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 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
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