Seattle Mariners Fanfest and the Crab Pot

For a long time now I've always wanted to go to Mariners Fanfest.  For the past couple years when we remembered that it was going on it just did not work out in our favor and left me bummed out when I couldn't go.

On January 6, 2016, Griffey was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, receiving 99.32% of the vote, breaking the record previously held by Tom Seaver's 98.84% in 1992.  A flag bearing Griffey's number 24 was flown from the Space Needle following the announcement.  I was so excited to hear that and I thought maybe he would show up at the fanfest this year.  He didn't.

We still wanted to go to fanfest anyway.  I asked Ben about a month ago if this would be something he would like to do.  We were both huge Mariner fans as kids, cheering on Dan Wilson, Ken Griffey Jr., Jay Buhner, Randy Johnson and Edgar Martinez.  Ben said it would be awesome so we called his mom to see if she and Amy wanted to go.  Then it got bigger and bigger by adding on Brad, his kids and then my mom and dad.  That escalated quickly!

I saw the night before which Mariners and support staff would be there.  My only interest was getting Dan Wilson's autograph but we had to get there somewhat early to get a voucher.

The morning of the event was chaos.  Ben was on shift the night before and was screwed over by one of his co-workers the next morning which made him late getting over to my house.  We left late and we arrived in Kent late but Trish and her car load was late meeting up with us at the junction.  For some reason our communication was bad and they ended up in front of us by about 10 minutes.  We just told her we would meet her at Safeco.  The morning already fell apart.

We all got there and parked roughly at the same time.  We parked on the northeast side of the field and she parked near the southwest.  We were suppose to meet at the left field entrance but met up at home plate to get our autograph voucher.

I handed out our tickets and was disappointed Brad's other kid didn't come (now a ticket was going to go to waste) and I gave it the ticket guy who checked our tickets to get in.  I said give it to someone who doesn't have a ticket...sorta like a pay it forward.  He said he would do his best.  We went in and looked at the banners and got ourselves a fanfest booklet of things that were happening inside the stadium.  It looked like the Dan Wilson autograph vouchers were gone.  Dang it!

I was then asked by one of the guys handing out vouchers for autographs.  He asked me if I was looking for something in particular.  I said, we were old school Mariner fans and was looking forward to meeting Dan Wilson.  He looked at me and smiled, "I still have 7 vouchers left for Dan Wilson if you want them."  "Are you serious?" I asked.  He handed them over to me and I thanked him over and over again.  He made our day.

We walked up the stairs and decided what to do first.  We had about an hour to kill before we had to get in line to see Dan Wilson.  We all split up and Ben and I wanted to be on the field so we walked the bases and went into the dugout, something I've wanted to do since the place opened in 1999.  It was awesome.  We took some pictures of us on second base and inside the dugouts.  We thought this was a great place to start our fanfest adventure plus it ate away some of the time before we got in line for our autograph.

By the time we walked up the stairs it was time to go meet at the stairwell to the second level to get in line to go see Dan Wilson.  I actually found everyone and we got up the stairs in one piece.  We got to see him and got his autograph within a half hour.  It was awesome actually getting to meet a Mariner in real life.

From there, we split up into little groups again and walked to the activities we wanted to do.  Ben and I waited in line to go and throw in the outfield.  That one took some time but it was fun to throw again.  I had forgotten what it felt like to throw a baseball.  I have been conditioned to throw softballs throughout most of my lifetime.  I over threw Ben a few times.  This was the first time I've played catch with him.

We walked over to the bullpen line and got to throw pitches.  Ben's hardest throw was in the 30's and mine were in the 50's.  Haha!

Then he wanted to go his balls off of a tee.  The line wasn't too bad but first we guessed how many whiffle balls were inside this container in right center field.  I guessed over 7,000 and Ben guessed between 1,500-2,000.  I wonder if we will find out how many were really in there.  We were given our cage assignment and I had Ben hit first.  He almost hit one over the fence.  Then mom called me and told me where they were.  They were standing right around left center field watching us bat.  I told them we would meet up when we were done batting.

