Bonney Lake Caching Adventures

It's been raining a lot these past few days so we decided after some laundry and lunch we were going to go out for a bit to find a few caches.  We wanted to stick close to his parent's house mostly to save money and dinner was going to be done in an hour or two.  I wrote down the ones we could get so we didn't have to do too many forest ones.  We started with the two caches on the roads we use to get to Ben's house the back way.  I didn't bring my GPS this time because I thought it would rain all weekend.  So we used Ben's phone and the geocaching app.

Ben had already found Don't Get Towed (GC2R6HY) but he stopped because it was a quick park and grab.  It was a lamp skirt near the cross walk.  I had to be a bit sneaky to grab it.  We drove about a quarter of a mile to the next one, Angry Birds (GC30N6Y).  That was a bird house just on the edge of the woods near a retaining pond.

From there, we got onto South Prairie Road and then turned onto 214th towards Hwy 410 to grab JAMC (GC2TV6Y) (which stands for Just Another Micro Cache) hidden underneath a road median just off the side of the road.  Ben and I spotted the rock instantly.

Power Up (GCKGFZ) was behind the Safeway so we parked at the nearest parking spot and walked to it.  That road behind there was pretty busy so we had to wait until cars cleared the area before we started looking.  I knew it was by the power box and low and behold it was one of those faceplate box caches.  I'm pretty sure someone saw us but they didn't care too much about it.

I told Ben he needed to find The Unknown Future (GC31KYC) before we went home. Bob and I found it about a year ago.  That one was just a short walk across the road and behind a few businesses.  When we got there I was disappointed in the last person for not putting it back better. The cache was poking out of the top of the see saw tree.  Basically you had to pull up the part closest to the ground to pull down the other side of the tree for the person to retrieve the cache.  It was a physics cache.  We put it back better than we found it.

We walked back towards the Explorer, which had recently gotten new tires, and found out there was one in the woods along the trail called Bethany's 7th Birthday Cache (GC2E6HG).  We found the trail and a LOT of garbage near the entrance.  Somebody had gone "Office Space" on a TV.  As we got closer to the cache, the area started to seem familiar.  We got to the cache site and it was confirmed.  I had been here before and found this exact cache about three years ago.

 Next came the memorable cache of the day, The Dark Hole (GC23PWE).

What made this cache memorable is was what we found near it.  The strange part about it was this wasn't my first time finding items like this near a cache site.  We found a broken glass dildo and some fruity lube to go with it.  We had to take a picture of it so when we tell our story people would believe us.  Kind of ironic that we found adult paraphernalia near a cache called The Dark Hole huh?

Once we got our giggles out and recovered from that cache we needed some tots from the nearby Taco Time.  We went through our change and found enough for a large order.  We each used some hand sanitizer and enjoyed our tots and we drove to A Weekend in Bonney Lake (GC1234X).  When we arrived, I immediately found a plastic frog tied to a tree limb with a plastic bag.  Ben didn't remember this from when he found it a while ago.  We just went with it and drove to the other one in the Home Depot parking lot.

Will You Measure Up? --Rule Series #1 (GC36RTG), was one I knew what it was immediately before I started looking for it.  I knew it would be a measuring tape you had to write your name on.  It warned that you needed a Sharpie to write on it because a normal pen wouldn't do.  I lucked out and someone had put a sticker on it so I wrote on the sticker with my pen.

The last one of the evening was in the Safeway parking lot hidden underneath a Rhododendron bush.  It was a crayon thermos, called the Crayola Crayon Cache (GC2H86H).  The owner did this one to keep it fun for her boys.

We called it good for the day and headed back for dinner before we saw Walt and Wendy on the way back home to Olympia.  There, we chatted and watched Captain America.  Then we stopped at the store for some groceries before he dropped me off at home.  Until the next adventure!

Next Adventure:  California Desert and Route 66 Caching:  Day 1

Disc Golf, Geocaching and Hwy 410

It was going to be the nicest day this week so we decided to take full advantage of it.  We got up around 10-ish and got ready to go.  He got his shower in (because he was getting his hair cut when we got back) and wanted the gel stuff out of it.  We ate breakfast and I was glad I did the queries last night so they were already on the GPS.  We made sure we had everything and put it in his vehicle.  Off we went.

