TriCities Geocoin Challenge Day 3

It was windy last night but not as bad as the night before.  I woke up to an owl hooting off in the distance.  I tried to ignore it but it just wouldn't stop! This was about five that morning.  I wanted to sleep in a bit more before we got up and started making breakfast and putting our tent away.  I eventually couldn't sleep anymore so we got up, changed and started in on our morning.

I took down the tent, packed up the sleeping bags, pads, pillows and placed it neatly in the trunk and the back seat of the car while Ben prepared the grill for our sausage and eggs.

Brenda and Ray came over and shared their fruit with us and we shared our sausage and eggs with them.  We also had cereal with our food.  It was delicious.

We had everything packed up, dishes washed and grill cleaned.  We made sure we had all the stuff we would need for the day with us...including our sandwiches, GPS's, phones etc.  We were going to ride with Brenda, Ray and Zuri while Bob and Bev followed us in their truck.

We walked over to the festivities that started around 9.  (GC4PFN6)

We went and saw Lisa's tent, Cache Advance, and bought three trackables.  One went on Ben's car and the other two went on our cougar and husky action figures.  We talked to a few people, Freda (bearsandme), and Hoovers69.  We got listened in on the rules for the coin challenge.  This year it was a little different.  You only had to get 8 of the caches, one of those include a multi cache in each city.  If you got all 10 in each city, you were put into a drawing to win a prize.  My group was going to do all 10 in each city.

After the rules, questions and answers, we all got in a huge group for a picture before the caches published and everyone ran out of there like their pants were on fire.

After the picture, the caches published.  We received our passport and map from the volunteers.  We tried downloading the caches from Ray's hotspot but the internet was too weak.  We got into our cars and went towards Pasco just so we were there where internet would work a whole lot better.  We got all the caches loaded onto the three GPS's and the Nuvi and started our journey through Pasco.  To me, it made sense to go to the furthest city across the river and work our way back through Kennewick and then Richland.

This year was the first time they gave us maps of the three cities and approximately where each caches were located by the three prefixes (P, K, or R).  It was so convenient because we would know which one to go to without backtracking or making a huge navigational error.  Between the six of us; we were pretty organized.

In Pasco, we started off with P01 and ended with P10.  They were basically in order as you drove through the town.  The theme for this year involved parks.  We went to a lot of parks.  Some took you down by the Columbia River and others to neighborhood parks.  One of them in particular I've been to.  It's called the TRAC center and I played in the 2002 state fastpitch tournament there.  It was fun being there again.  There were two caches here (GC4VYR8) and (GC4VYRG).  One was a three step multi cache and there was a horse show and a softball tournament going on.

When we finished Pasco, we drove over the bridge to the closest Kennewick cache.  When we downloaded the caches, one of the caches hadn't published at the time so we drove by it going to another cache along Columbia Park.  We got that one and then found a place to pull over and eat lunch.  We found a nice picnic table spot that wasn't being used.  We made our sandwiches, ate chips and hung out for a bit while the Canadian Geese watched us from the river.

Again, this year's coin challenge had to do with parks.  Kennewick had a ton of parks.  We visited just about every tiny and large sized parks.  One of them, which was a thermometer, (GC4ZT6B).  When we found that one we really thought it would get muggled by the neighborhood kids.  Surprisingly about a month later it is still there and has not had to be fixed or moved.

We visited Kennewick's Park and Rec building again to grab (GC4ZT7C), Carousel of Dreams.  There, we used the restroom since it was convenient and very clean.  This is also the complex where the 9/11 memorial is.   We had two more caches in Kennwick left including the multi, which was a simple two step cache and one more traditional.  We finished Kennwick about 3:15 grabbing the last one at a Little League Baseball field.

And now onto our last city, Richland.  Our goal was to be done around 5.

The first Richland cache brought us to a building called The Reach (GC526TA), an interpretive center based on the cultural history of Hanford, Columbia River and The Ice Age Floods.  We found the cache pretty quickly.

The Richland caches were more focused on activities instead of the local parks.  We went to a dog park (GC4Z1HD), Badger Mountain (GC4Z1HP), an archery range (GC4Z1H4), volleyball courts (GC4Z1G8), a boat launch (GC4Z1G2) and a baseball field (GC4Z1GY).  Every single cache we found today there was either a group hovered around it or someone showing up at it.  Sometimes we had to wait around and have people sign it because we grabbed it first so we could put it back.

