Easter

This was the first Easter since the worst day of our lives.  Grammie was always the one who planned our holidays and birthday parties.  Family was something that was very important to her and getting together was just as important to her.  She and Grandpa were the ones who hosted most of our family get togethers since I could remember.  The stopped doing a lot of them around 2013.  They just ran out of energy to put them together.  I offered to help and we started having them at our house, Kevin and Karla's and occasionally at Grandma Karen's house.  A few years ago, we started having Thanksgiving and Easter at Kevin and Karla's house and they let us know when they couldn't so we hosted it.

Last year Kevin and Karla couldn't host it because they didn't feel good during the week and couldn't get ready in time.  I told everyone that Ben and I would host it.  I am a traditionalist and I didn't like change very much especially for holidays.  My happiest memories were all of us celebrating a holiday/birthday at Grammie and Grandpa's house.  I asked Grammie and Grandpa if I could help them with the Easter baskets because I wanted things to be like they used it be.  I really hated that things were changing, people were getting older, we worried a lot about the future and what it would hold.  I really wanted to go back to how things were but I knew that is something that would never happen.  I felt bad when I found out what lengths Grammie and Grandpa had to do to get the Easter baskets ready especially when they didn't feel good.  I even offered to do it for them.

This year Kevin and Karla planned on having it at their house.  They were going to buy baskets  and the items for the baskets.  Mom bought some plastic eggs and some candy to put in the eggs.  I bought some bubbles and some candy.  I used to be excited for holidays but every holiday since August 24, 2018 just reminds us of what we lost that day.  I struggle with this every day sometimes multiple times a day.

We went to their house around 2 and Karla had spent most of the morning getting food ready.  Everyone showed up except for Tracy and Ben.  She had been recovering from getting sick and she told us she was sorry she couldn't come.  We said we would see her at the next gathering.  Ben went to an Easter gathering with his family in Puyallup.  We ate ham, chicken, veggies, salad and mashed potatoes.  Mom made her sugar cookies.

Kevin and Karla went outside and hid all the Easter eggs and baskets.  When it was time we went out there and found the eggs and baskets.  We had a hard time finding the last few of the eggs but we managed to finally find them all.

We played with bubbles afterwards.  Bubbles were always Grammie's favorite.  We've had several occasions where Grammie brought out the bubbles.  We've had bubble guns, giant bubbles we made out of a string and dish soap and the cheap ones that come in the colored containers with the wands.  The wind was blowing slightly so there were a lot of bubbles everywhere!  We celebrated Doug and the spring birthdays, which was everyone from January to April.

Around 5ish, we all had to get home and get ready for the work week.  We thanked Kevin and Karla for hosting, the food and the Easter stuff and headed home.  It was different from all the other Easters I remembered before this year.  You could see really no one had the same enthusiasm as years past...almost a different demeanor than we're used to seeing.  It was hard to smile when you knew everyone was still recovering.

Happy Easter!

Next Adventure:  The Process of Moving

Hands Across the Border Event, Peace Arch, Bellingham, WWU and a stop in Mount Vernon

I saw this event a few months ago on Facebook through the Cachers of Puget Sound group and I was like, Ben, we have to go to this!  He asked me what was this?  A geocaching event at the border in Blaine by the Peace Arch.  He said sure, let's plan on going.  So I wrote it on the calendar and it was a go!

The night before we got all of our stuff ready to go so we didn't have to get up any earlier than we had to.  I plotted out a few geocaches to grab on the way up.  It was going to take us at least three hours to get up there and with the stops we should be there well before the event started.  We tried to go to bed early but that never happens on a Friday night.

The next morning we got up and left by 7 a.m.  It was hard to get motivated but we had to be there at a certain time and wanted to give us enough time just in case there was weird traffic.  We got onto I-5 and made our way up.  We didn't hit any traffic in Seattle which was amazing because I feel like there is always traffic pretty much all hours of the day.  We actually got to Seattle fairly quickly which was weird.

The first time we had to stop for traffic was just outside of Mount Vernon because everyone was in town for the tulip festival.  Crap, I forgot about the tulip festival and how many people actually come to this thing.  Mom, Grandma Karen and I came up here in 2016 and did the tulip thing.  It was actually pretty fun just spending time with them for the weekend even though it was centralized around a lot of people and flowers. We had to stop and go for a couple of miles but thankfully it didn't take a really long time.

We stopped just outside of Ferndale at the rest stop to use the bathroom and to find the two caches here, Another Northbound I-5 Rest Area Cache (GC7CPXX) and Northbound I-5 Rest Area Cache (GC7CPXE).  We found both of them without any trouble, wrote our names on the log, got our pictures and walked back to the Escape.

We drove though Bellingham and all the small towns outside the city limits. Ben told me a couple stories about visiting friends when they were at college there. I told him that Lindsay went to school there but we never came to visit her due to transportation issues.  We wanted to but never got to.

