Sunday, October 9

International Earthcache Day: Lake Kapowsin, La Grande and Eatonville

I wanted to go get some of the Rainier100 caches and an earthcache for international earthcache day.  I am so glad I decided to save the earthcache out by Lake Kapowsin so I had one close by to do.  Earthcaches aren't that plentiful in my area around Olympia.  There were maybe four in the immediate surroundings but other than that you had to drive a ways to get one.  Lately they have been popping up around Mount Rainier because of the geotour.

The other day my friend Shauna offered some Sounders tickets on Facebook for the first come first served.  I saw it immediately and asked Ben if he wanted to go.  He said sure.  I hopped on it fast.  She called me a little while later to arrange a pick up date.  I told her we would be in the area tomorrow and we can just stop by.  She said she would be at work but she can put them in the UPS/FedEx box.  I told her that would be fine. 

We got up somewhat early and got ready to go.  We had some cereal and I decided on a route for the day.  We would be getting at least five of the Rainier100 caches and one that wasn't part of the series.  We stopped by Shauna's and picked up the tickets.  We waved to her mom and BJ as we drove by.  I also needed to stop by grandma's house to feed her cats.

From there we were on our way to Rainier100 4:  Lake Kapowsin (GC6QWMP) for our souvenir and another code to our passports.  When we got there, I told Ben about the last time I was here.  I was with Bob and Bev and we brought our rafts to paddle over to the island to get that cache.  And of course the one up by the gate in the parking lot.  That was a few years ago now.  There were some people fishing off the dock and we tried hurrying so we wouldn't disturb them or have them ask what we were doing.  I really didn't want to talk to anyone today because we had a mission we had to get done before it rained or got dark.  The cache had us ponder why the lake was relatively new.  It celebrated its 500th birthday back in 2002.  We had to find traces of evidence on why that was true.  We also had to determine what kind of flow from the mountain created the lake and if there were pieces of a certain kind of rock left behind.  We sealed our answers with a picture of us and the lake.  We were probably there for maybe 10 minutes.


When we got home that evening after our adventure I logged our finds and I was congratulated for finding an earthcache!  Wooo!


I had Ben find some along the way to Eatonville because we were right here and he hadn't found these ones yet.  He ended up with 16 total finds this afternoon.  Here is Ben at Moooooo! (GC5J8N5).  He was so excited.


We got closer to Eatonville and found a few for Ben and then he decided he wanted some coffee.  I told him about this little bakery/coffee place in Eatonville that Shauna talks about.  He said let's go try it out.  We rolled up to the Cottage Café and Bakery just off of the main road near the high school when you first get into town.  We went in and there were a lot of delicious items to choose from.  I was really eyeballing that doughnut with sprinkles.  Ben got the snickerdoodle flavored coffee and a layered chocolate treat and I gave in and got the doughnut.  I was telling the girls who were working there, we stopped by here because I have a friend who is a cop in town that told me a while back that this place was good.  They both go, Oh Shauna?  I said yeah.  Small world or that she comes in very often.  Haha.  P.S. the doughnut was very tasty.

We grabbed a few more caches in town so Ben could get them.  The next geotour cache on my list was Rainier100 4:  The Eatonville Rock Festival (GC6R768).  A few months back I think my mom, dad and I walked out to where the field is they talked about on this cache page while we were seeing the Mashel River waterfalls in July.  It makes me giggle that Eatonville had its version of Woodstock.  To Ben and I's disappointment this was the first geotour cache that was hidden very poorly.  I know once you get to the area and see there really isn't a spot to hide it but it was a guardrail cache.


It still wasn't raining and we were heading out towards Alder to get onto Hwy 7.  I asked Ben if he remembers trying to find Tom's Cache (GCMRB6) two Junes ago with mom, the island one?  He said yeah.  Well we haven't found it yet and we are driving right past it.  Do you wanna get it?  He said sure.  When we got to the junction, I noticed the area was still dry and walkable.


During parts of the year it is covered in water and you have to access the cache via boat.  We didn't need a boat today.  This blasted cache has been on my list for years.  The gate was closed due to it being close to the winter season so we parked outside and walked in.  We followed the trail down to the "swimming" area and along the high spot to the island.  We noticed a lot of animal tracks in the dry mud.  We got to the island and started looking.  Last time we didn't go far enough into the brush.


I followed by phone's GPS and it took me almost to the other side of the island and I was still 40 feet off.  It could be anywhere with the coords bouncing all over the place.  No wonder we had such a hard time last time.  There were lots of sticker bushes and really sad looking trees.  I wandered off while Ben did some searching of his own.  A few minutes later I heard "FOUND IT!"  I thought to myself, YESSSS! It's been finally found!  I headed off to his direction and there it was.  The stupid container we couldn't find the last time we were here.  Glad to have this one off the list!


I stopped a few more times to let Ben get some of the caches I have gotten over the years.  I didn't realize there were this many along this road.  We were on our way to Rainier100 4:  Power to the People (GC6Q02T). I actually thought this cache was more near LaGrande by the power boxes.  Nope, it was at a pullout off of Hwy 7 at a scenic viewpoint of the dam.  It was really foggy and you could barely make out the dam.  The cache was down below next to an old stump.  This hide was also kinda lame but at least it wasn't a guard rail like we originally thought when we stopped.


The last one, Rainier100 4:  La Grande (GC6P68G), on the list was in the small town of, yeah you guessed it, La Grande, Wash.  The only memorable spot here was the old post office that was built in 1910.  I was kinda sad it wasn't located at the post office but about 100 feet away near some brush in a flower bed.  Oh well.  It still brought us to a cool location.


Ben picked up a few more as we followed Hwy 7 to the 702 junction to McKenna.  We decided to stop at the store to pick up a few things on the way home.  We were going to make home made bbq pulled chicken.  We got home and started making dinner.  We had beans with it as we watched Sunday night football with the Packers vs. the Giants.  Packers won.  We were sad that the Seahawks were on a bye but it meant that we got to have an adventure outside of the house today.  I am going to try and get a few more of the geotour before the weather really sets in.

Next Adventure:  Sounders vs. Houston Dynamo

No comments: