Around 8:30 we walked over to the event (GC5FNHE), signed the log, talked to a bunch of people including Peach and Pete, ACFunk and Bearsandme. I ended up passing out a few pathtags that morning.
We had an introduction around 9 a.m. of the four cities, the visitors center and the tourism lady representing the entire area and Jen, the gal who was in charge of the event said a few words to us. Then she asked all of us to walk over towards the teepees to take a group picture with a drone. We stood around talking for a bit until it was in place. It took a couple of shots. We received our roll up treasure maps which included the map on one side and the passport on the other.
We walked over to Jim's car where he had the computer ready to upload the caches to the GPS's. I opted not to load them onto mine just because we would have enough of our devices with the caches on them and it would save us some time. Plus, once the caches published...we had a difficult time putting them onto our devices, his computer was being lame. I put my stuff I would need into Bob and Bev's car. I let Jen ride with Brenda, Ray and Jim even though she knew me. I figured it was a better arrangement. When we finally figured out why Jim's computer was being dumb, we had lost about a half hour of our geocaching time. We all piled into our cars and headed to West Richland and Richland to the furthest away cache. We were going to work our way back to the park as Team JIGG. We as a group decided to do all 32 caches. You were only required to do 28 of them.
Last year they had printed out a map of the cities which really helped in the long run. You could plan ahead and make a route without too much back tracking. Between the two cars, walkie talkies and having a person from the TriCities, we were in pretty good shape. This year they made a few changes. There were four cities, four multis and without warning there would be at least one paper punch for the "code word". It prevented people from cheating as much. I'm sure some tried.
Because we started at the furthest cache, R04-WSU (GC5MZR1) and so did majority of the other cachers, we ran into a lot of the same people along our route. I always love visiting other WSU campus branches. I think caches have brought us here the past four times we've done these coin challenges. Even thought it was still before noon, it was a hot walk to this cache and our first of four paper punches.
We tried to get Richland done as quick as we could because of the car parade. It was rather difficult navigating around roads that were closed but some how we got through it. We got to West Richland finally and did this really cool one except the lock was broken and we couldn't get inside. Luckily, someone had shared the code word with us.
A lot of them took us to parks, more baseball fields, a community garden, a hill near Badger Mountain, various businesses who allowed permission for a cache to be on their property and we even to got to go inside the air conditioned visitor's center to grab a cache inside a treasure chest.
Some of the cache spots we've been to before and there were some walks that took a while especially the multi W05-Park at the Lakes (GC5PKNA) wow was that a walk. I walked out there with Ray, Bob and Jen, everyone else stayed in the cars. Jen and I talked about hiking. She had a trip planned for Mount Hood in the next couple days. We got waypoints from a birdhouse on a tree that would take us to the final location. Boy was it hot. We also logged 6 Valentine Park (GC4YEXW) since it was in the parking lot. I was so glad to see air conditioning when I got back to the cars!
We got back towards town and found a Subway to stop at for lunch and to mostly cool down. I didn't have a lot of money so I brought my own food. I assembled a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the car before I came in to cool down and eat with my team. Bob went and got gas at the nearby gas station. He joined up with us and ate his sandwich. When we left, wow, the heat was intense when you walked out from the air conditioned shop. At this point, we were finished with West Richland and Richland, we moved onto Kennewick.
There were a few we found near areas we've been to the previous years. Such as K02-Sports and Events (GC5P0CG). We found that near the Kennewick Sports and Rec Dept. building. That's the same complex the 9/11 Memorial is located.
We moved on to other sections of Kennewick where we found bird houses and plastic water meter holes and went to a wooded park with a creek that ran through it to do a short multi called K01-Zintel Greenway Treasure (GC5P0CA). We were to count the planks on the tiny footpaths, add them to the north and west coords to find our treasure! A team from Canada were right behind us and they did not do any of the counting. I heard them pretend to and then follow us to the final location.