I wanted to do one more event before it was time to go.  This was the longest line we had to stand in the entire day.  I wanted a picture of us standing at home plate with bats and helmets.  While we waited, we got to listen to Dan Wilson talk to the crowd...and we had some rambunctious kids in front of us being silly.  When it was our turn we took three pictures, one of us together and one of us by ourselves.  It was an awesome experience and I am so glad it didn't rain.

We gathered up everyone and took a group picture before we all left.  We had called Doug and Jenn to see if they wanted to meet up at the pier and eat some seafood at the Crab Pot. 

Unfortunately Trish, Amy, Brad and Grace didn't make it down to the pier.  Trish got frustrated with the directions and traffic and ended up going home.  I was sad they didn't get to come.  I was excited to eat dinner with everyone.

We walked back to the Escape and headed down towards the pier.  I wasn't aware that the entire pier/viaduct was under construction.  I haven't been down here in a while.  Luckily there were still some parking spots available.  Mom and dad wandered while we talked to Trish.  We had to waste some time so Doug and Jenn could get there. Luckily we didn't have to wait that long.

We were seated quickly and our drinks and food came really fast as well.  I was impressed.  Dad, Doug and Ben ate the pile of seafood dinner, mom and I had fish and chips and Jenn had the crab mac n cheese.  It was all delicious and fun that dad got to join us this time around.

We paid, said our goodbyes and walked back to the Escape.  Traffic wasn't that bad and we got home before 8.  Ben and I watched some of our shows and he had to be back home so he could go to work the next day.  

Next Adventure:  Mardi Gras

Mount Rainier for Doug's 30th Birthday

Mom found a fun activity to go try during Doug's birthday weekend.  She found it off of Mount Rainier's website and have heard good things about it as well.  One day she showed me the paper and asked if this would be fun to do.  I told her yeah and that I've always wanted to try snow shoeing and that it should be a blast.  She corresponded with Doug and he said that would be fun to do.  Then it got complicated with the family birthday party and then it was okay again.  Things like this should not be stressful.  We told him to meet us in Eatonville at 8:30 because that should be enough time to get there before 10 to sign up.

Nope.

Doug and Jenn did not get to Eatonville until 9:30.  I should have put money on it.  I would have won.

It rained the entire time from when we left the house to about halfway up the road to Paradise.  If it was raining at home it was snowing on the mountain.

We found a place to park Jen's car until we came back, piled into the Escape and headed towards Mount Rainier.  We got to the gate, paid our $20 and was asked if we carried chains.  I lied and said yes just in case they made us leave because we didn't have them.  We followed a very slow person all the way up.  It irritated me because I was trying to see if we would make it before 11.  We didn't. 

We reached a spot where the ranger was pulling over people to check to see if they had tire chains.  He asked me and this time I said no because I thought he might make me pull over at the Narada Falls pull out and put them on before we continued up the hill.  Instead, he gave me a lecture about carrying them and if I got stuck and he had to help me that it would be a hefty fine.  I had 4W drive and this drives pretty well in the snow.  Besides, the sign said to carry chains if your vehicle didn't have 4W drive.

There was a definite line where the rain ended and the snow began and it changed very quickly.  The now on the trees made this trip worthwhile.  It was so pretty.  The snow also started sticking to the road.  For some reason I enjoyed driving on the snow when it was dry and compacted and I am not really sure why.  We continued to snake around the corners and the snow got thicker and thicker as we got higher in elevation.  Jenn doesn't get to see snow that often so she entertained us in the back seat with her snow stories.

We finally got to Paradise as the clock hit 11.  Dang it.  I really wanted to go snowshoeing.  We wanted to do the early one so we could be back in time for the birthday party at grandma's house at 5.  If we tried to do the 1:30 one we wouldn't make it in time.  We debated for quite some time and then tried to get a hold of grandma to see if she could call everyone to change the time.  We didn't get cell phone service up there and both pay phones didn't work.  We were out of luck.  We walked around the visitor's center, ate lunch in the café area and then headed outside to play in the snow.

