I got up around 7 because they were going to be here around 7:30. They meet with their kids in the morning for coffee before they head to work. I got all my stuff together and made sure I had some snacks for the trip down because we never know when we'll have time for food.
They arrived just after 7:30 and I got in the car with all my bags and lunch box. We were on our way to the Vancouver area. I actually wasn't as tired as I thought I would be. On the way down, we talked about several different things and even stopped at the Toutle Lake Rest Area, one of our traditions on our way down.
We got to our first one on the list. It took us towards Ridgefield right off of I-5. It was a bearsnme cache called Bee Careful, one of the many I-5 series she has put out in the last year or so. There was another one not too far down the road we grabbed quickly. We saw a crane standing in the middle of the field just doing its crane thing. From there, we went west towards downtown Ridgefield but made a few stops along the highway. We grabbed many guardrails, tons of micros hanging in trees (we knew better coming down to Cowlitz/Clark county, they are riddled in them), and some actually hidden near bottoms of trees and stumps.
We got into town and tried looking for this park and ended up driving in circles because Bob got frustrated with our directions. We've never been here before Bob, chill. We parked to grab one that wasn't there. Go figure and found the road that lead to Abrams Park. All of them but one was missing and we barely found that one.
We went back into town to grab one more before we got hungry. Instead of having lunch like normal people, we each bought a bag of chips and when we went to pay for it, I found a unscratched lotto ticket left in the tray so we took it with us. We didn't win.
Next on the list was Old Carty Place, one of the remaining oldies in Washington State. I thought about grabbing it the last time I was near here but it got dark and I know it's a small hike. We tried stopping for two along the way but they were missing...we really need to check logs before we stop.
We followed the GPS to the refuge. We parked the car and made our way to the trail head. There were a bunch of little kids with their moms. We were hoping they weren't going to be on the trail with us. We walked up over the train tracks, we got to see a train go by, and onto the paved trail. The cache was .60 away from where we were. It took us a lot to convince Bob to come get this one since it was out of the way. But we told him this was the only one up here and we know he doesn't like leaving ones, so we had a good case. We took a few pictures along the way, the weather was beautiful. The high was around 71 and sunny. It was t shirt and shorts weather. I should have brought shorts with me.
We admired the 300 year old oak tree and the fall foliage as we made our way down the neatly groomed nature trail. Bev led the way towards one of the oldest ammo boxes in Washington State. We chatted about the history challenge to pass the time while we walked. I still had quite a few more before I was finished. I may or may not get to finish it next year.
After a short hike we finally got to the grassy knoll where we found the uprooted tree and Bob found the ammo can hidden in its twisted roots. We got to sign a 12 year-old log book. Pretty epic. We took turns taking pictures of ourselves with the cache and placed it back where we found it. Another one done and many more to go.
We made the walk back to the car. The warm wind blew softly from the river and reminded me again on how much I missed summer already. We moved onto the next couple along the refuge, Refuge Entrance and Turn Around Cache. One of those wasn't found in a while and had several DNF's, but we found it. Haha.
We went to a really cool one inside a cemetery dedicated to the pioneers who settled on this land back in the 1800's.
We went to several skirt lifters, many small parks and found tons of micro caches in bushes and trees. We were almost tired of it but Bob loves his numbers. We found ourselves near Battle Ground once again and managed to turn a few DNF's we had last July into finds. The two were D'Anjou #9 and Kellen's Cache on Daybreak Park/Trail near the East Fork Lewis River. We completely looked in the wrong spot and I finally moved my way towards the river and found it with a stick. Go glad that one's off the list.
We continued up the 503 picking up a ton of guardrail caches, specifically a series called Woodland to Coug to BG, most of them were easy and some of them we actually all had to get out of the car and look. We should almost have this series done unless they add more. When we got to Fargher Pond area that's where we turned around and started heading west towards I-5.
We grabbed two off the the 503 at a cemetery and a grocery store. The sun started to set.
We stopped at a small business connected to a cranberry farm to look for a cache near an old boat along the road. It was funny trying to remember which side was starboard and which side was port. We eventually got it right because we found the cache. We took a few pictures of the area because I thought it was a great view.
Once we were going towards the freeway, we found a couple others along some side roads. Several of the caches had recent DNF's. We were going to prove them wrong. Bev and I found them on the ground and tucked away in places not helpful by the hint. We made it to La Center and we managed to find our fifty caches before it got too dark. One of our last short hikes took us down the Breezy Creek Trail.
On the way home we verified our caches on the lists we wrote down along the way. For some reason they didn't match up. We found our error and was happy with the results. We stopped in Kelso and had some Taco Time because like Bev always says, "there's always time for tacos."
Next Adventure: Haunted House, Freakers Ball and My First Sounders Game
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