We got to Buckley, soon through Enumclaw and on our way towards Mount Rainier via Hwy 410.  We talked about numerous things as we snaked our way down the road.  I got the GPS out just to see how many were still along the road that I didn't get back when I went Chinook Pass to Yakima back in 2011.  White Pass/Hwy 12 had been closed that summer for construction.  We saw about seven caches to grab on the way back home later on.

We stopped at the Greenwater Ski shop to talk to the owner about the status of the disc golf course.  I wandered around the store while Ben talked to the guy at the front desk.  He told Ben about the changes to each of the holes and gave us a map to take with us.  Ben has done the course before but it's been a while.  We got back in the Explorer and made our way a quarter of a mile down the road and to a very primitive pull out, roughly three cars could fit comfortably in the designated area.  We changed our shoes, socks and pants, grabbed our discs and off we went...to hole one.

Holes one thru five were down a dirt road shaded by trees.  We managed to get our discs in the pin under five throws are less.  Six and Seven were in an open meadow area and it took us a while to figure out the map and which way we were suppose to throw it.  Once we figured it out we were on our way to the lower section of the course.  There, we had two choices...8A and 8B.  I voted for 8B because it would involve "Sasquatch Stairs" and walking over a make-shift bridge.  I threw my disc and it almost was a hole in one.

I'm just glad I didn't throw it in the water.  If there is water nearby, my disc always manages to find its way inside the body of water.  Luckily, the past few times I've avoided the depths of the deep. 

We got lost at hole nine and ten but ended up doing a few extra holes and didn't seem to mind because we were having fun.  We found a booklet and a baggie underneath one of the benches so we dated it, signed it and wrote a fun sentence or two.  We went back up the hill and finished out the course the way we came in.  We got to hole 18 and commemorated our outing with a few fun pictures.

We walked back to the "parking lot" and made ourselves more comfortable.  Ben changed his shoes and socks.  I was pretty happy with what I was wearing so I stuck with it.  The first cache was called Warm Up Stop (GCM8VB) Warm Up Stop and it's been around since 12/12/2004.  It was at a little shop called Wapiti Woolies and it was known for its winter hats.

http://wapitiwoolies.com/

It took us a few minutes to locate the cache because the coords were very bouncy.  Then we saw the fence and the old ski lift someone had turned into a porch swing.  We sat on the ski lift as we dug through the cache.

We went inside the shop before we left the town of Greenwater.

The second cache along the way home was my 52nd state park cache and Ben's first one.  I've always wanted to come get the Federation Forest (GC4B04P) cache but had never gotten out here to grab it.  I had grandma's passport (I finished my 50 state parks July 3rd and turned mine in) so I continued using hers with parks I have not been to yet.  We parked near the trail head and walked the .12 of a mile to the cache.  We saw where the GPS and the hint was steering us towards.  There were giant bearded trees everywhere.  We pulled the cache out from its hiding spot and I had Ben take it all in.  We signed the cache, stamped our passports and I had to have the traditional photo with the cache.

View from the Bridge (GC1W0M7) was at a large pull off with a great view of the White River.  I got my tripod and camera out because I wanted both of us in the picture with the river.  First we found the cache, which was on an old part of the road underneath a piece of median tucked away with a rock on top of it.  I let Ben find it.

We threw rocks in the river mostly because we could not help ourselves.  :)

A little further up the road was a cache called What's That??  (GC1W0KF) which refers to the large white dome in the distance.  Ben told me it's a weather station and some believe that's where they aliens go after they fly around Mount Rainier.  I saw the cache underneath the stump.  It's been a while since I've seen a PVC pipe cache.

A few more miles down Hwy 410 we stopped again and this time we could not find the cache.  My first DNF in a little while.  We made sure in our logs to let the owner know it hasn't been found since August 2013 and to come check it.  We saw two caches up the road, Denizens of the Forest (GC371Q1) and Lions and Tigers and Carnivorous Lizards, Oh My! (GC2C4Z5) were both down a forest road.  We parked at the gate and walked to both of them.  The first one was missing so we decided to make a replacement log and baggie and leave it.  We found out later after we logged it the owner decided to archive it.  We were the LTF (last to find) it.  We continued walking the quarter of a mile to the other one.  That one led us astray.  It was 25 feet off of the coords and it did have a plastic carnivorous lizard inside.  We walked back to the Explorer.

We grabbed two more on the way home, Travel Series #1 (GCY5N8) and #2 (GCY5NP) and the 410 Travel Bug Hotel (GC2PPXK).  I had gotten #1 and the TB Hotel about a year ago with Bob and Bev but I thought Ben would enjoy these.

