Geocaching in Bonney Lake and Iron Chef

We got up late and were hurting because that mattress we slept on made us feel older than we actually are.  I must have been really tired because I didn't get up at all through the night.  I did get too hot though in the wee hours of the morning.  I ended up taking my socks and sweat pants off.

I couldn't lay anymore so I got up, used the restroom, got cleaned up a bit and headed upstairs.  Trish was already up, sipping her coffee and getting everything ready for a French toast and sausage breakfast.  I went back downstairs and finally got Ben out of bed so we could eat some food.  I was getting hungry.  I brought my computer upstairs and did some internetting and looked at some of the geocaches I haven't gotten around the area yet. 

Food got done really fast and Amy finally got out of bed.  She was having a rough weekend because her boyfriend was being distant and sending up some serious red flags.  Amy was pretty mopey most of the weekend.  We got the table ready and dug in.  It all hit the spot.  I asked if we could have a small birthday party after breakfast before we all get busy.  Trish said sure.  After breakfast we cleaned up, I grabbed Ben's gifts and Trish went and wrapped hers.  Amy grabbed the card she had ready for him.

We sat in the living room and he opened his gifts.  He got a gift card from Amy and his mom, she had also gotten him some Seahawk chip clips that are also magnets.  I got him his 35 lb. kettlebell he had asked for a few months ago, some athletic shorts and Irish Death beer.

He went outside to fill in and fix some of the landscaping the septic tank contractors messed up.  He was out there for about an hour raking, shoveling and moving rocks.  I asked Ben if we could go geocaching for a bit after he was done.  He said sure.  I asked Trish if she wanted to go and she said yeah, I could get out of the house for a while.  I got onto the computer and looked for a few to go get in the area.  I solved two puzzle caches, one at the library and one near the actual Bonney Lake.  I made a list of about 10 just in case we had time to find them all.

He finished with the front yard, I got my warm clothes on, Trish put her warm clothes on, Amy decided to stay home, we got into the Escape and headed out to the first one, Della's 8-25 B-Day (GC15EK9).  This one was located off of the Old Sumner Buckley Highway.  The road was somewhat busy but we managed to find a pullout near some concrete road partitions.  The short dirt road off the main road could take you to the backside of the Target. I let Ben and Trish look for the cache.  I knew it was going to be underneath the cement structures.  Ben managed to find it quickly.  We signed our names and headed to the next one.

Bring Your Library Card (GC2EXJ3) was the first of the two puzzle caches I solved today.  We got to the library and I had to explain to Ben and Trish what a library cache was.  I told them that they are all different and I have found at least five so far since I've been caching.  My first one was at the Yelm Library back in 2011.  It has since been archived.  Earlier I had to figure out some numbers based on the Dewey Decimal System.  However I forgot to solve for H which made the search harder.  I took a few minutes to solve for H and found out which section of books we needed to look in.  We found the "book" and signed our names.

We drove to Main Street, not even a quarter of a mile away from the library, to get our third cache of the day, Main Street (GC6239FZ). I looked at the hint and knew it was going to be on the stop sign somewhere.  We parked in a lot across the street from the sidewalk and the sign.  We ran across the street and luckily Ben was tall enough to reach it or we wouldn't have been able to get it as easily.  The hard part was getting the darn log book out of the nano screw.  It took us forever because we didn't bring tweezers with us.  I used to bring all that stuff with me when I went more often than I do now.  Trish went and got her Seahawks Swiss army knife and we managed to finally get the log out of it.  We saw Brad drive by in his truck as we were signing our initials on the book.

We drove onto Hwy 410 and turned onto Myers.  We took the first open driveway to park the car and walk the remaining 100 feet to the cache site.  It took us a while to zero in on the cache.  The power lines above did not help the situation.  We Left the Good Hands (GC2HAA9) was a tricky one.  Trish ended up stepping on it and noticing a container embedded into it.  "Is this it?" She asked.  "It sure is!"  We signed our names and Ben made sure it was put back with some leaves and tree debris over it for the next set of cachers.

