My Adventures and Places Life Takes Me: Heading Out to Seabrook for the Weekend

I had a 4 day weekend ahead of me for my birthday. Last year I didn't take it off just because it would look poor since I was a new employee. This year it was on a Sunday but I wanted to take the Monday off so Ben and I could do something fun. I've really never done anything other than dinners or movies on my birthday so this year it would be fun to do something different. I wanted to drive down to the redwoods in Northern California but it didn't work out because Ben had training on Saturday morning at work. Instead he suggested a place called Seabrook, just north of Ocean Shores, for the weekend. I said sure. Having an autumn birthday sucks most of the time in the Pacific Northwest because it is always raining...majority of the time. The only time it didn't rain is when I lived in Pullman.

He got all of his stuff packed up the night before. I got up around 10ish, got my stuff together and he went and got his haircut, got home around noon and we packed, got gas and left in his car towards the ocean.

Since it wasn't raining, I decided to grab some caches along the way. I had a few mapped out along a route. We drove up the 101 towards Shelton, got off on Hwy 8 and drove towards McCleary with a pit stop in Squaxin Island to get one of the heritage caches.

WSHS 125 - Squaxin Island (GC6JV81) was located in a pretty neat area. The museum was insane and so was the koi pond. The koi were very curious at what we were doing and demanded that we feed them. Unfortunately there wasn't any food to give them. Ben and I looked for the cache that was hidden among roots down a small walking trail near a picnic area. It was pretty easy to locate. We opened it up, grabbed the log book, signed our names and put it back where we found it. We enjoyed the pond a little while longer and walked carefully back to the car...the boardwalk was very slippery.

We got back into the car and drove Hwy 8 into McCleary to find Fire Me 24 McCleary (GC4Y32H). I haven't been through this little town since at least spring of 2011, when we got the only two in town...which are now archived. We drove up to the fire station and started searching. We were fooled by the toy in the front of the bay doors. We expanded our search and found it inside a fire pipe with a screw thread cap. I let Ben find it because I wanted to find some of the Fire Me series and I knew he would enjoy them.

We got onto the highway and got off in Elma to follow the Monte-Elma Road to the only other letterbox, Little Tomato (GC2B93V) I haven't gotten in this area. I am still trying to get 50 letterboxes to finish the challenge so I can get the only one in Rainier I don't have yet. It's been a long journey because there just isn't that many letterboxes close by. I am now at 38 and have 12 more to find. Ugh. We stopped at the coords and realized that it was a veggie and fruit stand. I could see where the cache was from the car. I got it, logged our names, got my photo and was back in the car within 5 minutes.

We continued to follow the Monte-Elma road into the tiny town of Brady. We pulled over at the fire station there and started looking for the Fire Me 13 Brady (GC4119Z) . It was actually near the fence line near some bushes. The last few we found were actually near the building. It was hanging from the only bush in the area.

We headed into Montesano to grab the last Fire Me cache in the series for the day. This one was at the Montesano Fire Department, where one of Ben's friends worked. She was on shift for the day but in class for training. She knew we were coming but we didn't know if she could come out and see us or not. We found Fire Me 16 Montesano (GC4118N) in front of the station underneath a rock.

We sat out in the parking lot for about 15 minutes waiting to hear back from her. We never did unfortunately. It would have been nice to meet her.

We drove down the road a little ways, parked the car and walked to a cache called Triangular (GC2G60T). It was similar to my Triangle series back home. It was located inside of a triangle of land. We knew it was at the tree but according to the clue we would have to look at it from the right angle. We spent some time looking and came up with nothing. Then I had an idea. The only place it could be is on the tree. I squatted down and looked up. There it was crammed inside a hole in the limb.

We got into Aberdeen after a short drive from Monte. While we were driving through we thought about stopping at Walmart for some milk and realized we didn't bring cereal for our breakfasts this weekend. Instead we decided to have a late lunch instead. We ate at the Happy Teriyaki. Ben had his General Tso and I had my chicken teriyaki and yummy white sticky rice. We spent less than an hour there. We got going west towards the coast. We took the cut off on the 101 and took the back way to Seabrook.

Seabrook is a new beach town that was built around 2004. They designed it to be self sustainable. You can walk just about everywhere within a few minutes. There is a pool, shops, a store, outdoor activities, a farm, a town hall, a gym and other various amenities. You can rent a house or own one. It is a short walk to and from the beach down below the bluff. I had no idea it was this involved. I thought it was just a place to rent beach houses. It's an actual town!

We found the rental place to check in and get our keys to the Crow's Nest. We followed the map and found our home for the weekend. Originally I thought we had the right place but when I opened the door it was unlocked so I thought we had the wrong place. We looked at the other place, which was the main house, and saw people's stuff inside. We didn't want to walk in on anyone so we called someone to meet us to make sure we had the right place. It turns out the first place we went into was ours. I just found it odd that the door was unlocked. We parked the car in front and started taking stuff upstairs. A neighbor cat helped us bring in stuff.

Ben threw pillows at me at the stop of the stairwell as I was coming up the stairs.

We got settled in and played Trouble and Yahtzee and ate popcorn while we watched some of the college football games. Ben was really a sore loser at Trouble.

We walked to the town hall for the event in town and decided it wasn't very exciting. There was a band playing music really loud for the venue, you had to buy a sample of the Waska Valley Distillery if you wanted to try it and there were just way too many people inside the building to make it worth while. We walked back to the Crow's Nest to hang out some more.

UW lost their first game of the season and WSU won keeping our undefeated Pac-12 streak alive. It was nice to finally be better than the Huskies. I rubbed it into everyone's faces on Facebook. They all freaked out and started talking about the Apple Cup. I told them that doesn't matter. Tonight we were better than you. Then they all made up a bunch more excuses about why they didn't beat USC and compared our game to theirs. Apples and oranges. Every football game is different you can't compare them. Oh and my Penguins won too.

I got a shower in and then Ben gave me a back massage. My lower back had been hurting really bad the last few weeks. Every time I woke up in the morning I felt really old. This actually made me feel better. We watched Train Wreck and fell asleep before the movie was over. I was tired.