Yakima Visit Day 1

My alarm went off at 8:45 and I immediately got ready to go.  I didn't want to waste any time.  I packed the stuff up in my car, grabbed a couple of nibbles, a drink and my keys and headed over to Grandma's house to trade vehicles.  It didn't take long to unload my car and load the van.  She had gone to the store that morning and bought too many bananas so she gave me one for my trip.  She said bye, safe trip and I drove into Yelm to get some gas since she had given it to me with less than a half a tank.  Gas prices are slowly going down and I only paid $3.45 a gallon.  I went inside and grabbed a few other munchies and a drink just because.

I drove out to Hwy 7 and stayed on there until the turn off at Elbe.  Along the way a helicopter followed the shoreline of Alder Lake.  I turned on my GPS and found the closest one.  It's weird that I haven't stopped at this one yet or why I had missed this one all the times I've come through here.  I pulled over and parked at a gated forest road.  It was a bit chilly and the ground was saturated with water but my shoes didn't get wet.  I immediately saw where the cache was hidden, grabbed it, signed it, took a pic, put it back and went back to the car.

I pulled into traffic and hoped that I didn't get stuck behind a semi truck.  I caught up to some of the vehicles ahead of me and one of them was a semi truck, crap.  We got into Morton and the semi turned off at the gas station.  I got onto Hwy 12 and had no trouble until I caught up to the slow caravan.  I ended up following two white vans from Oregon the entire length of Hwy 12 until we merged with Hwy 410.  We passed a few cars here and there and once we made it up the pass, near the top was a frickin semi truck.  Luckily, he pulled over to let us by.  When we got to the tunnel on the eastern side of the pass, we had to stop for construction.  Thank goodness it was only for a few minutes than up to 30 minutes like the internet warned.  I took this picture.

After our quick stop, it was a breeze the rest of the way to Yakima.  I texted Willmarth to tell him I was almost there, I called my mom to let her know I made it over and I gained six minutes of time from when I left home to when the GPS thought I would make it to Yakima.

I drove past their new house, thinking it wasn't literally next door, I had to turn around and then turn around again to be able to park correctly on the street.  I grabbed my bag and left the rest of the stuff in the van to bring in later, when the dogs weren't going insane.  We chatted, he gave me the grand tour of the new place, went and got food from Subway, watched TV and talked about Ebay stuff.

Shannon broke her ankle back in January and is in a boot that she can not put weight on.  We had to go pick her up from school.  She has a scooter to help her be more mobile than the crutches while teaching.  We had to go to the store to pick up some stuff for dinner.  We ended up picking pulled pork sandwiches and mashed potatoes.  We watched ESPN.

Shannon was exhausted and most of her nights have been on the couch because of her condition, we made her bed and retired to the extra room to get some Ebay stuff together.  He showed me how to list stuff, what to look for, how some one wins a bid, pays, how to do Paypal and how to print postage labels.  It seemed pretty straight forward.  He did warn me about the weird things that might happen every now and then.

It got to be late and it was time for bed.  I made my bed on the air mattress and got comfortable.  I turned the TV on and watched a few things while I continued to log ET Highway caches.  I was almost done.  Only a few more days and I will be done!