We grabbed our last cache around 5:15 and went back to the campground to claim our coins.  I made it to the table and they checked my answers.  They handed me my 2014 Tri-Cities geocoins.  I smiled mostly because I had a great time caching with friends and now was somewhat sad because Ben and I had to drive home that night so we could be at work the next day.  I was kind of worried about how well my car would do on the way home after our incident on the way here a few days ago.

We made sure we had everything and I had Bob and Bev take the bikes with them when they drove home the next day just to take some weight off my poor car.  I thanked them for doing that.  We got in the car and headed out.  I took the less traveled road Hwy 240.  It was wide open and straight with little to no hills to climb.  That led us to Hwy 24 and then over to Yakima.  We decided to stop at Miner's for dinner and to let the car cool down before we go over White Pass.

I haven't been to Miner's in a while and neither had Ben.  We ordered our burgers and fries and found a place to sit down.

We ate our food and then found one more cache nearby before going home.  I've driven past this cache a few times wanting to stop but never did because of time or I was with someone and I didn't want to inconvenience them.  We stopped at the covered Union Gap wagon and looked for Muggle Central (GC1WBM3).  We found it after looking in the wrong places.  Haha.

We tried our hardest to get over the pass before it got dark.  It didn't happen.  Ben thought it would be a good idea to stop at the top of the pass to check the fluids and to give the car a small break.  My car bubbled over and we had to add more anti freeze to the reservoir.  We were up there for about a half hour and it was cold. 

We finally got to the point where we could coast all the way down to Packwood.  When we got to Packwood, they must have known we were coming because they celebrated us surviving my car not overheating with a colorful firework display.

From Morton all the way through Mountain Hwy 7 near the turn off to McKenna, I kept a close eye on the road to see if I happened to see my blanket I lost.  I didn't find it.  However, my car did not overheat the entire drive from Richland so that was a win.

We rolled in around midnight and I was exhausted.  I brought in the important stuff from my car and helped Ben put his stuff in his car.

It was a fun adventure but this time was a bit more than we expected.  I can't wait until I am not poor, do not work weekends and have a decent car to travel around in.

Next Adventure:  Long Beach Day Trip and A Water Rescue

TriCities Geocoin Challenge Day 2

We woke up several times throughout the night to hurricane force winds and tarp noises.  I got up once to use the bathroom.  When morning arrived, we heard the sound of magpies squawking at each other and Ben saw bird feet on top of our tent.  A magpie was standing on the top of our tent yelling.  He got up and punched the top of the tent.  Then we went back to bed for a half hour or so more.

We slept until about 6:30-6:45 and woke up to the sound of an owl hooting.  Ugh.  Okay, we'll get up.  It was starting to get warm in the tent anyway.  We got dressed and grab everything we would need.  Before we left, our neighbor with the RV came out and we visited for a while.  They were from Arizona.  We ate our cereal, bananas and chewy bars while we drove to Kennewick.  We accidentally drove past the hotel and had to turn around.  We parked in the parking lot, grabbed the stuff we would need and hopped into the truck.

We worked on Kennewick and Pasco this morning.  We found some of the similar hides as we did the day before.  Bird houses, fake green circular water covers, hides inside bushes, etc.  We made it down towards the Columbia River to Columbia Park.  There was a two-fer, one of the coin challenge caches (GC475D9) and a virtual called U-98 (GC6E69), both centered around the hydro place races held in the Tri-Cities every year.

We grabbed a few more Kennewick caches.  They took us mostly to parks.  One took us to Kaywaydin Park to (GC4A6QP), which sits up against one of the oldest canals in the Tri-Cities, Columbia Canal.  This park where the museum was, it featured the famous Kennewick Man (GC1MPT5).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man

K02-Tri-Cities 2013 Geocoin Challenge (GC475DE) brought us to Clover Island.  In 1946, the Port of Kennewick purchased Clover Island, a low stretch of land in the middle of the Columbia between Kennewick and Pasco. The island soon had a barge-building site run by Columbia Marine Shipyards. In 1953, Clover Island was expanded to 12 acres and was connected to the mainland by a 700-foot-long causeway. Development of the island continued with the Metz Marina and boat dock, a clubhouse for the Clover Island Yacht Club, and a $350,000 U.S. Coast Guard Station, staffed by 13 servicemen. In 2010, the Port of Kennewick initiated a revitalization of Clover Island including an upgrade of the Clover Island Marina and the construction of a new retail-office building, which included the Ice Harbor Brewing Company restaurant and craft brewer. As a part of the revitalization, the Port also dedicated a new Gateway to the island and a working lighthouse at Lighthouse Plaza on the west end of the island.

