I asked Doug if I could stay with him on Tuesday night since I really didn't feel like waking up at 1 to drive to Seattle. He said sure. I got the rest of the painting done at the rental, went home and started getting ready to go. We had dinner and I left around 7:30 to get up to Seattle without the traffic. It took me a little less than an hour and a half. I found a parking spot and let myself into the house, Doug wasn't home. I texted him. About ten minutes later he walked through the door, he and one of his roommates just came back from dinner and a movie.
By the time I got the stuff out of the car and relaxed, it was already 10:30ish. Crap, I gotta go to bed...I knew I would not get a good amount of sleep before 3:15 rolled around.
I attempted to go to bed at 11. Doug was making noise, playing his game and then he got up to make popcorn. I could hear the traffic on I-5 all night long. It was hot, I was on a futon and I kept rolling around trying to get comfortable. He eventually went into the living room. I still couldn't get comfortable and I kept looking at the clock.
Ugh...it's almost time to get up and I haven't slept a wink.
I finally got comfortable and my cell phone alarm went off. It took a lot to drag myself out of bed and get ready. This so far is the earliest I have actually gotten up to go geocaching. The latest was a FTF in Tumwater a few years back. I stayed up until 2 to go grab the cache.
I took my stuff I wasn't taking to my car and put it in the trunk...this is Seattle you know. I used the bathroom one more time and made sure I had everything for today's adventure. I let Jacob know I was ready to go, he was on his way.
About 20 minutes later, he came down the hill, I threw my stuff in the Jeep and we made our way towards Hwy 2 via the 522 through Monroe. We talked about geocaching. Mostly the ones that were on our to do lists and the ones we've done that were very memorable.
We got to our first stop. It was a city park nestled up against the South Fork of the Skykomish River. It was called Skykomish Ball Park Family Cache. It was still dark outside when we pulled in and parked the Jeep. I didn't have this one in my gps so we would have to go by what Jacob's phone and gps said. We wandered through the dark with flashlights looking for the stump explained in the hint. Found out after several minutes into our search the coords were about 60 feet off. We adjusted and Jacob finally found it. We signed our names and moved on down Hwy 2 towards She'll Be Coming.
We got up and over Stevens Pass, beautiful drive, and finally over the other side towards Leavenworth. We found the forest road (NF-6910) we needed to be on and followed it up to the trailhead. There was a cache there so we grabbed that one and then used the facilities before we made our way up. It was roughly 7:30 a.m.
We made our way up Round Mountain. We took several breaks between the trail head and the first cache along the trail. Jacob was not in hiking shape and was determined to get back in it starting with this hike. We came up on the first cache, Bite the Bug...it was surrounded by what I called ghost trees, an area that suffered a major burning at one point.
We trudged on.
We arrived at 7, 8, 9, 48, 50, 75. Jacob rested and I went and got it. He said I had more energy than he did. I got to the cache and it was hiding in a pretty cool location. Near a big bunch of boulders resting on a ledge. I have not found a cache container like this one before. Pretty neat.
We got to a junction in the trail. We we were on the Round Mountain Trail and it turned into the Mason Ridge Trail. The trail after this sign was probably the steepest. We stopped many times and saw some awesome views of Wenatchee Lake and pieces of the valley from the ledge.
We made the last switchback and found the last cache before She'll Be Coming. It took us a few minutes to zero in on Round Mountain Tube View. I walked past it at least three times before Jacob walked down and helped me look for it. I should have seen it the first time. It did provide us with a great view looking south.
...and now onto She'll Be Coming, the very reason why we hiked up Round Mountain.
We called Sean just to make sure we were heading the right way. He said to continue down the trail until we got as close as we could and then cut up the side of the hill. He said it was easier than the way we were thinking of going. We climbed up the incline and zig zagged through the trees that have seen better days. I got up the hill before Jacob did so I thought it would be a good time to seek shelter and use the bathroom. After I was done I returned to my back pack and waited for Jacob to make it up. I didn't want to be a jerk and look for the cache without him since he was the one who invited me to come along.
We looked for it together. It took us less than a minute or two to locate the cache which was hidden underneath a suspiciously obvious pile of bark. We took the cache to a nearby log to sign, rest and eat some food.
I just had to add my mark since those Husky fans pushed my buttons a little bit. If the Huskies were represented sure as hell the Cougars were going to be. I video taped Jacob on his weight loss journey, we put the cache back and made our way back down to the trail. It took us about 3 hours and 45 minutes climb up and only a little less than 2 hours to walk down. My knees and feet were so ready to rest. Total hike was 5.6 miles with an elevation gain of 1,690'. I found out about the 50,000 elevation gain challenge from Jacob, so I decided to start my own track on the cache page. This was hike #1.
We got back to his vehicle and drove back down to Hwy 2 towards Lake Wenatchee State Park.
We had some trouble finding a way to get to it without having to walk a long way. We found a pull out off the main road that was less than .20 to the cache. We parked and made the short walk to the lake. It was going well until we saw the large hill we had to walk down and then back up on the return trip. Just our luck. I went and enjoyed the views of the lake while Jacob caught up.
We found the cache together. This was my 51st state park cache and he still had a bunch to go only at 5. We decided to drive back towards Stevens Pass. Before we left, we stopped at the Fifty Niner Diner for a milkshake. I got a strawberry one. They claimed they had the best milkshakes in the world. They were good but not the best in the world. (http://www.59erdiner.com/)
The next cache we attempted to go get was a past Cache of the Month, Wellington. Somehow we missed the turn off at the top of Stevens Pass. We tried getting to it another way but ended up giving up and deciding to go for it another day when we weren't tired from getting up at 3:15 in the morning and a 5.6 mile hike. We also decided to bypass the three state parks that were also on the list, Forks in the Sky-Index Town Wall, Wallace Falls and Bridle Trails.
We stopped at a fruit stand for a few minutes because Jacob was craving fruit and on our way through Monroe, we spotted a reptile zoo. Jacob was stoked and we had to stop. We went in and saw lots of lizards, snakes and gators. They had two full rooms of critters. Jacob got to hold a snake and the workers noticed his caching shirt and directed us to the cache just right outside their business. We only had certain caches on the gps for this trip. (http://thereptilezoo.org/)
Jacob dropped me off at my brother's house at around 5 p.m. It was a long day. I was so ready to crash. I took a quick shower and Doug's roommates made pulled pork sandwiches for dinner while I waited for rush hour to subside. I left Seattle around 7:30 and got home around 9. I unloaded the car and passed out immediately. I didn't get up until about noon the next day.
It was a fun adventure and looking forward to more in the future.
Next adventure: 4H Geocaching and GC12
No comments:
Post a Comment