On the hill above the visitor's center was a path towards the mountain, it was carved into the many inches of snow that lead to a sledding area.  Crap, I didn't bring my sled.  It was a little windy and it was still snowing.  The sign in the visitor's center said they would be getting 3-4 new inches of snow by nightfall.  Mom took some pictures of us playing in the snow and when Doug and Jenn made it up they told me there was an abandoned sled.  I asked mom to take my picture when I went down the hill.  It was a pretty steep climb and I huffed and puffed all the way up.  When it was my turn I found out why that sled was abandoned.  It had a hole in it and didn't slide very well down the hill.  I had to get out early and walk the rest of the way to where Jenn and mom were.  Mom told me Doug and dad wandered off so she went looking for them as Jenn and I played in the snow and chatted about various things.

About a half hour later, mom came back and right behind her were dad and Doug.  They weren't sure how far they walked but dad was getting tired.  We needed to think about heading back down so we could meet everyone at grandma's house for the party.  Doug had to take a picture of himself with a Rainier on Rainier before we left.

We took our coats, gloves and snow pants off and threw them into the back of the Escape and piled back in.  We drove past a few snow plows on the way down.  We got down the hill fairly quickly, through Longmire and through the gate back onto the main part of the highway.  We stopped at a pull out with a porta potty so Doug could pee out all the beer he drank.

Of course it was raining.  Meh!

We got back to Eatonville and they got into Jenn's Mini Cooper and followed us back to our house.  There, we got cleaned up a bit, Jenn fell asleep, I wrapped Doug's presents and frosted the cupcakes for the party.  Just before 5, we went over to grandma's house and had Doug's birthday party.

Grandma had made a ham, mashed potatoes and everyone brought sides.  We had cupcakes as he opened his presents.  He got a bunch of plaid flannel shirts...apparently the new look as of the last year or so living in Seattle.  To me he looked like a lumberjack with the plaid shirts and the creepy beard he was sporting.  It was a nice gathering and grandma did a great job.  We all went home and relaxed.

Next Adventure:  Seattle Mariners Fanfest and the Crab Pot

Tehelah Caching, Red Robin and Ben's New Phone

I was right.  I was so sore the next morning.  I could barely get out of bed.  My neck, my shoulders and the backs of my arms were very sore.  I had to have Ben pull me out of bed.  I haven't hurt this bad in a very long time.  We didn't get up until about 11:30.  We were told the night before that we had to pick up Amy from work around one.  We slowly got ready and before we knew it time had passed and it was already 12:30. 

We decided to go out towards Tehelah to get one of the new caches called, Cascadia?(GC5T9FB) along the trail systems inside the housing development.  We did the others last year and wanted to get out for a short walk.  There were soo many more houses than the last time we were here.  It was sort of a clear day and you could see Mount Rainier in the distance.

We found a place to park, near a new tiny playground in between two house lots, and found where the trail began.  I know we were here last year but there wasn't a cache here yet.  I knew that would change.  We walked the quarter of a mile to a rock, we've seen before, with Cascadia carved into it.  Ben read us some of the cache information and then we started looking for it.  We looked around both rocks pretty good and then saw this grouping of trees.  I checked it and there it was!  We signed our names, took a picture and put it back better than we found it.

Off to Fred Meyers we go!  Amy was waiting for us as she got of her four hour shift.  We told her we were going to have lunch at Red Robin and she was okay with that.  This was the first time I saw her eat something other than salad or fish.  She actually wolfed down a hamburger!  We played Peggle and ate our food.  It hit the spot. 

The one thing Ben wanted to get done today was get a new phone.  We drove over to the Verizon store and sat there while he went over his options with the sales guy.  The day before when we went snowboarding some water got into his phone and made it run funny.  The past few months his phone has been doing weird things like shutting off when it has 40% battery life, some of his apps shut down or didn't work properly and his phone is from 2012 so it was time to get a new one anyway.  We were there for about an hour or so.  I got bored so Amy and I went over to the Target and wandered around for a bit.  I used the restroom and then Ben called us on his new IPhone 6 telling us he was done.  We all met at the Escape and went home.