It was getting late, we were hungry and Ben still needed to get his haircut before we went back to his place.  We went to Sports Cuts, ate stew made by his mom and then got cleaned up, logged our finds and passed out.  It was a long adventurous day.  Until the next one!

Next Adventure: Bonney Lake Caching

Spring Forward Meet and Greet

We went to the meet and greet last year and enjoyed our time getting to know some of the southwest Washington cachers, eating pizza, and since it was in the same place, we decided to go again this year.

I asked Bev and Ben if they wanted to go.  At this point mom had expressed interest in going.  We were going to drive her car mostly for the room and it gets better gas mileage than my car does.  Plus my car might blow up on I-5.  Bob was busy at a card tournament. We decided to leave around 2:30 so we could get a few caches on the way down.  Mom decided not to go because she wanted to finish the quilt so we could start raffling it off at work this week.  We're raising money for Relay for Life.  Ben was in Rochester so we picked him up on the way.

Onward ho towards Castle Rock!  I wanted to stop at a few place along the way.  Bev had already gotten most of the caches in this area.  She didn't care if I stopped for a few of them.  We stopped for one off of the Vader/Ryderwood exit to grab a new one by bearsandme, Live Life with Geocaching (GC4NYWK).  We parked at the restaurant nearby and ran across the road to the trees.  Ben found the cache.

We set our sights on Barnes Dr, a location I've done in the past with Bob and Bev.  I got off at Barnes Dr. and found the closest one to us.   It was a truck stop gas station and the cache was called Gee Cee's (GC48KX4).  I walked around the wrong way to locate it.  Bev wondered from the car where the heck I was going.  I found it quickly as several muggles watched us from their cars.  I'm sure they could care less what we were doing and then they drove away.  We got in the car and moved onto the next one.

At little further down Barnes Dr., we stopped at Moving to the Country Farm (GC41EZJ), which was off the main road and down an old logging road.  Luckily, it wasn't that far of a walk to the cache.  However, since it was what I call a "hillbilly area," (places in Washington and Oregon that people throw trash, dead animals and other debris off into the forest or the side of the road, to avoid disposing it themselves).  We found several freezer bags of fruit, some dead deer carcasses and feet and random trash.  It sickens me.  We found the cache quickly and got the heck outta there.

I looked on map screen of the GPS and got really excited at the name of the next cache.  Give Me an Oink (GC41MJW), we so had to stop.  I knew a pig would be involved since it was again a bearsandme cache, she usually has some pretty epic animal caches.  We parked at the nearest convenient spot on the side of the road and walked about 300 feet to the cache site.  Ben walked past it as I caught a glimpse of the container sticking out from a log on top of it.  We rolled the log off of it and grabbed the container.  I was so excited to see what was inside I couldn't wait.  There was a pig inside and it made oinking noises!  I had Ben take my picture and take a video.

From there, we grabbed Is It Christmas Yet (GC415V6) and Grab a Tent It's Picnic Time (GC47HRQ) two caches part of the I-5 Series.  We found both of them quickly and enjoyed what bearsandme attached to both of them, one a Cardinal and the other a wooden watermelon piece.

And now the best one in Castle Rock, Aloha TB Hotel (GC1G3TR) by Cascadesclimber and Geomimi55.  I found this back in late 2012 when it was just a lock n lock container sitting on the ground while they fixed the actual cache.  It was taken down because the sign it was attached to the back of was destroyed.  I had to come back and see it in all its glory.  It was pretty cool.  Bev had seen the old hotel, I saw the lock n lock container and Ben got to see the new one for the first time.

It was about 5:00 so we decided to head on across the freeway to the other side where Papa Pete's Pizza was and the spring forward event (GC4XNHA).  We found a great parking spot and wandered in.  Cascadesclimber and Geomimi55 greeted us with joy.  We signed in, got a name tag, which was also our raffle number, found a place to sit down and decided which pizza we wanted.  Bev went up and ordered a family size pepperoni and  couple of salads.  We talked to a few people, took a picture with a very large TB and just enjoyed our time.

For the meet and greet game, they picked a few things off of profiles of cachers they knew would attend the event.  You had to go around and get the right answer.  Once you had the right answers of the fifteen questions, they provided coordinates of a new puzzle cache called Know Your Caching Friends (GC4ZA5J), that would be published during the event.  I was actually one of the cachers featured on one of the questions.  Ben and I figured out the coords and went to see if they were right.  Ben got his first FTF and got to keep the FTF prize which was a coin.

