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.