There, we hung out, I logged caches, Ben fiddled with his phone and Amy fell asleep in front of the TV.  Trish came home around 7 and made some chili. After dinner I took a shower, because I know I wouldn't have time to when I got home, got all of our stuff together, packed it in the Escape and headed out around 9:30.  I was so sore and wanted to be home to go to bed.

We had to drive clear out to Tumwater because that is where Ben parked.  I had forgotten for a second but then remembered we left from L&I on Friday to head to Seattle.  I knew his car would be safe with my parking pass on it.  We got there just before 10:30, we transferred his stuff into his car and said our goodbyes and both headed to our homes. I got home around 11, unloaded my stuff, got ready for bed and passed out.

It was a long weekend but fun.  I can't wait for the next one. 

Next Adventure:  Mount Rainier for Doug's 30th Birthday

First Time Snowboarding

We got up around 8:30 and started getting ready to go.  I kinda wanted to be up there as soon as we could so we could have as much daylight as possible.  I got all of my stuff on, did my bathroom things and then went upstairs to make some sandwiches for our trip.  Ben came up a while later and we both ate some breakfast while the Seahawks game was starting.  I really didn't want to watch it.  I did not like Cam Newton.  He is a tool with no sportsmanship.  The better team was the one who did not win that day after a gallant come back.  If we would have had more time we would have won because the Panthers gave up.  We shouldn't have dug ourselves a giant hole like that.  Anyway...

We got everything packed into the Escape and off to Snoqualmie Pass we went!  The last time we came up this way in the winter was when we headed over to Spokane for Ben's interview.  There was NO snow, at all.  We knew we were in for a really dry summer with a lot of fires.  It rained the entire time until we were roughly five miles from the summit.  It literally went from rain to snow in seconds.  I had not driven the Escape in the snow since I've had it so this was a real test to see how well it did.  It did awesomely.  The snow was slushy in a lot of places until we made that long corner then it was compact dry snow; just the way I like it.  We took the second exit because we had seen a sign stating that the exit we wanted was closed for some reason.  When we went by it wasn't closed...how confusing!  We took the other one and Ben directed me to the area we needed to be in.  We made two drive-byes until we found someone leaving. We were lucky to have found a spot that quickly. The place was BUSY!!  Finding a parking spot was ridiculous almost just as bad finding a parking spot at WSU while classes are in session.

We decided to use the restroom, get our lift tickets and then our rentals.  Once we had our snowboard boots.  We then found a place for Ben to teach me the basics of how to skate when we are near the ski lifts, basic starting and stopping and other tidbits.  A douchbag decided to smoke near us and got a sickening whiff of that which made me really mad that the guy couldn't go somewhere without people nearby to do it.  Then my snowboard wasn't gliding very easily so while Ben exchanged it I ran a trip back to the Escape to drop off our shoes and grab the GoPro.  Which later I found out I grabbed the wrong piece of it and some of our video didn't turn out.  Lesson learned!  He then took me over to the bunny hill to see how well I did while I was moving down hill.  I lost that battle.  I lost control and fell hard to avoid hitting these morons who weren't about to move at the bottom of the hill.  Luckily I was wearing a helmet or I would have had a concussion. 

I was tired of the bunny hill and wanted to go down the bigger hill.  We got in line for the ski lift and they had to stop it so I could get on.  I haven't mastered that skill yet.  Haha.  This was my first time on a ski lift so I enjoyed the moment.

Haha, getting off the ski lift was a chore as well.  Every time we got off we crashed into each other.  My only bruise that day was on my thumb from running into Ben when we got off the ski lift the first time.  I know how embarrassing right?

The first time down took us a while and it was very memorable.  Ben had the GoPro on and filmed some of him and some of me going down the hill and crashing.  There is a segment of that video where I literally crash and face planted hard into the snow.  I knew I was going to be very very sore the next day.  With a couple more crashes and the inability to navigate the board effectively I eventually made it down to the bottom of the hill to go back up again.

