Today, I asked grandma if she wanted to go for a ride out towards Eatonville and the Pack Forest. She said sure. I wanted to do it today before it started raining. The forecast said it will be rainy most of the week and I really didn't want to be inside of a forest in the pouring rain.
I picked her up and we headed towards Yelm, she had some money to deposit before we drove out to the Pack Forest. I found it ironic I was assigned the Pack Forest because it is ran by UW and I am a WSU Cougar and my caching name reflects my college pride, cougarcach24. I have never actually been inside the Pack Forest but have driven past it many times to and from Yakima.
We followed the road to the main office so I could pick up a trail map. I had no idea where to hide the cache. Once again, it was a trial and error experience. We drove down to the less extensive trails (ones that would be open year around and less muddy) and parked the Escape. We chose one that led us east and just followed it until we found a good spot. I kinda wanted cachers to actually get out of the cars and walk to the cache location. It's about .15 away from the parking coords. I placed it inside of a tree spire and put a piece of bark-like tree over it to hide it from muggles. I hoped that area would keep the container dry. I took my readings and wrote down everything so I could add it to the cache page I was almost done building.
I was pretty happy with the location I chose and grandma and I walked back to the Escape. I figured since we were already out this far we need to go get the Rainier100: Elbe Hills Forest Viewpoint (GC5V7TR). I should have gotten it on my way to Yakima back in June but I didn't have a lot of time. We get there about 15 minutes later and of course the day that the gate is closed and we have to walk to the cache. Lame. Oh well, it gave us the exercise.
Alder Lake was so dry this year actual grass and plants were starting to grow on the lake bed. I've never seen it this dry before. The view from here was nice. You could even see the smoke smoldering from the area that burned a few weeks ago across the lake. We got up to the kiosk and saw the really worn geotrail from the road down to a rotted stump. The cache was hidden on the top of the stump away from the views of muggles.
We sat there for a bit as I went through the cache and signed the logbook. I put it back and we started our walk down the hill. We walked past a lady and her dog as they were going up the hill. We said hi to her. I picked up a few cans and before you knew it we were back at the Escape again.
I took grandma to the rest area just a quarter of a mile from the trail so she could go potty before our 45 minute drive back home. We talked about a various assortment of topics on the trip back. I dropped her off and then I went home to eat some burrito leftovers from the night before.
Next Adventure: Doing the Puyallup
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