Geocaching in Mount Vernon, Visiting Doug and Jenn in Mill Creek and Home

Since we got to Mount Vernon so late the previous night it was nice to sleep in for a while.  I got up and got ready for the day.  I heard Elaine and Dom in the kitchen making breakfast for everyone.  I had my two pancakes and bacon and milk while I chatted with Elaine.  We didn't want to wait for the guys to get up because they were taking too long and we were hungry.  About twenty minutes later, Michael and Ben came downstairs to eat their food.  Dom wanted more bacon but he had his share for the day.  Elaine had to make some scrambled eggs for Ben because they were not used to making a large amount of food for anyone.

We chilled around the house for a bit.  Ben and I played basketball and legos in Dom's room with him before we all got motivated for a small hike around the Skagit Valley neighborhood.  The weather was decent and I regretted not brining shorts with me. They asked me if there were any geocaches around and I said there were about four of them within walking distance...only if they were up for it.  We changed our clothes and got everything ready to go.  We started towards the park that wasn't too far away from their house.

There Can Only Be One!! (GC54QAE) was on a bus stop sign.  I explained to everyone that I have found caches similar to these ones over the years and that these ones area hard to spot because the fishing line it really hard to see, the fishing line tends to blend in really well to its surroundings.  I found the fishing line and it was attached to something inside the metal part of the sign.  I pulled gently and the line broke because of the overgrown grass inside.  I could not get the small nano container out of the holes.  This cache was doomed.  I said we found it and then I attached a needs maintenance on my online log.  I didn't get a picture of this one because we couldn't.  We walked on down Skagit Highlands Parkway to the next one.

We found a small dirt trail off to the side of the paved pathway and decided to take it.  We found an obvious nurse stump but we were still off by 50 or more feet.  The directions on the cache page were very vague.  We spent too much time here after we figured out we were in the wrong area.  We walked back down to the pathway and found this grassy pull out area and it was muddy.  Ugh, how are we going to get across the muddy area?  Ben had his waterproof hiking shoes on, Michael just went in and got a little muddy and I found a way to get in but only got slightly muddy.  The cache, Knot Hallow (GC3QM09) was either near a homeless shelter or a shelter that was created by teenagers to have sex in.  Either way it was gross.  I found the container thrown on the ground my a muggle and its contents were scattered all over the ground.  I checked my bag for an extra piece of paper to add to the cache because a baggie was left behind.  We all signed our names and we put it back where we thought it was suppose to go.  We let the cache owner know that its been compromised.

We started down the hill to the third one along this road.  We all really weren't looking forward to walking back up the hill after we were done finding Don't Get Stumped (GC5VJNH).  We threw rocks at targets across the street to see if we could come close.  It took me three throws to hit the light pole.  Then Ben and Michael tried to scale the wall next to the road without getting hurt.  They decided that they weren't wearing the best shoes to do it.  We saw several retention ponds on the way down. 

There were birds chirping and animals scurrying about.  We were all looking for a day when it finally didn't rain on us.  Apparently Washington set an all time record for the wettest winter on record from November to April.  I didn't think it would ever end.  We got to the dirt road and followed it to the stump.  I had someone else go and find it since I was the veteran.  It was an ammo can and had lots of weird trinkets in it.  We signed the log book, got a quick picture and put it back.

We started heading back towards the house because we were getting hungry.  Michael suggested we take the Buckhorn Trail back because it was shorter.  We still had to go up a hill though.

I wasn't wearing the proper outfit or shoes for this particular trail.  I wished I was wearing shorts and hiking shoes rather than jeans and tennis shoes.  We finally got to the house and we all realized we were starving.  We threw around the idea of going out to Mexican but then Michael suggested we have burgers and fries at the house.  The burgers and fries hit the spot.  Dom put on a weird kid show of eating cheese and falling on the kitchen floor hurting his face.  He acted like he was dying.  As the day wore on, he got more comfortable with Ben and I.  The last time we saw him he was an infant.  We chatted, played dominoes and ate our food.  It was nice catching up with them again.

We knew it was getting late and we had to get through Seattle traffic on a Sunday so we packed up our stuff and headed out.  We thanked them for hosting us and we would have to do it again soon.  We headed onto I-5 and down towards Mill Creek.  I thought it would be nice to see Doug and Jenn.  Doug gave me his address and it was stop and go near Tulalip and there wasn't a reason for it to be congested.  Then the nice day turned into cold and raining as we entered the convergent zone.  Gross.

We got to Doug's exit and needed some drinks so we stopped at the Fred Meyer.  Hey turns out there was a cache here too!  We literally parked 10 feet away from Five Nights at Freddy's (GC5TWCT).  We quickly found it under the lamp skirt, signed it and put it back in less than two minutes. 

We went inside Fred Meyers and got drinks and a couple of candy bars.  We texted Doug we were a few minutes away and then had to turn around because we missed the road.  We drove up and saw the small park and Doug standing there waiting.  It was nice to see him but with all the stress he had endured the past few months he looked pretty bad.  He was having trouble with his roommate and was urgently trying to find a new place.  It needed to be closer to work, be pet friendly (since Jenn got a cat) and the rent had to be cheaper.  He was hemorrhaging money.  They had to use public transportation because they didn't have a car anymore.  It was just a terrible situation that needed to be changed.  We talked about various things for about an hour or so.  Then we had some nosey neighbors approach us asking if we saw some kids being inappropriate.  We told them that we didn't see any kids in the area being inappropriate except for a few girls playing on the playground and some kids using razor scooters.  They thanked us and moved on.  I made fun of them because they were clearly Huskie fans. 

Doug's quote though,

"Better watch out for them kids because we heard some inappropriate things we didn't like.  Just look out for those kids. Gotta love passive aggressive busy bodies."

He thanked us for coming and we said our goodbyes.  I told him to let us know if he needed help moving and he said he would let us know.  We headed home and the traffic was surprisingly not that bad for a Sunday night.  We got home around 7:30ish and unpacked the car.  I started a load of laundry and got cleaned up.  A new week was upon us with lots of changes.

Next Adventure:  Blue Switch Day!