The second time we went down I almost had a flawless run except I fell at the top once and again at the bottom, the corner of my snowboard hit the bottom of the SLOW sign and I crashed.  I couldn't believe I did that.  I hoped no one saw it but I'm sure everyone did.  Haha!

The third time down...about halfway down the hill, I heard some kids on the ski lift chanting, "Fall, fall, fall, fall!" I knew they were directing it at Ben and I.  Ben did fall and I had a flawless run!  I was so proud of myself and I was starting to know more about how to balance myself, how to stop and how to steer myself clear of obstacles and people. 

When we went back up to the top I challenged Ben to a flawless run and we went down the steeper side of the hill. He fell about four times and I did great until I made it to the bottom where I fell twice.  I was mad and disappointed I fell.  For not having any snowboarding experience I believe I figured it out pretty quickly.  There is a learning curve to it and I am sure there will be one next time due to the snow conditions and whatnot.

We grabbed out gear and went back to the rental place where we turned in our boards, my helmet and I walked back to the Escape to grab our snow boots and came back so we could turn in our boots.  We were hot, wet and sweaty and I could not wait to get back to the car to eat some of our food we brought with us.

Earlier yesterday Brenda and Ray asked us to make them a snowman.  We took the 15 minutes to make a snowman while my car thawed out.  The snow was dry so it was hard to pack it into balls.  We managed to get some made, put it on top of the car, gave it eyes and buttons with our fruit snacks and pens for arms.  It turned out well.

We thought it would be funny to drive away with the snowman still on top of the car.  I honestly thought it would fall off as we got back onto the road.  It stayed.  We had to pull over to scrape it off the hood before we got onto I-90.

The trip down went fine.  There was a definite line of where the snow was and where it ended and rain dumped on you.  It was cool being in the snow this winter since where we live we haven't gotten any. 

I couldn't wait to get back to Bonney Lake so we could take a shower, wash our sweaty wet clothes and relax.  My body was going to hate me tomorrow morning.  We got there a while later, thank goodness for no traffic, and started unloading the Escape.  We brought a lot of stuff with us.  Always prepared.  Trish had made some dinner.  We had chicken, mashed potatoes and veggies.  It was nice to eat a warm meal after that.

We showered, started a couple loads of laundry and relaxed.  I uploaded some pictures.  We had some ice cream and watched our GoPro video from the mountain and How to Train Your Dragon because Trish had never seen it. I love the movie.  The dragon, Toothless, reminds me of our cat Jonas.

It reached the time where we couldn't keep our eyes open any longer so we went downstairs and melted into our amazing mattress topper.  I am really going to have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning.

Next Adventure:  Tehelah Caching, Red Robin and Ben's New Phone

Monroe and Duvall Caching

I woke up the next morning having to pee and when my eyes opened I was face to face with that orange cat.  I immediately thought to myself, who's cat is that and where am I?  Then I moved to get up and my back was really sore.  That inflatable mattress deflated over the course of the night.  I got up, peed and then came back to lay some more.  Then Sven got up and started doing some stuff.  He had to leave in the afternoon to go take care of some stuff.  Meanwhile, Ben and I tried to figure out what we were going to do today.

We thought about going to Stevens Pass to snowboard but it was too late in the day to head over there(it was already noon) and we decided to do it tomorrow at Snoqualmie Pass instead.  We decided where we were going to have lunch and what we were going to do with the rest of our afternoon.  We got all of our stuff ready and took it out to the Escape.  We thanked Sven for letting us stay with him and it was great to finally meet him (Ben had talked about him often) and hit the road. 

We drove into Monroe (this place has changed a lot) and Nuvi directed us to the teriyaki and sushi place we picked out. Kami Teriyaki and Sushi was nestled in between a haircut place and an H&R Block.  We went in and noticed this place was busy.  We ordered and thankfully we didn't have to wait that long.  Ben ordered sushi and I ordered teriyaki.  My food was delicious.

