust melted and carried away rock and soil below it.  This “thermal erosion” deepened and widened the channel, forming the cave walls.  The level of lava in the tube rose and fell as the eruption surged and slowed.  When flows stabilized for a period of time, lava built up on the walls, making ledges that reveal the depth of the flow.  Hot fluid lava pulsed between the walls and ceiling for months, possibly up to a year, until the eruption subsided and lava drained from the tube.  A spectacular 13,042 feet long lava tube, the third longest in the United States, was created as a result of this rare eruption.

We headed down the lava tube with our small flashlights.  They weren’t that bright but bright enough to see where we were going.  There were plenty of people with lights in the cave nearby so it didn’t matter.  We navigated our way though the lower section of the cave.  We helped Bev out several times because she is “not an off road vehicle.”  There were some parts of the cave which were very rocky and some places you had to step down and over large rocks. 

 After a while of walking we made it to the end of the lower cave.  We took a few pictures and looked around before we headed back.  The walk back was definitely quicker.  When we got back to the stairs we looked for the disc we were suppose to find for part of our log.  We didn’t see it the first time.  I went back and found it while Bev went to the car to get the GPS and everyone used the bathroom.

We found out we missed the one by the cave entrance so we walked back out there and grabbed it.  Later one after we got home, we found out we missed one down the trail towards the upper portion of the cave.  We’ll have one for next time we go!  We went back to the car and drove back towards the one we missed the first time we came up here back in the spring.  We parked at the gate and walked the half mile in.  It was a pretty walk through the woods.  We got to the clearing and towards the cache zone and saw it right away.  We dug through the bag of toys, signed the log and enjoyed the area before heading back to the car.  

A few miles down the road, we found this dirt road with four caches on it.  Of course we went and found them.  We didn’t realize how often people barreled down this road.  Dust was everywhere and it made it worse when the two pick up trucks raced by.  We were covered in dust.  The first one we found quickly, the second was hard and we had to come back to it on the way to the highway, the third one took some looking and the fourth one, wow…took us forever because the GPS jumped around, the hint sucked and the terrain rating was so wrong.  A 1.5 terrain rating should not mean you have to climb a hill.  We climbed up a hill.

We got back in the highway and headed towards Woodland and got some pizza from a local pizza joint.  We used the bathroom, washed our hands and waited a long time for a to-go pizza.  We ate pizza on the way home and got home after dark.  It was a nice day for some caching and cave exploring.

Next adventure:  Vancouver and Renton for the WSGA 10^th Anniversary.

Psycho Vertigo

Since I've been geocaching I've always wanted to do those rare 5/5 caches.  I did one back in 2011 near home and it turned out to be a hoax.  At best, it was a 2.5/3 near Lawrence Lake.  Oh well.  I made up for it when I went out towards Shelton with Bob, Mike and Jose.  Bob wanted his 7,000th cache milestone to be memorable.  This cache would be my 3900th milestone.

I was picked up around 10 that morning and we went and grabbed Mike and Jose.  We were on our way towards Shelton.  We had to get a few so Psycho Vertigo would be the 7,000th cache.  Bob had them all planned out and on a list.  Sky Diver 2.0 and Tony's Can were our first for the day.  We tried to get Jose as involved as we could.  We headed north on 101 and found a few more to grab on the way up to the railroad trestle.  Electrifying View was quite the hike up the side of the hill.  When we got to the cache zone there was a car that had been abandoned and parted out.  It hadn't been there long because the license tabs expired March 2013.  Mike took a few things out of it.  The coords were off and it had me and Jose wandering all over the hill.  Bob found it from the road inside a stump.  I thought we were looking for a regular, not a micro.  Whoops.  The view from this location was pretty cool.  You could see the Skokomish River.

We headed further down the road to a small park to get Skokomish River story.  We thought we had the coords for a puzzle cache nearby but I didn't have my puzzle book and it would have been a hike up the hill.  We were excited to get our Psycho Vertigo on.  We still needed to get a few more before going to the bridge.

