I asked her where she wanted to go and she said in the Olympia area. First we stopped by HopJack's for some lunch. I got a burger and she got the street tacos. While we ate, we got caught up on all the changes that were happening in our lives and the future endeavors. I told her after we were done eating I would take her to a cache or two. She was up for the challenge.
I took her to Let's Start Out with an Easy One...Sort of (GC5R6NN) just down the Yelm Highway towards Tumwater. I put the coords into the GPS and off we went. We found a parking spot and started looking. My GPS was taking me everywhere but to the cache. Maybe some new batteries? We eventually got to the right tree and I asked Lacey where she thought it was. She pointed to the stick and I thought to myself...this seems too easy. It was. It was a red herring cache. Dang it! We were fooled! We looked around some more and I saw a bison tube hanging in the tree. Here's the real cache.
Then she mentioned that she wanted to see the Deschutes River. I told her there was a park up ahead and it's southern boundary was the river. She got excited. First we stopped by a new park that used to be someones property that we both knew. It used to be a fastpitch field that we spent a lot of time at practicing for the Dynamite. It was weird to see what it had become...a boring park. We stayed for a few minutes and then headed out to Pioneer Park to wander around for a while.
We parked somewhat in the shade and made our short walk to the bank of the Deschutes River. There were some people enjoying the cool water with their dog. It was still too cold to go swimming even though it was a really nice warm day.
We walked around the various trails and I remembered that there was a cache here that I didn't have yet so we meandered over to it. We used the restrooms and saw some cons who were doing work somewhere else, they had to be escorted to the bathroom and then back to the vans. We waited until they were gone.
We followed the GPS over behind the baseball fields and to the swampy area. We looked for Pioneer Park: 47th Parallel (GC4CQ05) and could not find it. It was a medium-sized cache container and there was no trace of it. We walked back to the Escape and made our way towards Deschutes Falls in downtown Tumwater. She said she hasn't been there in a very long time.
We parked in the lot near some shade and started our walk near the totem pole. We took many pictures along the loop.
We walked down to the platform to get a better view of the falls and got sprayed.
We explored more of the area and found a hidden alcove on the other side of the falls. It was serene.
We completed the loop, took a bunch of photos and walked back to the Escape, it was time to move onto our next spot, downtown Olympia.
We took the back way down Deschutes Parkway and tried finding a place to park near the boardwalk and the park along Capitol Lake. We finally found one on the south side of the lake and we had to back in, luckily we were there late enough to where we didn't have to feed the meter. We got out and we walked along the shoreline.
I took her across the street to the fountains. A lot of little kids were enjoying the vertical spray on this very warm day. We talked about various things including her trip to Hawaii and her renewed acquaintance, Wayne. We walked the boardwalk and then decided it was time to head home.
I dropped her off next door and asked her before she left if she had plans for tomorrow. She said no and mentioned that we should go do something tomorrow. I had some sort of a plan in mind it just depended if she wanted to go wander around state park trails. I texted her a few hours later and asked her if she was down with heading to Lewis County and she said yes! It's on!
Next Adventure: Travels with Val: Lewis County
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