I got our query together and laid out my clothes. It was suppose to be nice today so I wore light clothing but pants because I knew we would be wandering through the trees and brush. The next morning I got up around 8:15, got dressed, grabbed everything we would need and ate some Raisin Bran. I left my house around 8:50 to be in Rochester by 9:30.
He had just gotten off shift at Grand Mound and he took a shower and was not ready to go when I said to be ready by. How dare he? I gave him a bad time and he gave me a bad time for giving him a bad time. We eventually left around 10. We lost a half hour of driving time. We got onto I-5 and headed south towards Woodland.
Just before the Hwy 12 exit, a wrench fell out of a truck two vehicles ahead of me, the person in front of me avoided it, it bounced really high off the road and fell just before it could hit my windshield, it bounced and hit the bottom of the Escape, came out the back, bounced and almost hit the car behind me. I was so so grateful that it didn't hit my windshield. We would have been injured severely.
We got to Woodland before noon and stopped at the Safeway for some food and to top off on gas. We went inside to get food first. We grabbed sandwiches, drinks, chips, snackies and of course we each got a doughnut. I can not resist the Safeway maple bars. We loaded the car and got gas before heading east on the 503 towards Cougar. I plugged in coordinates to the first cache.
Since it was a holiday weekend we did get stuck behind some slow people. At one point we went around a corner I saw a dead animal. It was someone's chicken and it had recently been ran over. I felt bad for the people who had lost their chicken. We continued on to the cache we put into the GPS.
We arrived at the turn out off of the highway and found a good place to park to go get C.C. Bigfoot Hide-A-Cache (GC2CA7) an oldie from December 2001! I told Ben we had to find this one because it was one of the old caches still left. He was like, okay. Of course we went the hard way. I guess there was a parking lot area and a less hardcore walk to the cache, we entered from the highway and walked up a hill and into what I think is a swamp most of the time but because it was so dry this summer there wasn't a swamp and then a short walk to the area where the cache was hidden. Ben didn't think I had the correct coords. He kept asking, "are you sure this is where it is? It looks like no one has been here in a while". I told him I promise it's here. He watched me from down below I just couldn't pinpoint where it was based on the hint. The GPS bounced all over the place. I tried several spots near the bluff and even fell down once because of the stupid ground-growing sticker bushes. I made my way back over to the area I thought it was and sure enough there was the dog food bag and the cache container was inside of it. Probably to protect it from the snow in the winter months. I signed our names and took a picture. Then my stomach dropped...where is the GPS!? It could be anywhere. There were so many ferns, brush and sticker bushes. I told Ben to come up and help me find it. He climbed up and we started looking. We were not going to stop until we found it. I retraced my steps about three different times. Then I grabbed a stick to help me sort through the brush. About 45 min into looking I finally found it! What a relief!! We walked back to the Escape.
We plugged in the next set of coordinates to the next cache, Lahar Viewpoint (GC3Q2XY), an earthcache on the southeast side of Mt. St. Helens. I do not remember coming here as a kid but I am sure we did as a family. We followed the really rough FR 83 out to a place called Lahar/Lava Canyon recreation area. We got out of the trees into a really open area and found out where the earthcache site was. We parked the Escape near the bridge and tried to get a view of the mountain before the clouds engulfed it. It was too late. I was told that the weather would be nice this weekend. The clouds had just covered the whole mountain as we got down in the old lahar bed. Lame. I wanted Ben to see the view. We started answering the questions and just enjoying the area. We looked at the volcanic rocks and we got the GoPro out and took a few pictures.
And then it started raining. I was so disappointed in the weather. I had so many fun short hikes to do and we can't do them now. We got back into the Escape and headed back towards the junction of FR 83 and FR 90. We stopped near a small creek with a bridge behind it to take some pictures. We left as soon as the rain got out of control.
We stopped for BIGFOOT LIVES!!! (GC1T3ZJ) and we made some bigfoot jokes while we looked for it in the POURING down rain.
We ran back to the Escape and stopped one more time at the Cougar Snow Park (GC1T0X0) and I had Ben stay in the vehicle because it was pouring down rain and there was something going on in the road with a bunch of service workers so I really didn't want to stay around for too long. I found the cache quickly, it was missing the container and was just a plastic baggie with a log book inside. I jotted down our names, put it back and walked back without anyone really wondering what I was doing.
We got to the junction and turned left onto FR 90 and made our way towards the Lewis River along the Swift Reservoir. The road was very windy. We ate our sandwiches and chips along the way for lunch and listened to Aerosmith. Dude looks like a lady!!
I wanted to stop and do the small hike up to Eagle Cliff but we didn't have enough time and we were not prepared for the rain. We would have gotten soaked and been very unhappy. We bypassed it for another day and followed the road out to Lower Lewis River Falls. This road was also very windy. Luckily we didn't have to follow anyone or it would have been an even longer day. One section of the road was being worked on so it was a very awful potholey dirt road. You could actually high center your vehicle on one part of it. The road then went back to pavement and we were less than a mile or so away from the day use area.
We pulled in and found a place to park. I finally used my forest pass that I bought three years ago. I finally put a date on it. We got all the stuff we would need and made our way to the falls. It was awesome! I am glad we came to this spot. I wish we could camp. We will have to keep this place in mind for future trips. There is also a middle falls and an upper falls but we didn't have time to do those.
I bet this place is awesome during late spring and early summer. I kinda want to go swimming in it some day. We spend a good chunk of our time wandering around the top of the falls. I have never been to a river where the bed was almost perfect bedrock. It was awesome! We saw some really cool formations that have been carved into it from water erosion.
We took some pictures from the waterfall and Ben took a bunch of GoPro videos and photos. Look for the video in a future post.
We walked back up to the trail and looked at the fall from the various viewpoints. There were quite a few people around but it wasn't swarmed. The rain let up a bit but was still falling lightly.
To end our visit, we found a place further down the trail to see the falls from the river bed level. Of course we took the hard way down and the easy way up. Haha.
We walked back up to the parking lot and went and looked for the cache before we left. Lower Falls on the Lewis River Cache (GCP6AR) was down a small trail off the road that lead into the recreation area. We knew where it was before we even looked at the hint. Ben ran over and pulled it out from its hiding spot. We signed the log, looked at the trinkets inside, took the TB's and put it back where we found it. We covered it up better too.
We left the Lewis River area and made our way back towards Eagle Cliff and took a right to our last cache of the day. It was an earthcache called Recipe for a Mudflow (GC1F7WY). It was at a very iconic rock from the Pine Creek mudflow and we had to answer a few questions on the informational board and it was literally a recipe for a mudflow, we thought it was very creative.
We got back into the Escape and made our way to the 503 towards Woodland. It took us about an hour and it rained off and on. Like I said, I was very disappointed in the weather but I am glad I got to spend the day with Ben. We got stuck behind a douche going 20 below the speed limit and no one would pass him and made our trip back longer than it needed to be. We got to I-5 and drove the 30 miles to Longview.
To top of our day we were going to try this brewery I found online, Ashtown. It was a small brewery created and owned by two cousins, they were preparing to celebrate their two year anniversary of the brewery opening up. I had their Red Tape Razz Wheat and Ben had two of their stouts. They were pretty strong and made him a bit silly on the way home.
We ate the rest of our food and talked to Ben's mom. When we got to the station we hung out a bit and then I had to go home because I really needed a shower. I got home just before 11 and unpacked the Escape.
Next Adventure: Placing my Rainier100 Cache and Caching in Elbe
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