We walked back to the Escape, turned it on, put the coordinates into the Nuvi to the next one and Trish exclaims, "Did you guys just hear that wreck?  It just happened."  As she is pointing to where Myers merges onto Hwy 410.  Neither Ben or I heard anything.  Ben gets out and calls 911 and walks towards the wreck.  We are still not sure how it happened but it involved a huge pick up truck and a small Honda Civic type car.  They were smashed pretty bad and the car was smoking.  The Civic driver was an older Asian woman who basically walked away uninjured and the truck was a 35+ guy who was uninjured however his daughter in the backseat had a possible broken arm.  Ben helped while the fire department and the ambulance was on their way.  Once they got there, he explained who he was and they took over.

We headed up the hill as we were still trying to figure out who hit who.  Our next stop was Myers Road #1 (GC69QVP) and apparently it was hidden in plain sight.  I pulled over near a driveway into a housing development and of course a giant motor home wanted to turn right where we were.  It was lame but we were way out of the way.  We searched the side of the road the Escape was on and couldn't find anything that was magnetic.  We jogged over to the other side to expand our search zone.  I looked on everything that was metal that a small cache would stick to.  Apparently I didn't check one spot.  I was getting to the point where maybe it was missing?  Then Ben and Trish walked over and Ben says "Here it is!  It's in plain sight!"  I'm glad we didn't have to mark it as a DNF.

We stopped by Allen York Park to look for 10 Years! - East Pierce, WA #2: Plateau (GC27PBY) and could not find it.  We had a great walk in the park though.  We walked back to the Escape and headed to the actual Bonney Lake where the second puzzle I solved this morning, Love My Harley (GC4DYZ0), was located.  The loop around the lake was one way so it was weird navigating around.  We found where the cache was hidden, pulled over, I had Ben grab it and sign it for us and he hopped back in.

We had time for one more before we got ready to go out to dinner for Ben's birthday.  I found the closest one that was found recently and it brought us to the Bonney Lake Dog Park (GC59JND).  We parked near the elementary school and walked to the gate.  I was telling Ben and Trish that I came here a few years ago with Bob and Bev and we could not find this one.  We really thought it was missing because we should have found it right away due to the hint.  We walked down the trail and crossed paths with a guy who was walking his dog.  He asked, "aren't you guys missing a dog?"  We chuckled and told him we were geocaching.  He just continued walking by.  We made it to the section of the trail where some of the trees were down and a place I spent a half hour looking with Bob and Bev a while back.  Trish literally walked over to the crossed trees, picked something up and asked if this is what we were looking for.  I said, "it couldn't have been that easy! We spent a long time looking and came up with nothing the last time I was here!"  We signed our names, put it back and walked back to the Escape.

We headed back to the house and on the way we let Amy know to get ready because we didn't want to wait for her.  When we did get home Trish changed and put on some make up, I changed my pants and shoes and Ben did the same.  Brad didn't want to go so he stayed.  We ended up taking the Escape because it was parked behind everyone.  We drove to the South Hill via the back way through
McMillin down in the valley and up the hill to Puyallup.  We went to a Japanese steak house called Iron Chef.  We got in quickly and sat with some strangers.  Our waiter took our drink order and which dinner we wanted.

I had the steak and chicken.  Our chef messed up and ended up giving me fried rice that I didn't ask for so Ben ate it.  Both times I've been to Japanese steak houses we really haven't had a fun chef.  In fact both were pretty blah.  They did the standard tricks with the knives, egg juggling and the onion volcano.  Amy was drinking tea and her tea kettle fell apart and she was very embarrassed.  Our hostess brought her a new one.  We ate way too much food, paid way too much and headed back to Bonney Lake the same way.  We stopped at Fred Meyer to pick up another movie and this time they had the newer Ghostbusters movie. 

We got back to the house and had a birthday cake for Ben which was an ice cream brownie cake.  It was delicious.

We watched Ghostbusters with everyone since Brad's kids, Grace and Christian, were at the house for the evening.  I did some internetting at the table while I watched the movie. 

I stayed up until about one and decided I was done for the evening.  Today was pretty eventful and I hope the weather starts getting better so I can go out and geocache more.

Next Adventure:  Ben's Birthday and Chambers Bay Love Lock Bridge