It took about a half hour for our food to arrive. I ordered chocolate milk, french toast, eggs, bacon and it came with a side of fruit and Ben ordered a scramble, which came with some English muffins and a side of fruit, he also got the chocolate milk. It sure was tasty. I haven't had a breakfast that good since we went to Hood River, Oregon for our year anniversary.
We ate our food and discussed what we wanted to do until we had to go into Wenatchee. Ben suggested that we go over to Manson to explore since he hadn't gone anywhere past the casino. I said sure! Let's do it! We got back to our room and grabbed the stuff we needed. I made a query of the Manson area and off we went.
We started off at Don's Sandy Shore (G5QYHT) and it was impossible to park so we had to go to the other lot really quickly. We were only there for the cache. And...no cache. It disappeared sometime during Memorial Day Weekend and was not checked up on or replaced since. We were disappointed. Oh well, we got a great view of the beach area looking at the lake. It was going to be another hot day.
We got onto the Manson Highway and made our way west towards the city center. We passed many wineries and really expensive houses. Welcome to Manson (GC5QRA5) was indeed at the Welcome to Manson sign. It was a fake rock hidden below the sign. It too had a great view of the lake.
We went further down to one at a winery called, Where It All Began (GC1V207) and we totally misjudged where it was and instead of it being on the corner where the lamp post was, it was actually inside the winery at an old wagon cart with wine barrels on it. The container was hidden underneath the wheel. Ben watched me from the car.
The next closest one took us to Old Mill Park and a boat launch. Wing Attach Plan R (GCEFCB) is one of the older ones 3/30/2003, that are still around. When we both saw where it was we knew it was going to be hidden under the only tree in the area. We were disappointed when we found out it was an old Gatorade bottle with some stuff shoved inside. Someone at one point stole the ammo can and another person replaced it with garbage from their car. Lame. On a positive note, we sat inside the park for a bit trying to get the wild baby ducks to trust us. We got them within a foot of us.
Is Than an Apple or a Pear (GC4EX7D) took us to a very cool art piece in the middle of downtown Manson. I was hoping the cache would be hidden amongst the art but alas it wasn't. We checked the next obvious spot and we found it. It's been a while since I found a bolt cache.
It wouldn't be geocaching without stopping by the local fire station with my firefighter. Fire and Water (GC5B6H5) was difficult to navigate to. I thought it was behind the station which in fact it was inside the rock wall to the side of the building, we drove right up to it and I had Ben find it and sign the log while I looked for another cache to go to.
We tried getting to a cache but a huge truck was in the way of the only road through so we had to go around. I put in U-Find (GC3EEC5) and it took us to a blueberry, strawberry and grape orchard. There was a old metal piece of farm equipment near the road and entrance to the place and the arrow was pointing us to it. When we looked we found two caches, the real one and a throw down. We signed the real one and left both of them just in case the cache owner wanted to dispose of it.
We were running out of time but we found a road that took us to the back side of Manson, out by Wapato and Rose Lake. We tried looking for one but gave up because the hint was really misleading and it looked like it was in the brush...we weren't prepared for brush swimming. We looked to the next one, Lake Tour Series #1 Roses Lake (GCXQWV) and it was on the way to the boat launch. We thought it might have been a elevation thing but it turns out we chose wisely. It was on the guardrail instead of down below at the boat launch. He dropped me off and drove away. I was like, what is he doing? Then he stuck his hand out the window signaling that he was going to turn the car around and I thought he was flipping me off. Haha!
We left Chelan and headed down to Wenatchee to meet up at Ohme Gardens for the rehearsal. We got there a half hour early so Ben and I explored the area. It was definitely a pretty place. It over looks the city of Wenatchee, the Columbia River and the hills. We found tiny waterfalls, small pools with fish in them and a copious array of flowers, shrubs and trees.
Everyone started to arrive and we met everyone, who belonged to who, the wedding party, the parents etc. I sat and watched them go through the walk through a few times. Sam wanted everything to go smoothly because we all know weddings do no go perfectly. From there we drove to downtown Wenatchee for the rehearsal dinner, the RiverTop Bar and Grill, was on the top floor of the Coast Wenatchee Center Hotel with a great view of the valley.
I ordered the cheapest thing off the menu, fish and chips. Ben ordered some fancy pasta and we both had a pint of ShockTop. We chatted with everyone and the servers even got into it with some laughs. It was a good time. We said good bye to everyone and tried to find out if anyone wanted to meet up later at Josh and Sam's suite. Some wanted to and some just wanted to go relax before tomorrow.
We drove back to Chelan and grabbed one more cache because we could. "Tsillan" (GCJVXR) was on the guard rail (Ben saw it from the car) near the Lake Chelan sign along US97. We went back to our hotel until we heard from Josh.
At around 11 p.m. we heard from Josh. He said to go ahead and come over. We brought our assortment of booze over to his suite. Sam was tired so she didn't last very long. She actually fell asleep in the chair while we watched Naked and Afraid. After the TV went out, Ben, Josh and I grabbed our drinks and headed out to the balcony to stare at the lake, enjoy the nice night and to talk about his last days as a bachelor.
We went back to our hotel room after one and decided to go to bed because tomorrow will be a pretty long day.
Next Adventure: Josh and Sam's Wedding
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