We got the address put into the GPS and headed to Old European in Post Falls. I told everyone that I hadn't been to an Old European since college. The one in Pullman is very hard to get into therefore I never went except that one time with a few of my friends in the spring when it was less busy. It was impossible to get into during the fall when we had home football games. We pulled up, got a great parking spot and saw how many people were going in and out of the place. We saw the waiting line and got scared. Ugh, I wonder how long we'd have to wait?
Obviously not too long. We were sat within 10 minutes of arriving. They brought us coffee and other breakfast drinks that we ordered as we browsed the menu for our food. I ordered the full meat goulash, Ben ordered the omelet stew and they gave us "ables" their form of hush puppies...kind of like pancake balls. Mom ordered some eggs and sausage and Trish ordered an omelet as well but not hard core as Ben's man omelet. We ate, visited and enjoyed our time. Our waitress came by and dumped off our checks. We paid on the way out.
We grabbed a few letterboxes on the way out of Idaho...mostly to finish the Planetary Pursuit challenge. However, there is one cache I've had my eye on for years. For some reason every time I was in Spokane I never had enough time to grab it. Aliens Among Us (GC1N0B9) was hidden in 2009 and has been found over 400 times since it published. I was really excited to go find it. I asked everyone if they were done with Spokane and if we were ready to head home. I-90 west we go!
Just before the Medical Lake/Cheney exit we got off and followed the coordinates onto a road that paralleled the interstate. You could see the space ship as we got closer and closer. We read the signs as we pulled in. We really weren't sure where we were suppose to go so we parked on the side of the road and walked in. The guy who lives here had some really cool stuff! He came out because he saw us wandering around. We asked him if he was open and he said yeah! We told him why we were here. Mostly for the geocache at his alien spaceship but we also wanted to look around because we've noticed his treasures from I-90 for years. He said that he's had a lot of people stop by and find this cache and admire his stuff. He even added that someone wrote about the cache and published it in a magazine.
Ben and I walked over and grabbed the cache while mom and Trish walked around the property looking at all of his stuff. I knew it wasn't going to be in the spaceship but in the cairn of rocks in front of it. It was an ammo can and I dropped a few trackables inside while Ben signed our names on the logbook. We took a few pictures with the cache and the spaceship before putting the ammo can back and meeting up with Trish and mom.
The guy who owned the property headed back into his house while we walked around looking at his junk which were mostly statues. Mom found a piece that she wanted to take home because honestly you will never seen anything like this again unless you made it yourself. She found a Rat Fink statue and I was floored. I thought I would never seen anything like this anywhere. Mom wanted to buy it but only wanted to pay $50 for it instead of $60. I told her she had to ask the guy if he was willing to sell it for less. She knocked on the door and he came out.
He drove her in the golf cart over to the statue and then drove it back. He asked us if Ben was interested in any guns and brought one out. Ben wasn't in the market for one but enjoyed checking this one out anyway. Mom paid full price for her statue because he gets his statues from Mexico. The metal is melted down car parts. Ben and I decided to walk around and check out the stuff since we missed it when we found the cache.
We thanked him once again for letting us come onto his property to check out the cache and his statues. He said stop by anytime because he gets stuff shipped to him weekly. We walked back to the Escape and headed back towards the freeway. But first, I wanted to get a few more caches as we headed back to the west side. The next stop was at the gas station just off the on ramp, the cache was called Third O'Fence (GC36BVY) and it was a pretty clever one. It took Ben and I a bit to figure it out mostly because the coords were off. Then I had an idea and was very glad the water wasn't higher than it was or we wouldn't have been able to grab it.
We got back onto I-90 and headed west for a while. We put a few miles behind us and as we got closer to Sprague I asked everyone if they wanted to use the restroom at the upcoming rest area and everyone said yes. Everyone got out and I headed over to the cache that was less than 500 feet away. Sprague R&R (GC79DNM) was inside of a stump. I walked right up to it, signed it and put it back the way I found it. I walked back to the Escape and we got back onto I-90.
I had put in the next cache on my radar, Power Surge (GC11VF8) because it had a lot of favorite points and it was a good place to stop, get out and stretch our legs. I was imagining something really cool so I had hoped it was since it did have like 40 favorite points. We got to the off ramp, just west of Moses Lake, and followed the GPS to the location. Because we were underneath the powerlines it made it difficult to see where we really had to go. When it settled down we found the dirt road and drove up it until we couldn't go anymore. There were sooo many tumbleweeds preventing us from going any further. I parked, got out and walked the rest of the way. I saw where ground zero was and pulled it out. I really couldn't see why this cache had that many favorite points. I was kinda disappointed.
We stopped two more times after we crossed the bridge into Vantage. They were both park and grabs so I was the only one who got out and grabbed them and everyone else sat in the Escape and watched me. Columbia Roll On (GC4CZ9D) and Simply Petrified (GC3P6V5) were both guardrail caches.
We got over the mountains really easy this time and got onto Hwy 18 towards Puyallup to drop off Trish at Korum. When we got there she was totally ready to head home, get cleaned up and rest. We tired the poop out of her this weekend, plus the bed we slept in probably didn't help either. We helped her get her stuff into her car, thanked her for coming with us, handed out hugs and told her we had fun. We headed back towards Rainier, dropped mom off and came home. I was exhausted. I had enough energy to unpack the Escape, get stuff ready for work the next day and take a shower.
My head hit the pillow and I was out light a light.
Next Adventure: Retro: Moving On
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