We found three caches before we left the island.  The other two were easy finds.

We left Clover Island and headed up the hill to grab two more of the Kennewick caches.  Once we found those with the accompanying codes, we typed the address to the parks and rec department into the Nuvi and we were on our way to earn the second piece to our coin.  The address and coords on the paper were wrong.  They took us further up the hill to a fire department.  We asked the gal inside and she found the correct address.  It was down by the school close to where we found one of the caches.  I wonder why we had the wrong address?  We went down the hill to where we just came from.  I guess the parks and rec department moved into their new building.  We grabbed our second piece to our new coin around 10:30 that morning and then drove over the bridge into Pasco.

We ran into Shelrik and his wife a couple times during the day.

We drove to the closest one to us when we entered Pasco, (GC45KY3) P06-2013 Geocoin Challenge, took us to the other side of the river and we found one of the many the bird houses.  We wanted to get done with this as quickly as we could so we started seeing how far away each of them were from our current location.  We got into a rhythm and soon it was becoming more and more easy.  A few of them were missing so we had to write the code on our passport from the cache page.

P03-2013 Geocoin Challenge (GC45Z9X) brought us to the cemetery.  It seems like I've been to every cemetery between Washington and Oregon since I've been caching.  Afterwards, we found a cache called RIP #3 (GC4R8P8).  It was hard to find it inside the thorny tree because we were looking for it in the wrong tree at first.

We ate lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while we found the three last caches in the Pasco series.  a then drove to the parks and rec division, wandered through their halls and finally found the desk to get our third piece to our coin .  We did it!  We finished just before one.  We all went back to the hotel, threw our stuff in the car and decided to go our separate ways. Ben and I went across the street to rummage through the Value Village.  We found some good stuff.

I wanted to take him to the 9-11 memorial up the highway before we left town.  We snaked our way thorough Kennewick and got onto the 395.  We got out of the car and it was pretty darn windy.  I had Ben find the cache there, we took pictures and then tried to throw the disc around.

We thought we should head back the campsite before the meet and greet.  We pulled onto the 240 to Horn Rapids and had to follow a car with a bike on top of its roof going under the speed limit.  This road was very busy.  I had my GPS set to one coming up called #24 Turnout T's P&G (GC195J6) and about half way there my thermostat decides to climb.  We pulled over onto the turn out as it was smoking.  Luckily, we got to the cache so we had something to do while we waited for it to cool down.  Stupid car.  I am getting really tired of it overheating.

We got it cooled down and added more antifreeze to the reservoir.  We left a huge mess in the middle of the turn out.  We grabbed Road Closed (GC14MW2) and made it back to the campsite before anything else exciting happened.  When we got there, we saw more people had arrived that day to set up their camp whether it was tent or RV.   We saw Ray and Brenda had showed up while we were gone.  I mentioned that we wanted to do the rest of the Horn Rapids series but didn't really want to take my car after our little episode.

They agreed and we went and did #14 to #00 in no time.  Brenda looked at the scrapbook I made from our California trip back in April.  We finished in a little over an hour and drove back to the camp to grab a few things before driving into town.  We ate at Bruchi's for dinner and then made our way to the meet and greet.

http://www.bruchis.com/

We were about a half hour early to the event.  We signed in and started mingling with the others while we played geocaching bingo.  We did a lot of visiting, had a raffle (I was off by one number) and left to go back to the campsite.  

First, we got ice for our cooler than had eggs, drinks and sausage inside.  We had planned on using it for tomorrow's breakfast.

We got back to the campgrounds and re-organized our stuff and then joined Brenda and Ray at their campsite to hang out and talk before bed time.