Afterwards we did a little caching in the main area of town.  We grabbed the nine traditionals around town.  The first one was called Shell Shock (GC1XMQ4) and it was located at the Shell Station on the south side of Hwy 2.  We rolled in and noticed the guard rail.  It was a guard rail cache, poop.  However, the cache container made up for the poor placement.

The Teeny Tiny Ammo Can (GC1HYP6) was on the north side of Hwy 2 on the right side of the Lowe's.  I let Ben try and figure it out before I intervened.  I told him it probably wasn't going to be on the ground, the tree or the bushes.  The most likely spot was the lamp post skirts or somewhere else metal.  I started expanding the search zone and found it about 50 feet off its coords.  Here it is Ben!  How did you know to look there?  I had a hunch.  It was on some of the metal artwork near the building.

We drove across the street to the Walmart to grab This is Progress (GC61VP4) really quickly.  There were lots of people driving around and not obeying the rules of the road.  We had a guy who clearly had the right of way, stop in front of us and wait for us to turn.  It was dumb.  We parked in front of the cache, I got out, found it under the lamp skirt and returned to the car with it.  We signed it and I put it back into its hiding spot.

We drove over towards the theater and found a place to park and walked up the small hill behind Fred Meyers.  We passed a boy and a girl who were roughly high school aged walking back down the hill.  I doubt they were geocachers and the only other explanation is they went up there for some making out or some home run action.  Freddies and Beyond (GC24ZMB) was a small bison tube with a magnet on the side of it that stuck to the outside of a pole tucked underneath a corner to conceal it from muggles.  We found it quickly and walked back down to the Escape.

Cache in a Jif (GC28QX6) was indeed at the Jiffy Lube not too far from the Fred Meyer. We pulled into the parking lot and Ben found the cache fast.  We logged our names, put it back and we were gone within five minutes.

We checked his App and the next one took us into the other complex across the side road.  YOU Have the Power (GC5RBW4) was an electrical face plate stuck to the side of the lamp pole.  Luckily no one was paying attention to us.

The next one took us down a side road north of Hwy 2 out towards the farming part of town.  We saw the side road and parked at the gate.  We walked up the short but semi steep paved driveway.  Ben thought it was going to be on the tree side.  We looked there first and didn't find it.  Then I remembered two caches I found near home a few years back.  I told him that sometimes caches have been hidden in the caps of this white fence.  We spent some time opening all the lids on the fence and didn't find it.  We were looking in the wrong one.  I pulled one more cap off and it was the one that contained Resolutions (GC1KBR7).  He told me good to know for future caches.

There was one more down the same road that we could get before heading down to Duvall.  Cable Guy (GC1T468) was next to the road near a muddy pull out.  I dropped Ben off and turned around. I parked in the muddy pull out and gave him some pointers about finding caches underneath power lines...the coords will lie to you. After that, he figured it out and found the cache.  Our shoes were really muddy and now my Escape was going to be muddy.

We drove back into town and found one more along the way to Duvall on Hwy 203.  Monroe Parks:  Lewis Street Parks (GCRK3V).  This cache was located inside Al Borlin Park.  Immediately I thought of Al Borland from Home Improvement, lol.  We walked down the hill and across the bridge.  The coords took us to the end of the bridge.  We started looking.  With the many bridges I've found caches on it could be just about anywhere.  I gave Ben a chance to look for it.  He read the hint and found it immediately.

I wanted to walk down to the river so we followed the path down to the bank and then over the bed to the river.  We found a really cool downed tree with the bridge in the background so we took a few pictures.  You could tell the Skykomish River recently flooded in all the rain we had this winter so far.  There was so much tree debris.

Then it started raining so we hustled back up the hill, over the bridge and to the Escape.  I thought I would use the restroom before we headed to Duvall.  I went and checked and it was closed due to vandalism.  Don't people have better things to do than to destroy a public bathroom?   I guess not.  We got back on the road and headed south over the bridge and towards Duvall.  I don't remember ever visiting Duvall in the past.  I guess this was my first time there.

