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
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