My Adventures and Places Life Takes Me: Rattling Bridge and The Swinger

The other day some caches published out in the Bald Hills/Cougar Mountain area. I over heard Bev talking about them at the event the other night and needed to find time do do them. I heard the one was pretty cool.

I tried to get a hold of Lacey on Wednesday but my text message didn't go through but it said it did on my end. The cell phone service in my building sucks so I can not receive calls or text messages. I thought it was weird I hadn't heard from her so I texted her again later on in the day outside away from the building. She said she never got it. Dang it! We will have to do it tomorrow since the weather was suppose to be somewhat nice still. She said that would be awesome.

After work on Thursday I headed home as quick as I could so we had maximum daylight. I decided to take Lacey out here because she was familiar with the area, due to Tabitha's wedding back in 2010 and it was relatively close so we didn't have to travel very far. I think she wanted a mini adventure as well.

I got everything ready in the Escape and started backing out of our driveway when Lacey pulled into the driveway. I didn't see her text before she left but she offered to drive. I told her it was okay, I already had everything in the car and the GPS on. She parked the car and jumped in with me. I set the Nuvi to our first stop, Rattling Bridge (GC6CA44) just on the other side of Lawrence Lake.

Here is some information about the location near the cache from the cache page:

"This Cache is at the beginning of a private road that crosses the Deschutes River. This is the third Bridge at this location. The first was supported by two fir arches. The second one was simply four large cedar logs making the span with wood planking for a deck. The current Bridges supportive structure (1967) is a train car that originally had a crane mounted on it. It spans 60 feet between a concrete bulkhead on one end and piling drove down to bed rock on the other. The decking is metal planking that tends to rattle quite alarmingly when cars drive over it."

We chatted about stuff on the way there. It didn't take us long to get there and I wasn't paying attention and drove by our stop. I turned around and parked the car near the mailboxes of the private driveway. I remember coming out this way when we were in high school with some friends to go swimming in this really awesome swimming hole. I believe this was the last time I was here until today. Lacey recognized the area and told me this is where they took Tabitha and Earl's wedding pictures. It definitely was a good choice to bring Lacey out to these caches.

I got the coordinates into the handheld GPS and waited until it found a signal. In the meantime, we walked out to the bridge to admire the area. I really don't remember these houses being here almost 16 years ago. Even the small grocery store down the street was out of business and vandalized, which was too bad, every little community needed a small grocery store/gas station.

We talked about the times we spent with our friends in middle and high school, before she left to Olympia and then to California, of the many inner tube trips we took from bridge to bridge during the summer vacations. I really missed those times. I was one of those kids who had a great childhood and awesome friends to hang out with. Life just gets in the way now.

We walked back towards the Escape thinking about the hint. We looked around for a few seconds and then it hit me, "it's a fence end cap!" I grabbed it and low and behold the cache! Lacey, who I've taken geocaching a few times, hasn't seen one like this before. She thought it was pretty clever.

When the wind blew it was really cold. I didn't think it would be this cold. Luckily I had some hats, gloves, extra jackets, sweatshirts and a blanket in the Escape. I put the coords to the next cache into Nuvi and we were on our way. It's been a while since I drove these roads. The last time probably was about 10 years ago while I worked at Camp Cascades. Neat Road was the least traveled of the two roads that took you to the same place and it gave you a great view of Mount Rainier.

I must have driven this road at least 200 times during the two summers I worked at the camp. I never saw the gate that we stopped at for the cache. The Swinger (GC6CMT3) was a very well crafted field puzzle even though it was a traditional cache. We parked the Escape right in front and I gave her the run down of what we were looking for. She said she knew the family that owned this property, which to me, made this even cooler.

From the cache page:

"My father, Ken Reichel in the late 1960’s, created this gate and dubbed it the “Swinger”. He also built the Rattling Bridge (cache GC6CA44). He made the first (right) half and later found it too narrow and added the second (left) side. Thankfully foreseeing “Google” searches in the future he did not pluralize the name. Those who don’t appreciate art will call this a gate and those who do may call it a sculpture. Dad has never been accused of being an Artist or a Swinger but he did create some cheap art while using up some of the junk in the shop like a tractor steering wheel, peavey, pitchfork, wheel bearings, large fan, model A jack and numerous other things. The Swinger has been featured in the local papers a couple of times. Dad was more apt to make my brothers and I toys when we were young rather than buy them. One of these found its final resting place on the second half of the gate. It is a Bulldozer. I do remember my brother taking this particular toy to school for show and tell. He ended the day saying, “Boy that cat is heavy!” "

The gate showcased a lot of farm junk which made it seem very overwhelming when trying to locate a small-sized cache. We didn't realize there would be three parts to this cache. The first hint lead us to a sliding latch. Upon further investigation the end cap came off yielding a clue to the next piece. The clues were very poetic and we had to use our thinking caps to find the next one. We touched everything that moved, everything that had a hole in it and everything that could hide a magnet or something. Lacey found the second clue on the small metal tractor. It's wheel hubcaps hid the next PVC pipe, dowel and the next clue. I was so excited she found one of the clues. Plus I'm sure we touched that little tractor at least five times already, lol. We read the clue and tried to make sense of it. It definitely screamed something that had to do with a "support." Which meant it had to be on the support poles that were holding up the gate. Sure enough a few moments later we had the cache in hand. We signed our names and put it back where we found it.

We got back in the Escape and took a few pictures of Mount Rainier on our way home. She thanked me for bringing her along. I told her we will be doing more of this when it gets a little nicer. She was excited. She drove home and I went inside and started doing my evening things.