Next Adventure:  TriCities Geocoin Challenge Day 3

TriCities Geocoin Challenge Day 1

We woke up around 9:20 with the intention of getting ready and heading towards Richland before noon.  That didn't happen.  We ended up watching the world cup game, the US against the Germans.  We lost 1-0 but because of another game, we get to move on even though we lost.  Willmarth went to a dentist appointment and wanted to go to breakfast before we left.  We hung out with Shannon and the dogs for a bit and then started packing the car to get ready to go.  He got done with his appointment, picked up Shannon and we went down the hill and ate breakfast at the Powerhouse Grill.  Willmarth and I had the blueberry pancakes with a side of bacon, Ben had the skillet with pancakes and Shannon had a salad.  Of course we made fun of her.

http://www.powerhousegrillyakima.com/

We got on the road around 1:00 and we knew Bob and Bev were patiently waiting for us.  As we drove along I-82, my temperature gauge started rising.  Luckily one of the Zillah exits were coming up because we had to pull over, my car was smoking.  We got off the freeway and found a boat area next to the river to park in.  We lucked out and had more water with us plus Willmarth bought us some antifreeze when he was at Albertson's this morning.  We dumped all the antifreeze we could inside the reservoir.  About a half hour later we were back on the freeway heading to where Bob and Bev were.  The car did not overheat during this leg of the trip.  We got to Richland without any problems.

We met Bob and Bev at the first cache, R07-Tri-Cities 2013 Geocoin Challenge (GC4AGAZ).  It was inside the Chamna Natural Preserve.  We found it pretty quickly.

We continued to find the next closest one to where we were and got all of the Richland ones.  There were three that were missing or gone.  The code was given to us on the cache page.  We got this third done because this is the only town we had time for.  Most of them were inside parks, lots of bird houses and green water meter circle holes.

After we finished with the seven caches, we had to go to the Richland Parks & Rec department to pick up our first third of our coin.  We were lucky it was open until 10 p.m. that day.  We totally forgot to make two copies, one for me and one for Ben.  I let Ben have the coin since I had one from 2012. 

Since it was getting late and Bob and Bev still had to check-in to their hotel, we decided to part ways until tomorrow morning.  Ben and I found a Fred Meyer nearby for gas and ice.  I got a three cent discount with my card while Ben bought ice for our cooler.  We grabbed two caches in the area, Big Foot (GC1806F) and Goodwill Hunting (GC4XDDM).

We needed to eat dinner before we went to the campsite.  Along the way we saw this place called the Atomic Ale Brew Pub and Eatery.

http://www.atomicalebrewpub.com/

I had the bratwurst sandwich, chips and a side salad and Ben had the pasta special, salad and garlic bread.  I felt like a Sierra Mist while he had Ionizing Irish Red Ale (Richland).  The food was tasty and not badly priced.  We took some of the coasters before we left.

We drove to Horn Rapids County Park and wanted to get our tent set up.  After a minor mistake of missing the driveway, two ladies approached us...you need to see the ranger about letting you guys in.  The boyscouts were here the past few days and they told us to close the gate when we were done.  We drove up to the ranger's house and knocked on the door, no answer.  We got back in the car and drove to the gate.  Ben opened it, we drove in and he kinda closed it behind him.  We found RV site #22 and parked the car.  We set up the tent, our beds and chairs. 

We still had daylight so I thought we should do part of the Horn Rapids Trail Series (GC4BAZ6) until it got too dark to see.  I didn't realize you could drive the entire series.  We brought bikes to do it but we really couldn't do bikes because one of the bikes we brought had a permanent flat tire...lame.  We took them off the car and chained them up to our campsite.  We got through about 15 of the series plus a few non series caches sprinkled along the way.

Our favorite one along this section of trail was called GeoStation Research Post (GC2X098).  It required you to open a lock (the code was on the bottom of the box) and a container was inside.  It was great to find a regular sized one amongst all the micros we've been finding.

We stopped at Horn Rapids #15, found a turn around and drove back to the campsite.  Along the way we forgot #30, #31 and an extra one called Camporee (GC2GV5T)...we had to find that one by flashlight.

We got all settled in, did our bathroom things and watched half of Hot Tub Time Machine before calling it quits.  We had to get up to meet Bob and Bev by 8:00 a.m. at their hotel in Kennewick to finish the 2013 coin challenge from last year.

All together we found 29 for the day.

Next Adventure:  TriCities Geocoin Challenge Day 2

My First Day as a Manager and Traveling to Yakima for the TriCities Coin Challenge

Today I got to be the housekeeping manager at the hotel becasue it was Kathy's day off and I needed certain days off to go to an event I've been wanting to do since last year.  I don't normally work on Wednesdays but I had to this week.

We got done around 3:30 and I got gas, went home and started getting everything else packed  up in the car.  Ben got there around 5ish and packed his things.  We left before 5:30.  We drove through McKenna and onto the 702 and to Hwy 7 towards Morton.  We had to pull over just before we got to Morton because the bikes on the back of the car were loose for some reason.  I found out they got so loose my blanket I use to keep the bike rack from scraping the car disappeared.  I was kinda sad.  As soon as I got out of the car it started raining.  Figures.