We moved onto Clover Island, another place in Kennewick we've been to a few times over the years. From here you can see my favorite TriCities bridge in the distance. We grabbed K05-It's An Island Thing (GC5P0EM). There were quite a few people at this location looking for the cache. It really was near the porta potties.
On our way over the bridge into our last city, Bob and Bev's car started to overheat, and it didn't smell too good. This is way too familiar. Last year it happened to Ben and I on the same trip. It was unfortunate but I was glad it wasn't happening to my car again. It was 111 degrees by the time we drove over the bridge into Pasco. I have never been so hot in my life geocaching. I was so sweaty and the dust from the area stuck to me. I went through so much water. I must have had between 4-6 full Nalgene bottles worth of water plus whatever water someone handed me from the cooler. I was glad I brought a handkerchief with me to dip in the water and tie around my head. It kept me cool until it dried out.
Our first cache in Pasco was a short multi called P04-Port (GC5PHVD) and it was another stop that we've been to several times in the past. As a group we went and found the cache as Bob tinkered with the car. When we got the hood open you could see and sell antifreeze spraying out of a tiny hole in the hose. We were there for at lease a half hour trying to decide what to do. Eventually two guys drive up a a small SUV truck-like vehicle and asked what was happening. We told them our situation and they said they were cachers too. His son was here from Colorado and the guy was from Richland and he said he had plenty room for us if we wanted to go with them. I can not remember their caching names or their real names but they they were very generous to have complete strangers ride along with them. We left Bob and Bev's car there until we were done with the challenge. We would pick it up after we received our coins.
The next one we all went to was P06-Mansion (GC5PHWT) and that one was a long walk along the trail that paralleled the Columbia River. While we walked I really wanted to jump in. A few hung behind like before to stay cool in the air conditioned car. I was dripping by the time I got to the back of the SUV truck. I guzzled as much water as I could.
We finished up the last six caches in about 40 minutes, they took us to a few parks, the industrial area of Pasco, some small dunes off the road and an area where a local flea market takes place on the weekends. Since we were behind, we did these last few pretty quickly and moved onto the last cache, inside the state park, P01-Sacajawea Trail and State Park (GC5PHWF). We were so stoked to finally be done. It took us roughly 9 hours in the 111 degree heat! We definitely earned that geocoin!
We all piled into our cars one more time and headed back to the event. We thanked the father-son duo for the ride and being so generous to us. They said they were happy to do it. We ran over to the coin table and gave them our passports to check. I was so excited! She handed me my coin and we walked around a little while to see what kind of stuff were at the booths. Team JIGG had some time to pose as a team.
Here is the coin in all of its glory!
Team JIGG decided to have diner as a group and Jen suggested a place called Cousin's in Pasco, which is a separate franchise off of The Country Cousin in Centralia. We visited, laughed, shared stories and ate our food. It was delicious. I had a burger and fries. We said our goodbyes and I took Bob and Bev back to their car. They were going to drive to their hotel and then check out car places the next day. I told them good luck and gave them another one of my water jugs just in case.
I left Pasco around 9 p.m. and it was still over 100 degrees outside. Ben was suppose to come with me this weekend and he works on Sundays so I planned to have Father's Day a week later so everyone could attend. I could have stayed until Sunday but I didn't. I called mom and talked to her for a while, I called Grammie and I called Ben. I made pretty good time and got into Yakima about 11. I stopped at the Arco down the hill from Willmarth's house to fill up on gas. I grabbed my snacks and started out towards the pass. From the top of the pass down to Packwood I encountered three elk, thank goodness they were not in the road, when I drove by. When I got to Morton I called Ben again.
I arrived at home just before 1:30 a.m. I got out of the Escape and I was cold standing there in the 68 degree weather after being in the 111 degree weather all day. I unpacked some of my stuff, took a shower to get all of the sweat, sticky and dust off of me, got ready for bed and passed out. It was hot so I had my fan humming me to sleep. I can't wait to see what they have planned for next year!
Next Adventure: 4th of July
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