 

We went back up to the event and took some pictures of the TB's on the vehicles.  We went in and sat down and had fun watching people win raffle items.  Bev won one of the raffle items.  We talked to Frisbee'r, Rose Red and Jen from the Jackson Clan.  We boxed up our extra pizza and took it home to share with Bob and my mom.  We left Castle Rock around 7ish and dropped off Ben at his station in Rochester and I took Bev home soon after that.  I got home and logged my caches.  Until the next adventure!

Next Adventure:  Disc Golf, Geocaching and Highway 410

St. Helens Geocoin Challenge

I saw this event on the Puget Sound Facebook page.  I immediately called Bev to see if they were interested in doing it.  She said she wasn't sure because Bob had to go to the doctor for a bladder infection and he could hardly walk.  She said to get back to them in a few days once the antibiotics have got through his system.  Ben couldn't come with us this time because he had to work.  I was pretty bummed out but there are more events and coin events in the future.

About Thursday is when we started planning on going.  Bob was feeling better and Bev and I talked about what kind of queries we needed to cover the locations we would be at.  We found one for Rainier, Oregon and one for St. Helens, Oregon.  I had to remember that Bob and Bev had been here several times and it would be hard to navigate having such different maps.

I got a phone call Friday night stating when we were going to leave around 7:30 a.m. and Kenny was going to go with us.  I said cool see ya then.  I did my queries, set out my clothes, made sure all my batteries were charged and went to bed.

My alarm went off around 6:50 and I started getting ready to go.  I grabbed some food just in case we don't get to stop or somehow forget to stop because we're so engrossed in caching (which does happen when you're with Bob).  They rolled into the driveway around 7:20 and I grabbed my stuff and hopped in.  We talked about several things while we headed to Chehalis to eat breakfast at the 13th Street Denny's.

We got there and Kenny decided to drive over to his in laws house to get rid of some Girl Scout cookies they had ordered.  In the meantime, Bob, Bev and I sat at the booth and ordered some food while we waited for him.  They shared two pancakes, a slice of bacon and part of an egg with me because they could not finish their meal.  Kenny arrived just in time for food.

We had full bellies and now on our way to St. Helens with Kenny leading the way.  We stopped at our traditional rest stop to use the bathroom.  Now full speed ahead to exit 32 off of I-5 and across the Lewis & Clark bridge to Highway 30.  It was hard to pinpoint a cache between the four of us because we all had something different when we arrived in Rainier.

The first one we went to was one I already had gotten back in June 2011.  Apparently, when Bob and Bev were there it was missing.  I said, I have this one already, I remember it being in the tree.  When we let Bob out, a Rainier cop found our activity very suspicious so he got closer.  I stayed pretty close to the car just in case we had to leave quickly.  Bob and Kenny put the cache back, we all got in the car, found the next closest one and the cop followed us for a couple of streets.  He turned down Main street and we were on our way to Knights of Pythias Cemetery (GC31YHY).  At first we did not find it but after reading some of the logs, I found it on the ground like someone had threw it there.  We had to be careful not to step on the flowers.

We continued down Neer City Road and picked up four others including My Daddy Rocks (GC47K7Z), a bearsandme cache.  Bob and Bev had gotten this one already but stopped so Kenny and I could grab it.  We found it easily.

We found a Seattle Seahawks cache and among other caches that were a part of the NFL Series put out by TeamJago.  Kenny was very excited Bob stopped to grab this one near the Goble Tavern.  In the cache description it states that Willie Nelson's mom worked there as a bartender in the 1950's.

The next one was a DNF Bob and Bev had gotten back in May.  They wanted to turn that frown upside down.  Between the four GPS's we managed to find a common area to look through.  It was a side road with lots of boulders to dig through.  Basically, the cache could be anywhere.  After about 5-10 minutes of looking under, over and in between rocks according to the clue, Bev managed to hook the cache with a stick.  It was hidden pretty well underneath all of the leaves near the tree.  She was so excited to finally get rid of that DNF. 

