Ben and I cleaned up our campsite area and started packing
and putting it back into the Escape and his car. We did one last sweep, used the restroom and
came up with an afternoon plan on the way home.
Ben had talked to a few fishermen who were coming in on their boat and
mentioned that we visit Potholes. I
haven’t been there in years. I did
remember seeing the sign every time I drove past Othello on the way to
school. It’s about time I visited this
area again.
We stopped and got gas at a shell station and used their air
for a dollar. I brought quarters with me
for the state park shower and just happened to need them here as well. I bought ice while ben filled up our inner
tubes with air.We headed up Hwy 395 towards the Hwy 17 junction. I saw we were close to Mesa and I needed a cache in that small town for the Towns and Cities Challenge. I am more than halfway done at this point. We stopped and grabbed Raven and Crow in Poe (GC6K2PJ) inside of a small park off the main road. It was pretty hot outside and I went and retrieved it and ben stayed behind looking at his phone. He told me to be careful for rattlesnakes. I told him I would be. I found the cache quickly, signed our names, put it back and made our way back to the cars.
We stayed on Hwy 17, up to Hwy 26 and on the east side of Othello towards Moses Lake. We got off at the junction and went west to Potholes State Park on the 262. I made sure to bring my passport just in case we drove past one we didn’t have yet. This would probably be our last state park cache since we were now approved for the house that we applied for. We would have to cut back on day and weekend trips so we could save some money or at least until I found a full time job. We drove over the O’Sullivan Dam and I couldn’t believe how vast this lake was. It took up most of the area as far as the eye could see. We wrapped back around and drove past a small resort, store and gas station. I pulled into the gas station and Ben followed. His car did not have the discover pass but mine did so we were going to leave his at the store and drive mine into the park. We got his inner tube, sunscreen and everything else he wanted to bring and shoved it into the Escape. We drove the short distance to the park entrance and went over towards the day use area.
I changed into my swimming suit, we got our inner tubes and we went over to the boat launch. We sat on our inner tubes and floated out away from the boat launch. The weather was awesome and it was just nice to float and not worry about anything for an hour or so.
It was approaching time to go and we got out of our wet clothes and into some dry ones. We almost left the park without getting the geocache! We turned around and parked as close as we could. I remembered that Potholes was another one of Mr. Gadget’s cool bird house caches. I followed the trail and it led me to the bird house with Signal on it. I fiddled with it for a while until Ben showed up and then he started fiddling with it. We figured out how it came apart put we couldn’t turn the piece that dropped the bottom out of it. I had to go get a tool from the Escape to be able to turn it. You just couldn’t turn it with your fingers but it easily turned with the pliers. We tried really hard not to break any piece of it. After 15 minutes of tinkering with it the bottom finally fell out and we had the cache in hand. We signed the log book, stamped our passport and put the bird house back together for the next cacher.
We got back into the Escape and went back to the store to drop Ben off at his car. We went inside and got smoothies from the ice cream portion of the store. We took the same road to Frenchman Hills Road, then onto Dodson Road, then onto Hwy 26 where we got on I-90 at Vantage.
The Escape struggles up hills especially long ones. Ben passed me with ease and got a few miles
ahead of me. We got off at what I call “The
Strip” of Ellensburg and followed the road down to the Iron Horse Pub Brewery,
a place we finally made it to before it closed for the day. We always showed up when it was closed. It was a small place, the waitress took our
drink orders, I ordered the Heff and Ben ordered the Irish Death, straight from
the source. It was definitely more zippy
out of the tap rather than the bottles we drink from often. We also decided to get some food since we had
about three more hours until home. Ben
ordered the sandwich and I got the bratwurst.
They were both tasty but really could tone down on the saltiness of it. The bitter beer didn’t help the situation
either. We finished our food, paid and I
grabbed some free popcorn for the road.
We tried to get a geocache down the road but it was in the entry way of
a building that you could only access during business hours. Poo.
We got back in our vehicles and drove to the fairgrounds to pick up
another heritage cache, WSHS 125 – Kittitas County Fairgrounds (GC6JE8F). I led us to the wrong parking lot and could
not access it. Ben showed me where to go
since he apparently has been here and didn’t tell me. When he was doing wildland firefighting, a
large group stayed here at the fairgrounds inside the smaller buildings. He shared some of the stories with me while
we were here.
We made it ground zero near the covered wagon and started
searching for it. It was a large so we
were bound to find it quickly. I spotted
it first and pulled it out so we could sign the log book and get our passports
stamped. This was our third one of this
particular geotour. We got a few
pictures before we put it back. We
walked back to the cars and took a picture of Ben riding one of the statues. In similar fashion to the one he took the
last time he was here. 
We got onto I-90 and didn’t expect horrible traffic. We thought it was late enough for some smooth sailing over the Cascades. We were wrong. Just after Thorpe, it was stop and go and we moved a few feet here and there. I was getting frustrated! Ben was a few cars ahead of me and it was really hard to get a hold of him. For some reason my phone wouldn’t work in that specific area. Somehow I did finally get a hold of him and told him to get off at the next exit because we were going to go I-82 to Yakima and over White Pass. At that point I would rather back track then sit in stop and go traffic…at least we were moving. Again, the Escape struggled up the hill so I got way behind Ben who flew up the hills. I haven’t been this way to or from Yakima since at least 2013 with my mom.
We arrived in Selah and I was only a couple miles behind Ben. I told him we should get some gas before going over the pass. He agreed and I told him there were a couple of gas stations in Naches. After getting gas and sharing some snacks, we were on our way towards the pass. At this point my GPS said we would be getting home around 11. I had no idea how long we would have been in traffic if we decided to stay on I-90, but like I said, at least we were moving and probably would have gotten home around the same time or later if we would have stayed.
There really wasn’t any traffic so we breezed right through. We had to be cautious around Packwood because
there are always giant elk standing in the middle of the road. We turned onto Hwy 7 in Morton so we could
say good night to each other since we weren’t going to the same place yet. I would go the back way to Rainier and he
would continue on Hwy 12 to I-5. We
visited for about 10 minutes and we were on the road again. Just as the GPS said, I got home around 11
and Ben got home at about 10:45. I
pulled some stuff out of the Escape that wouldn’t survive the night, showered
really quickly, got my stuff ready for work the next day and passed out
hard. 4:30 a.m. comes awfully fast.
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