Somehow mom talked me into going with them. Of course they made me drive.
Today we were going down south towards Vancouver.
The first quilt store we went to was Centralia, near the famous Yard Bird, who was getting a face lift from the damage the floods did to it. A few miles south we hit up the Chehalis quilt store. That one we went in and out of quickly. The next one was in Castle Rock, I've never been to that one before. The ladies were nice.
We got down to Longview and went to our first one, there, we saw a little person packaging the blocks to hand out to people. I was so excited to see a male little person at a quilt store. I have a co-worker who just loves seeing little people, so we sent her a picture of him. When we got in the car, my mom immediately called her and she shrieked with joy. We went to the other quilt store in town but didn't have as much fun as the previous one.
We started making out way down to Vancouver. There were three shops we had to hit up. Inside one, which was hard to get to because of the construction, I found a pattern of a cartoonish Cougar with a football uniform on. We are so going to make this so I bought it. It was the first quilt-like thing I've ever bought.
We were hungry and everyone felt like hamburgers. We put it in the Nuvi and it found the nearest Red Robin. It was near the mall, a place I have geocached before. So there wasn't anything close by to grab. We all got our food and Grandma looks out the window behind us and goes, wow, look at the rain! It was pouring buckets. Very large buckets. I sure hope it died down so I could get the caches I had in mind this afternoon. We finished our food and got back in the car, the rain had gone away...for now.
We put the coords in the Nuvi and meandered around the back roads, through Hockinson, until we got to the state park.
I have never been to Battleground State Park and my aunt lives down here, haha. We parked in the lot and walked down the hill to the lake. I expected it to be bigger. We took the trail to our left and walked down the bumpy trail. We needed to walk off our lunch anyway. We got to the cache zone and I knew where it was before we even got to it because I would hide it there as well. A small family was fishing nearby so I had to explain what we were doing. Luckily, the woman has a co-worker who goes out caching too. I showed them the container and the passport. They thought it was a great way to get out and explore, especially the state parks. We stamped our passports, signed the logbook, put it back and walked to the earthcache on the other side.
The lake was smaller than I thought it was. We got to the other side of the lake and started working on the earthcache. There was a family with two small kids at the cache site. We told her we would only be here for a few minutes. We answered the questions, took our picture evidence and walked back to the car.
Plugged the coords into Nuvi for the next state park. It took us up I-5 to Seaquest, across the street from one of the Mt. St. Helens visitor's centers.
I've never been to Seaquest State Park but I have driven past it over a dozen times to Mt. St. Helens. We drove in and it started sprinkling. I had to hurry so I didn't get soaked. We didn't know where the trail heads were or where to even start. We drove to the parking coords and went from there. I saw where to enter from and knew I had a walk ahead of me when I saw how far away it was. Mom and grandma stayed in the car because they are weenies. Off I went. I was so glad to see the cache after the long walk. Stamped my passports, logged our names and back I went. I didn't know if I should continue or go back the way I came. Then I found a short cut and had them meet me where it came out of. Then it started raining harder. Ew. I got to the car and they said they had a nice visit with the ranger who didn't see our Discovery Pass, that we won at the state parks kick off celebration, in the window, lol. Glad to have gotten that one out of the way.
The last one of the day was at Lewis & Clark State Park. I never knew this state park was here until this series, this was right off the freeway on the Jackson Highway. We parked near where we thought the trail head was. We picked the wrong trail but managed to get where we needed to be. It was dry, thank goodness and everyone was in awe of the enormous trees. We found the path that led to the cache. We found the cache with no problem, stamped our passports, logged our names and put it back where we found it. We made our way back to the car, this time down the right trail, haha.
We found out we didn't have enough time to make it to our fourth state park. It will have to be another day and everyone was tired from the long day.
Next adventure: More Shop Hop, Dash Point State Park and Saltwater State Park
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