The next five were either DNF's Bob and Bev found this time or ones they already found and they let me and Kenny find them.  Some were off the side of the road but most of them were guardrails.  Bob wanted to get a few at the trestle between Columbia City and St. Helens.  Last time they were here Bob started off on the trail underneath the train tracks and ran into a homeless camp.  He turned right around and waited for another day.  We parked near the tunnel and made our way in.

We found the trail to the first one, Under the Trestle and Through the Woods (GC2JC0T).  It was a cooler thermos with a handle on it.  It was shoved inside an old tree with a lot of garbage surrounding it.

We went further down the trail to Sandy Beach Cache (GC1GZQ) and made our way down the hill and to the sandy shores along the vast Columbia River.  We didn't know where Kenny went but managed to meet up with him at the cache site.  We located the container and all kinda sighed at where it was.  It was amongst scotch broom and sticker bushes.  I zipped up my jacket and carefully stepped around the owies.  I ended up getting a few scratches as I swam through the bushes.  I threw the container out and got out of there as fast as I could.  We signed the log and threw it back.

We got to St. Helens and grabbed some of the outlier ones Bob and Bev didn't get along with some that they let me and Kenny get.  We even met up with a lady sitting in her car named Snosrfpolo, from Beaverton in town for the coin challenge.  We chatted with her for a bit.  We moved on and managed to meet up with Cascadesclimber and Geomimi55 at a cache that we found together.  We found a few more before we made our way to downtown St. Helens.  We wanted to be there a half hour before hand.

When we got to the event, there were tons of people standing around and wandering around the small downtown area waiting for the event to start.  Kenny was hungry so we went into a bakery for a cookie since they didn't have any doughnuts.  Outside down a few feet were some cachers signing the logbook to Happiness Is... (GC4DCQ2).  Kenny and I signed our names as well.  We also found Halloweentown (GC24BYT) while we waited.  Then we saw the Jackson's and they said the event was not going to happen until 1:30 sharp.  We wandered around the antiques store and used the bathroom until then.

1:30 came and they handed out our "passports" for the coin event.  It was basically a piece of paper where we had to find five of the SHCC caches and five waypoints.  Both we had to find a specific word on the container or the waypoint, write them down and turn it in when we got back to the event site to get our coin.

Between the four of us and four GPS's we managed to get it done in a timely manner.  We started with the waypoints (which were mostly away from town) and worked our way back to town grabbing the caches.  In between we found six caches, one of them including The Ol' Swimmin' Hole (GC2XWDY), which was a great photo opportunity.

It was hidden down on the bank, shoved underneath a tree root.  Inside was a red condom, which I gave to Bob for giggles, plus that kind of swag should not be inside caches.  On the way back towards town, we found a few more along with cachers from Oregon.

While finding the five SHCC caches, one stood out to me more than the others, mostly because there was a horse statue made out of horse shoes.  It was awesome!

We got all the waypoints and caches and even managed to to grab two regular caches on the way back to the event.  We found a place to park and wandered up the stairs to this tiny room and over 60 people crammed into it.  They were already doing the raffle.  No one told us we had to put our names on them and turn them in.  We signed our names quickly and Kenny dropped them off in the container.  Both Bob and I won some Cajun seasonings and fish fry batter.  While I was up there, I turned my paper in and got my coin.  Bob, Bev and Kenny followed.  I honestly thought it wasn't put together all that well but that was my opinion.  I talked to the Gators for a bit and Brad and his buddies who came all the way from Pullman for several geocoin tour coins.  Insane Train!!

We picked up three more before leaving St. Helen's.  One was called Trojan Trail (GC1JPRV), and it hasn't been found in almost a year.  Bob, Kenny and I dug around a long time before I grabbed a stick and dug all around the leaves and rocks until I moved this one rock that popped out this sad excuse for a cache.

Once out of town, we all decided to go look for A Little Closer to Home (GC286H4) again, the first time on the way there we could not find it.  We thought about it for most of the day and went back and found it right away with the idea we had.  It was missing a logbook because of the nature of the hide.  It was our difficulty five cache of the trip.  Bob and Bev let me and Kenny grab one more nearby before we left Oregon for good, Snapshot (GC2BZ5A).

We drove north up Highway 30 and over the Lewis & Clark bridge to Longview.  Bev wanted Sizzler for dinner.  We all ordered our food, I got riblets and fries and it was delicious.  We used the restroom, saw Jackson Clan and headed out all before 7:00.  We got home around 9ish.

Next Adventure:  Spring Forward Meet and Greet in Castle Rock, Wash.