We got it all situated and got onto Hwy 12.  I was hoping to not have any problems along the way but it is my car and it's old.  I had a gut feeling something would go wrong with it.  When we got up the steep grade on the west side of White Pass and finally got to the summit my car started smoking.  Turns out it guzzled all the antifreeze and the temperature gauge was on hot.  I've never had my car go through that much antifreeze.  We just filled it up not too long ago.

We popped the hood and dumped some of the water we had on the cap so we could open it to see inside.  We decided to save the other two just in case we needed to dump them in for a quick fix.  We needed to find a container to fill the gulley next to the road up with water to dump onto the cap.  Ben walked towards the gas station to see if it was open.  Sadly it wasn't.  I continued to dump water on it to cool it down.  We finally got it cool enough to open and look inside.  It did indeed guzzle all of it.  We dumped two gallons of water into the reservoir and looked for the closest open store along the rest of Hwy 12 towards Naches.  Surprisingly, the entire half hour we were there, no one stopped to ask if we were okay.  Plus a thunderstorm was coming, you could hear the thunder in the distance.

We drove past several stores along the way but none of them were open.  We finally get to Rimrock Grocery and they were open.  Ben went inside and bought some antifreeze and talked to the people who lived and owned the store.  They said we could use the hose if we needed more water.  Two people came out to ask if we were okay.  We added the antifreeze and the water, filled up our three gallons of water and made our way towards Yakima.

We stopped at the Fred Meyer for some pizza and beer and found out the freaking main road to Willmarth's house was closed.  We had to find another way around.  We finally got to his house, made the pizza and watched some TV.  Willmarth and Shannon got there around 12:30 from the Mariner game in Seattle.  We stayed up until 2:30 chatting about random things

Next Adventure:  TriCities Geocoin Challenge Day 1

Salty's and Redondo Beach

It was Ben's sister Amy's 26th birthday on Monday and Trish decided to have it the day before because it was a weekend and it would be easier to get everyone together.  We were up in Bonney Lake a few days before and she mentioned it.  After work on Sunday I met Ben in Hawks Prairie to drive up together.  I left my car in the Walmart parking lot and off we went.  I expected the entire ride up there would be fine since it was Sunday...I was wrong.  We got caught up in Tacoma right after the mall.  Lame.

Ben got off and we meandered our way through Federal Way on back roads.  We had some time to kill so we stopped at a park near Steel Lake.  We got the soccer ball out and played for a little bit.  We tried to find a cache in the area but found out after we started looking for it that it was gone.  We used the bathroom and then made our way down to Redondo Beach...a place I haven't been since 2008 with Kaitlin.  Trish had made reservations at Salty's, a place I've always heard about but never had.

We found a parking spot and walked across the street to the restaurant.  There, we waited for Trish, Amy and their aunt.

Everyone arrived and because we had reservations we were taken right to our seats.  Trish was disappointed because we wanted to sit outside on the deck instead we had a panorama view of the beach from inside.  The food was pretty spendy and even though Trish said to have whatever don't worry about the price I still ordered the cheapest thing on the menu and had a strawberry lemonade to go with it.

Our food came along with the bread we were suppose to get before our food and we quietly ignored that.  We ate our food, had Amy open presents (I got her a Disney puzzle and a card, Trish got her tickets to a country concert at the Puyallup Fair in Sept.), and we had free cake.

We visited, ate cake and filled out the "how was our service" card.  Overall I really wasn't impressed but it was fun sharing the evening with everyone.  We went outside and looked for Kick Stand (GC4TGZJ).  It was a nano near a little shack on the dock that sells coffee.  We got a quick picture of his family before they all left.

We said our goodbyes and Ben and I set off to work on the multi along the boardwalk, Redondo: Under the Boardwalk (GC1FTRY).

We got all the points, answers and coords to the final.  Unfortunately after walking a half a mile we could not retrieve the cache because the tide was in.  We would have to come back another day when the tide is out.  We walked back, got in the Explorer and headed back to Lacey where he dropped me off at my car.  We said goodbye and I went home to get some sleep.  Until the next adventure!

Next Adventure:  My First Day as a Manager and Traveling to Yakima for the TriCities Coin Challenge