I got all of my stuff ready the night before. I was so tired from the weekend it took a lot to get out of my bed at 7. I got all of my stuff and made sure I had my lunch box and headed out the door when I saw their headlights.
On the way down we stopped at the traditional bathroom stop and shared funny stories the rest of the way towards Vancouver. Our first stop was off of the first Mill Plain exit. We grabbed four of them pretty quickly. One of those four included a multi. We rarely do multis unless they are simple. The reason is, one part or many parts are missing or very vague. For example, if you are looking for certain numbers on a sign and they tell you to count lines and many of them could be part of the solution and you pick the wrong numbers, it could be a long frustrating day. This one was easy and simple. We found the cache before we even go to the tree it was hiding under.
The next three or four took us down a road that didn't show up on our GPS's. That included a few guardrail caches, one hiding inside of a tree and one at the Northwood Park Cemetery. All were easy grabs and were in great condition.
The next one took us to a small park off the side of a road near several housing developments. We found the cache inside of a hollowed tree with a pair of jean shorts wrapped around it. Of course I made a few jokes about it and weirded out Bev.
Whipple Creek Hollow was the next cache according to the GPS's. We drove down a road where several new houses were being built. Due to the call of nature, we stopped and used one of the porta potties before making our way to the trail head to the creek. Once again, we should have read the logs before we walked all the way down there. We didn't find it after looking for about a half hour. At least the walk was pretty.
We got back onto the main road in the area and saw the fenced in area. How in the world do we get in there? We found a parking spot at a nearby apartment complex, Bev opted to stay. I saw an opening in the fence so Bob and I walked over to the "Tiny Forest" to get the cache. It was situated very tactfully inside the ivy on the old oak tree. It took us a few seconds to zero in on the correct side of the tree.
We had a few more DNF's that we think the cache was actually not there but we did give a few minutes of extensive searching. We moved on towards the hospital and found a few around the large parking lot. Bob and Bev had been here once before and found one of them because on their way home from Mount Hood earlier this summer, they needed one on the way home to keep their streak going.
We found a few more before calling for a lunch break. Of course we went to McBob's. Before going in, we noticed there was a cache nearby. They said they've been here before to look for it but never could find it. I walked right up to it while a bunch of ladies were chatting and having a great time with their Starbucks while getting into their car. I put it back without them seeing me.
After lunch we made our way east away from I-5. We found many caches by Geek&Gopher. The first one took us to the Heritage Historical Farm, a extension part of WSU, where Brenda works. I found the nano on an old rusted piece of farm equipment.
We went to Luke Jenson's Sports Park to pick up a few. This place really made me miss playing sports, especially soccer and fastpitch. The one took us a while to find because the hint was terrible. Bob ended up finding it in some random spot that didn't make sense. We found two Geek&Gopher caches, one was a bison tube on a tree and the other was a baseball, it was very clever in its placement.
The next fifteen or so caches were micros in trees and bushes. There were a few series that we've picked up before in this area, one was the Clark County Cache Run, Crossing Jordan, Pull Over for some Cache and the Black Cherry caches. I really hate getting out of the car and digging through trees.
We grabbed one at the Costco, one called Watch Out for Sharks!, inside a park behind an elementary school, there I almost fell in a hole taking a picture of Bev with the cache and one so far up a tree I had to jump up and grab the branch.
At this point we had about 45 caches and now we were desperate to grab 50 of them before it got too late and started getting dark.
The last six caches were all unique. The first one was on a guardrail, okay, that one really wasn't that unique but they were all different. The next one was a magnetic key holder and we had no trouble making the find on this one. There was a bird house near a church that contained the cache container. Bev stayed in the car while we grabbed it. The cache that came up next on our GPS's was a tricky one. They let me out of the car and I walked to where the coords put me. It was a key holder on the homeowner's side of the fence but you had to retrieve it from the sidewalk. I was almost too short to grab this one but some how I managed to pull it out of its hidey spot and put it back without looking suspicious. We found a micro in the brush and completed a cache challenge. It was called 50 in a Day and we've done this task multiple times already. The last people to find this cache was Ben and Jayme.
For our last cache of the day, which ended up being 51, we finished off with a letterbox, since there really aren't anymore around our area and now there are a bunch of challenges that require you to find 50 or more letterboxes. This one would make number 26 for me and I still have a long ways to go for my 50 letterboxes.
We made our way to the freeway and made it to the Sizzler in Longview for dinner. We were all starving. I had chicken fingers and fries and they had their senior meals complete with a salad bar. We got home around 9 and I logged some of the finds before I got tired and went to bed.
Next Adventure: Geocaching in Space
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