We had planned to to the coast tour for Sunday but instead we did it today because when we got to Shaefer Park yesterday and was ready to walk up the hill to the cache, Bob and Bev could not find their passport. They had left it on the table at home. I walked up with a couple cachers since we were there and Bob and Bev waited for me in the car. I returned after a half hour later and then went home because we couldn't go any further without the passport.
Today Bob and Bev redeemed themselves. We drove back to Schaefer Park and they got their stamp. Now we could move on with the rest of the caches on the list. It was going to be a long day.
From there, we went to Lake Sylvia State Park. Last time I was here, it was for my brother's cross country meet my senior year of high school. We parked the car as close as we could and followed the trail along the lake to a dock and a bridge that took us over the water to the other side of the lake. We passed a fisherman who wasn't having any luck. We saw some cool trees on the way. We got to the cache site and Bob found the cache quickly, we stamped our passports, logged our names and walked back to the car.
We headed west towards Aberdeen and got rained on hard just before the Welcome to Aberdeen sign on the right. It kinda made us nervous. I did not want to get soaked while we were at the beach or at all for that matter. We decided to take a short cut so we wouldn't have to do a lot of back tracking. So we took Ocean Beach Road at Copalis Crossing. That took us through two small towns called Carlisle and Aloha. Of course the cell phones didn't work in this area. We followed the Nuvi to Pacific Beach State Park, another park I don't think I've been to.
When we arrived and grabbed the cache, a car pulled up beside us. It was the Logan Six on a summer jaunt to the beach to grab some of the state park caches. We all stamped our passports, signed the log and chatted for a few minutes. I put the cache back into it's hidey spot and off we went to the next one.
The Logan Six unintentionally ended up following us to the next one down in Ocean Shores. We arrived at Ocean City State Park first with them pulling up just behind us. We thought we would combine forces and find the cache together. We got close to the cache and the GPS's ended up leading us to the wrong set of bushes. We had to walk around the small creek to get to the other side where this small group of trees were. We bent down and found the ammo can right away. We dropped some of our trackables after trading codes with our new caching friends. We put it back better than we found it and made our way back to the car. We still had a long ways to go.
We drove back around the harbor and back into Aberdeen to get onto the 105 towards Westport. It's been a while since I've been here. I don't think I've been to Westhaven State Park. We followed our GPS to the parking lot. They were doing construction. We speculated maybe a new bathroom? We started walking towards the cache. We saw where we needed to walk and as we got up and onto the ledge it was crazy windy! We headed out towards the jetty and saw many people crawling around, fishing and sight seeing. We found the cache quickly and then enjoyed some picture taking.
We walked back towards the car and found out there was another cache nearby so we went and looked for a few minutes. We didn't find it but we needed to go if we were going to get all eight of the state parks done that we had planned to do. Off we went to Twin Harbors State Park just a few miles south of us.
We were quick to find out there are two parts to this state park and we meandered through the roads to find a parking spot fairly close to the cache. We got out and found the small trail through the ghostly trees. Bob found the cache right away and we hurried to stamp our passports, sign our names on the log because we were being eaten alive! The mosquitoes were terrible! A cacher had warned us but had forgotten which park it was until we got here. We returned to the car and grabbed the virtual, Shifting Sands, on the way out.
Just down the road again, was Grayland Beach State Park. I may have been to this state park but it's been a very long time. We made our way through the camping area and found a place to park. We walked out to the beach along the small trail and walked along the beach to GZ. We found out we took the wrong trail but it got us there anyway. It was very windy but it felt good because it was a bit muggy warm outside. Bev made the quick find once we got to the cache site. We got our passports stamped and our names logged and then walked back to the car. We checked our map to make sure what the next one was.
En route to Ilwaco/Cape Disappointment, we stopped in Tokeland at the haunted hotel. The Tokeland Hotel and Restaurant has always been on my list of places to see since I found out it was haunted some odd years ago. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
More about the Tokeland Hotel: http://www.tokelandhotel.com/
Yes there was a cache near the hotel. Bob and Bev had been here years ago and tried to find it. We looked for it today and it turned into a confusing multi. We found all of the containers and wrote our names down in all of them just so we covered all the bases. We went back to the car and told Bob what we had to do. I talked Bev into pictures in front of the hotel.
We drove back towards the highway and got gas at the Georgetown Gas Station. We ate our lunch as we drove. I'm glad I brought food with me. We followed 105 along the water's edge. We had to stop several times at the bridges because they were under construction. The longest we had to wait was about 15 minutes. We got to Raymond and hit Hwy 101 south towards Ilwaco/Long Beach. We went through South Bend and contemplated stopping and getting some along the trail between the two towns but we figured it would waste valuable state park cache time.
While driving along 101, I recognized several places we stopped along the way when we were here for the Long Beach Cache Machine, back in January 2012. When we finally got into town, we followed where Nuvi told us to go and because the roads are all crazy she took us to the wrong place. We figured it out via the parking coords, where we were suppose to go and found out we had to climb a hill. Bev was not too excited about a hill this late in the day. She got her game face on and went up the hill with Bob and I. It actually wasn't that bad of a hill.
I walked up beside Bev and Bob booked it up the hill. He ended up finding the cache before we even got there. We logged our names, stamped our passports and took a few pics. We admired the views and the old cement structures before heading back down the hill. I joked around with Bev about the hike we did back in November. She said in her log that, it was not as bad as Pinnacle Peak in Enumclaw. We headed back down the hill and to the car.
One more state park to go. I remember driving past this park when we went across the Astoria-Megler Bridge (4.06 mi) to get into Oregon for some caching with Brad and his crew over a year and a half ago. I never really noticed that it was a state park until this challenge. We drove past it the first time and had to turn around and come back. There wasn't that many people in the park and Bob parked as close to the cache as he could. We got out and took the short walk to a stump hidden from the public's view. We signed the logbook, stamped our passports and put it back. We looked at the buildings and the battery and used the restroom before starting out long drive back home.
We couldn't decide if we wanted to go home the way we came or go home through Longview. I immediately checked the distance and hours it would take to get home. We decided to go back up to Raymond and hit Hwy 6 home through PeEll and Adna. Along the way we found several of newly placed Bearsandme caches, we had all pretty much wiped out the area. We spent an hour or so picking up ones along the road. We got about 8 of them. One required us to go off roading along a really rocky road. That made Bev upset. She didn't want her car to get broken out in the middle of nowhere plus her car should not be doing stuff like that in the first place.
When we got into Raymond, we stopped at McBob's for some dinner. I had the two cheeseburger meal and it was delicious. We ended up getting home late. We got about 18 caches all together.
Next Adventure: Rainbow Falls, Willapa Hills Trail Head, Ike Kinswa and a Pool
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