I posted on my facebook page if there were any cool caches in the Monroe area the other night and I got some responses back.  One in particular was from Fen telling us to stop by their house and get the one in their yard.  I wasn't too keen on the idea of caching on people's property but since I knew them it would be okay.  Ben and I decided to go get that one but it was premium and we didn't have coordinates.

We found a pull out near the welcome to Duvall sign because Ben's phone and the caching app was giving him a hard time.  I finally broke down and reactivated my premium account.  This was the first time in six years I didn't do it right away.   I asked him if there was a cache here and he said no.  We plugged the coords into Nuvi and we were on our way to get The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (GC4B2YG).  Fen and Mitch lived in a really nice house.  We were very impressed.  We found the cache hidden amongst the rock wall facing the road.  We took our picture and ran to the Escape because it rained really hard.  I believe we passed the cache owners as we were going down and they were coming up.  If only we stayed a few minutes longer we could have chatted.

We headed back towards town but pulled over at the other welcome to Duvall sign.  There had to be one here and of course there was.  Welcome to Duvall (GCG07V) was a dumb one located inside the guardrail.  While we looked, "Ben there's an eagle, there's an eagle, an eagle!"

Meanwhile, Ben found a couple of caches in town with a lot of favorite points.  He said we should do these ones.  There were three.  We started with Grandma Rose Room (GC2P7JX).  Boy did we have a good time with this one.  Here's Ben's cache log:

"Fun muggle story with this hide, made us laugh so hard. We pulled up to the cache which was obvious to us and three ladies watched as we started removing the contents from the container. Unknown to their presence, we turned around to these ladies wide eyed and gawking at us with no knowledge of who we were or what we were doing assuming we were trafficking drugs. Val and I knowing we were caught in the act of caching started playing dumb as we assumed they knew of the cache and the activity. They walked outside from the building and started accusing us of hiding paraphernalia in the container that they had never noticed before despite the fact that they worked at this location. Once describing the game of geocaching they became instantly apologetic leaving us with this story."

You would think these ladies would have seen people come and go over the years since this cache was placed back in 2011.  We had a good chuckle as we made our way back to the Escape.

We made our way back through town and found a road that took us down to the river to Flooding in Duvall (GC1WR9C).  This one required a special "tool" to get the cache out.  When we rolled up I knew what kind of cache this was.  I had Ben get out and do it because he has never done a cache like this before and I have several times.  He loved it.  Luckily someone had left a jug of water behind for us to do it.

He said the last one was called Welcome to Doo-vahl (GC3RK17) and it took us back to where we pulled over before we went into town.  I asked him, " I thought you said there wasn't one here?"  "According to my phone at the time there wasn't, lol."  We got out and found the cache laying on the ground.  It would have been really cool to look for it because it was a pretty clever hide.  We signed our names and put it back where it was suppose to be.

We said goodbye to Duvall and headed up the hill towards Redmond.  We stopped at a Starbucks to use the restroom and to get some coffee and hot chocolate for the ride home.  We got onto the 520, then to the 405, where we had to wait in traffic near Bellevue, for nothing and then to 167 towards Bonney Lake. 

We got to his mom's house around dinner time and tried to get a hold of Trish to see if they had dinner yet.  They got home roughly around the same time we arrived.  They had dinner in Puyallup.  I asked Ben if he wanted to go to the store and get sandwiches at Jersey Mike's because I've never been there before and it sounded good.  We got the sandwiches, headed to Safeway, got gas and went inside for ice cream and sandwich making stuff for the mountain tomorrow.

We got back, ate our food, did some internetting and ate ice cream while we watched some TV.

We practiced some snowboarding maneuvers on his wake board in the living room and watched some YouTube videos.  I got a shower in and we tried to go to bed early so we could get up and get everything done so we could go snowboarding.

Trish got us another mattress topper and we put that on the bed.  It was wonderful and I did not wake up with back pain the next morning.

Next Adventure:  First Time Snowboarding