I got up, got ready, got some food together and grabbed the recycle so I could dump it off on my way out to Rainier. I called mom to tell her I was on my way and to get her stuff ready so we weren't waiting around for her when I got there. I got rid of the recycle and headed to get mom. She was ready for once. She threw her stuff in the Escape and we were on our way towards I-5. I've done this drive many times between June 2009 and February 2010 when I was seeing Brad in Hillsboro. Once we got on the freeway I had mom try to find out more about the sloths in Rainier. She really couldn't find much. I might have to create an alternative adventure once we get down there.
The drive was pretty uneventful. The weather looked like it could rain at some point today and we were hoping that it held up until we were on our way home. We got off the freeway in Longview and took the highway to the Lewis and Clark bridge to cross the Columbia River into Oregon. We drove into Rainier and found out that this sloth place was up the hill towards Astoria off of Larson Road. We turned around and followed the directions. It took us past Rainier High School and an Amish store called Black Buggy Furniture. Not even a quarter of a mile from the furniture store was the gate to the animal sanctuary. It had a large sign on it that said something about patrons waiting outside until their appointment time. There wasn't an option to get an appointment. How do people get to go in here? It was a mystery.
We moved on and decided to do more research at another time. Meanwhile, mom wanted to go into the furniture store. I checked my geocaching app to see if there were any caches nearby. There was one at the furniture store! Score! Mom stayed in the car while I walked down to the cache. It was an ammo can hidden by Freda! Oh how I missed Freda. The geocaching world lost a good one when she left us to years ago. I signed our names, took a picture and put 2's Company~3's a Crowd (GC3H8ZK) back in its hiding spot.
Mom and I went into the store and looked around. All the furniture was handmade by Amish folk and it was really expensive. Since it was handmade the quality was spot on. I ended up finding some blue popcorn kernels to take home with me. As we paid we talked about college football specifically the Pac-12 because they saw my sweatshirt. We thanked them and headed back to the Escape.
I asked mom what she wanted to do next since we drove all the way down here. She said she didn't know. I suggested since we were down here we could go to St. Helens, Oregon. I've been down there several times over the years but it baffles me that she had never gone. I told her the movie Halloweentown was filmed there. She didn't know that and wanted to go see it even more. I told her since it wasn't October yet they probably don't have all the Halloween decorations out. She wanted to go anyway. We drove through Rainier again and down Hwy 30 to St. Helens.
I haven't been down this way in a while so it was nice to see if anything had changed plus it was a nice little drive. When we got there I had to put in the coordinates so I knew where downtown St. Helens was on the river. It has been a few years since I've been here so I couldn't remember every detail. We found a free place to park near the shops across from the famous city hall building. I told mom about some of the places that I could remember.
We walked to city hall and I found out there was a multicache, Historic Old Town St. Helens (GC6N4C9) here so we started doing the pieces of it as we walked the street and took pictures. We walked down to the park near the river where we used the restroom and tried to figure out how to get to the other side of the fence that was blocking some of mom's river shots.
We finished the multi, which took us to the theater and then to the final on our way to the small walking trail along the river. The final was a nano stuck to a yellow power box with a skull head on it just down the street from city hall. I thought it was cool.
We made our way around the small walking trail as mom took pictures. We walked back over to where we parked the Escape and decided to find something else to do while we were here. I grabbed one more caches, The Forgotten Cache (GC3AXBW) tucked into a rock wall. It was an easy rock wall.
We looked to see if there were any waterfalls in the area. We drove to Scappoose to show mom the large red candle and we got monsooned on for about a half hour. Then I saw the Goodwill and had to go inside. I found a few things and was impressed on how organized this place was I gave a compliment to one of the workers. She thanked me.
We had to get gas before we were stranded and I always hated getting gas in Oregon because we had to have it pumped for us by the attendant. I hated waiting there and I hated handing them my money. Why can't I just do it? It would take less time and I would be out of there. But then it takes jobs away from people.
Mom, again, suggested that we go see one of the falls just located off the Scappoose/Vernonia Highway. I said sure, it's still pretty early to be heading back towards home. There wasn't an exact address when mom was searching for but we thought we found it but it turns out we did not. We did find a little creek to enjoy though.
We got back on the highway and headed north towards home. We drove through all the little towns and finally back into Rainier. We went across the Lewis and Clark bridge and into Longview where we followed the road to I-5. Mom wanted pizza for dinner so I figured since we were heading through Castle Rock in a bit to go to Papa Pete's for dinner.
We shared a salad and ordered a large pepperoni and black olives pizza. I had a Pepsi with it and we scarfed that pizza down. We took the leftovers home for dad and Ben. When we got near Chehalis mom asked if we could stop at Walmart so she could get a few things. I said sure. She bought some Cheerios, strawberries and yogurt for dad.
We got off of I-5 and headed towards Rainier. I dropped mom off and headed back into Lacey and went home. I got a shower and hung out for the evening watching TV shows, logging caches and trying to catch up on my blog.
Next Adventure: Beacon Rock, The Sasquatch Series and Panther Creek Falls
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