The weather was going to be decent and mom wanted to go somewhere so I thought, let's go to the Kitsap Peninsula and got to some state parks we've never been to before. Plus it was Mother's Day so it would be nice to go explore and see some sights we're not used to seeing.
That morning I got up around 9 and wondered if we were actually going to go. Dad ended up staying home and working on some stuff and I told mom we were either going to go north or east. I picked north because of the state park caches rather than the Rainier100, we live closer to those so we could get them anytime.
I got my query ran and mom rallied finally. We didn't leave until about 11ish. We got gas in Rainier and headed towards Yelm. I felt I was missing something. Then it hit me, our passport was in another bag in my bedroom. Ugh!! We turned around, went back and got it. We were on our way once again. I mapped out our route and headed up to I-5 towards Tacoma. We merged onto Hwy 16 to Gig Harbor and over the Narrows Bridge. A few years back they added a toll for the people heading into Tacoma rather than leaving Tacoma. We usually just went through Shelton to avoid the toll. We planned on doing that on the way home.
The first one, WaStatePks100: Kopachuck (GC4B4RQ) was near the Gig Harbor area and neither of us had been here before. We followed Nuvi and she wanted to take us the long way around so we had to turn around to avoid back tracking. Sometimes I wonder if she takes joy out of messing with us with her directions. We got on the correct route and was at the state park in no time. We parked in the run down parking lot and decided to go down towards the beach first then get the cache.
We've never seen that many whole sand dollars in one place! Sooo many! There were some that were still alive and some not and most of them were reduced to pieces. We spent some time wandering around the beach. This section of beach even had an oyster bed that was staked off. We could see the Olympic Mountains from here and there was a small island to the east of us called Cutt's Island. We spent a good 45 minutes down here before it was time to get the cache and move onto the next state park.
We walked back up the trail and into the parking lot again. We took a small trail and found out that wasn't the right one. When we did find the right one it led us to another section of the park and mom started getting eaten by mosquitos so she took my picture and headed back to the Escape. It was an ammo can hidden underneath a couple of pieces of bark. I signed the logbook, got my stamp and put it back better than I found it.
We both walked back to the Escape and decided this state park wasn't one of our favorites. It desperately needed some work done to it. The campsites were closed due to the trees being diseased and it has had its fair share of storm damage.
We made our way north up some side roads and back onto Hwy 16 near Purdy and got off of our exit at Port Orchard and followed the scenic route along the northern shoreline. There were some great views of Bremerton, the ship yard and the Olympic Mountains behind the skyline. We meandered closer to WaStatePks100: Manchester (GC47B9B) in which we made sure to set aside some time to do because it was a lengthy multi. We entered the gate and made the parking lot loop deciding what side we wanted to park on. We parked, grabbed the stuff we would need and immediately walked to the Torpedo Storehouse, which was waypoint #1.
We answered the necessary questions, took some pictures and moved onto the Mining Casement, waypoint #2. Again, we filled in the missing digits and took a few pictures.
We followed the trail towards Rich Passage to fill out the rest of our missing coordinates at Battery Mitchell. We finished filling in our coordinates and plugged it into the GPS and followed the trail to the cache.
Along the way, we walked past many people enjoying the nice day at the park, barking seals at the nearby dock, a staircase and a hedge that reminded me of a maze. We found the cache, signed the log and stamped our passport as quick as we could because the mosquitos were loving mom. We went back the same way we came, used the restroom and got back into the Escape. We still had two more caches on the list to grab.
We headed over to the guns.
We got back in the Escape and got back onto Hwy 3 to Bainbridge Island. We followed Hwy 3 up until Hwy 305 through Poulsbo (I haven't been through here since Natalie's wedding back in 2010) and made our way to the posted coords on the island. I have never been to Bainbridge Island and have had this specific earthcache on my list for about four years. When we finally got onto the island, we followed the coords down a side road and when we got to the cache site I was very surprised on where it was. I thought you had to walk to get it, instead it was at the corner of Phelps and North Madison, right there...for everyone to see you take pictures with it. We found a place to park nearby and walked the 100 feet to Frog Rock (GC1C93A). We walked over and enjoyed this erratic painted as a frog. I brought mom here because she likes frogs and I thought she would appreciate it so I guess I saved it for a good occasion and the right person to come with me to see it. We took a dozen or so pictures with it and then mom wanted to go because she started feeling weirded out by the cars passing and staring at us. We got what we needed and headed back to Poulsbo.
There, mom wanted some food so we stopped at Dairy Queen, mostly because she wanted a hot fudge sundae afterwards. We both had the chicken tenders meal and it hit the spot. We were hungrier than we thought we were. Mom got her sundae and we hit the road. I plugged home into the Nuvi and she said we would be home around 9 if we didn't stop anywhere else. We drove Hwy 3 towards Shelton home so we didn't have to pay the toll on the Narrows.
We got home around 9:15. Next time we come up that way I hope to leave earlier so we could see more of what the Kitsap Peninsula has to offer.
Next Adventure: Mother's Day
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