When we got to the road we needed to be on there were a few more to grab along the way.  Pre-Landslide and Skokomish View were quickly found, signed and put back.  Now that our count was right, we headed for the parking coords for Psycho Vertigo.  Nuvi took us to the wrong area so we scouted it out a bit before finding where we needed to be.  We parked the truck and grabbed the things we would need for about a mile and a half walk there and back.  I took my fannie pack with pens, toilet paper (you never know) and a bottle of water.  I took my phone with me (even though there isn't any service out there) and my camera.  We set out.

There were lots of downed trees along the trail that we had to step over.  The horseflies were really bad.  I first thought they were bees.  I really did not want to get stung out here.  Bob told us they were horseflies.  We took caution.  We chatted about random things while we walked to the railroad bridge.  We reached a part of the trail that looked like a large landslide took it out at one time.  Then it was a huge uphill walk for a few minutes.  Then we rounded the bend and there it was...

I was absolutely stoked!  I can't believe we were here doing a REAL 5/5 cache!  We started across looking for the first waypoint of the multi.  Up here you really had to go one step at a time.  For all of you who are afraid of heights, yeah you shouldn't even try this.  You look down once and you're running back to the trail with your tail between your legs.  I'm very thankful I am not afraid of heights.

We knew the first wp was a washer on the top of the bridge.  We didn't spend too much time looking for it because we knew where to go.  We headed to the southern edge of the bridge and climbed down.  The first section we walked down was doable without a rope.  We did a lot of speculating because we didn't have coords to the cache.  Bob read some of the logs, I looked at some of the logs and pictures, Kenny did this a few years ago so we had a lot of information to find the cache.  We found the rope and headed down.  It was a little steeper than the Ring of Fire cache that we did last May.

As we descended, we had to go one section at a time to avoid being hit by rocks and debris.  Bob did get hit in the leg by a pretty substantial rock.  At one point I could have been hit in the head by a rock but luckily I was off to the side.  Wp 2 was suppose to be hanging near the rope but we didn't bother looking because people have had trouble finding it.  I was the first down the bank, Bob and Mike followed after.  Jose stayed up by the ropes.  We got to the truss and started looking.  According to the last log, the cache had fallen from its hiding spot and they tucked it away somewhere else.  I automatically started climbing up the truss because I knew that's where it was suppose to be.

 
I didn't find anything.  Mike came up the truss and looked for a bit.  We both climbed down and Mike said, FOUND IT!

What?  Really?  It's down there?

We all knew it was suppose to be up in the truss.  We really didn't see how it would stay though, unless it was bolted or tied.  Oh well, we found it and we had fun.  We signed it and put it back where we found it.  (We made a note of it in our log.)

We started back up the steep bank.  For some odd reason I was looking around while I waited for Bob to shimmy up the rope, I found the film canister for wp2.  I couldn't believe it.  Inside were a bunch of strips of paper with coords on them.  I took one just because.  We continued up the rope to the top of the hill.  Then we climbed up to the tracks.  Mike and Jose were talking to some young people who were trying to get down to the river.  Honestly, I wouldn't even begin to know how to get to the river.  Even from where we just were by the cache.

We walked back across the trustle and enjoyed the scenery as we trudged on.

We got back to the trail and started walking back to the truck.  I looked at my GPS and discovered that there was another cache that we just walked past.  We turned around and grabbed it quickly.  The horseflies were really bothering me.  We hurried back so we could grab other caches in the area.

We went and got Revenge of the Stumps, which took us a while to figure out how to get to it.  Once there, the view was breath taking.  I wish it would have been clearer so we could have seen Mount Rainier a little better and Mount St. Helens.

This was our last find for the day.  It was getting late and we headed back towards Shelton.  On the way we stopped to look for the 40 non micro challenge cache and it was taken.  Sad, maybe another time.  I did write to the owner and they're gonna replace it as soon as they can.  We had a hamburger at McDonald's and went home.  We dropped off Mike and Jose and Bob dropped me off at my house.  I uploaded pictures and wrote my logs.

The next two days my legs were so sore.  I didn't realized we worked that hard getting up that rope.

Next Adventure: Ape Caves near Mount St. Helens.