We finally got to Blaine and decided since we got there early to go find some caches in the area. The first one we stopped at was The Best Place in Blaine to get Hammered (GC2HR3H). We honestly thought it was going to be outside or near a bar. We were totally wrong. It was a hardware store.  We parked off of a nearby street and walked to the front of the store on the street side of the fence.  The only logical place it could have been was the power pole by the ditch. We had to reach for it because the ditch had water in it and we had to be careful not to get our shoes wet.  We, unfortunately got part of our shoes wet but we got the cache!

We drove down the road to the next one.  It was the Dakota Creek Kayak Launch Park (GC7TWB7) and we had to park in the small lot and walk across the street to the small trail that took you down to the water.  At this point of the day the tide was out.  We spent some time enjoying this hidden cove and wished we had a couple of kayaks.  Another day.  We were here for another reason.

I drove over to the event, Hands Across the Border (GC837PT), early so we could get a decent parking spot and to take a few pictures around the Peach Arch Park. The 67-foot Peace Arch was the vision of Sam Hill, a prominent road builder, Quaker and humanitarian, who built many landmark structures in Oregon and Washington.  Hill bought property in both countries for the construction of the arch.  Peace Arch was the first arch in the U.S. to be dedicated to peace and is still one of very few in the world.  The arch design is widely believed to be the work of renowned architect Harvey Wiley Corbett.  Construction was completed Sept. 6, 1921.  The structure commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 and Rush-Bagot Agreement in 1817.  The treaties, signed by the king of England and President Monroe, provided for peaceful resolution of U.S. - British disputes and an unguarded U.S./Canadian border.  The treaties resulted from the War of 1812 with Great Britain.  In 1931 the property on the Washington side became a Washington State Park.  In 1939 British Columbia added Peace Arch Provincial Park to its park system.  The Pacific Highway, the precursor to Interstate 5, was diverted in 1932 to pass along either side of the arch.  A much-expanded I-5 still runs north and southbound on each side of the arch.  

We walked down there and I told Ben about the last time I was here.  It was 2013 and Mom and Grandma were with me.  We did a day trip north during the state park geotour.  We hit up about 9 state parks that day and finished it off with a ferry ride from Clinton to Mukilteo.  I had Ben do the Peace Arch virtual cache (GCD65A) since I did it already.

It was still pretty cool that we were able to stand in the US and Canada at the same time without the hassle of border patrol or a fence.  We noticed how long the wait was to get into Canada.  The cars were backed up pretty far.  I wondered why it was so long.

We walked back to the event venue and helped bring in stuff once Chris and Deb got there.  I talked to various people including Annette and Pete, Sean, Seth, some cachers from Canada, chatted with Deb for a bit while she renewed our WSGA memberships, Ben helped Chris cut tomatoes and onions for the burgers.  I found out that the Canadians had a three day weekend during Easter weekend.  It is either Good Friday or Easter Monday.  It depends on the employer on which day they choose to take off.  That is why the border was super busy that day.  We heard Sean got stuck in the wrong lane and was forced to go into Canada and then back into the US.  I laughed.

We did a raffle after everyone was done eating and starting to snack on the desserts.  We tried Canadian Girl Scout cookies and Canadian Cheetos.  My raffle number was actually called and I won a prize!  I haven't won a raffle in a while so it was nice.  I grabbed one of the tags.  We helped Chris clean up a bit and then we decided it was time to go because we wanted to grab a few more on our way home...since we had the furthest to drive.

On our way out of town we picked up Blaine Light Post (GC3TJY2) and drove into the wrong parking lot but it was easy to fix.  Other cachers showed up just after we pulled out of the lot.  This one would probably be found a lot today.

The next one was called 49 Flat (GC3TJXP) and a lady and her daughter rolled up in a van and we found the container together.  She said it was really cool to see her GPS go 49 degrees flat.  We were using our phone so it didn't work as cool.  We got back into the Escape and went to the next one.

Salmon Run (GC1249N) was down by the marina.  We tried to find a place to park but we parked in a private lot and walked across the street.  We weren't going to be here that long so we didn't really worry about it.  We saw another person right where we were suppose to look.  He turned around and asked if we were cachers.  We said yes and then he added that he read something about there being two cache containers here.  We found the one but the other one that was suppose to be here might have been lost.  We all signed our names and moved on to the next one.

We jumped into the Escape and headed further down the marina.  We found another lot, this time a public one, and found a place to park.  Pause in the Plaza (GC80HDT) was a tricky one to find.  Ben thought a guy was looking for it and he spoke up, you looking for the same thing we're looking for?  The guy looked at us weird and we told him we were geocaching.  He just shrugged and continued on with taking his pictures of the boats in the marina.  Ben thought his camera was a GPS.  We finally found it a little bit later.  The bugger was hard to spot.  We signed our names and put it back.

The last one in Blaine that we grabbed required us to drive to the end of the pier and walk to the fishing dock.  We had to wait until some muggles walked away before we could search for Blaine Public Pier Cache (GC7V597) which was hidden underneath one of the tables.  I also found a fishing lure with a fake worm and I brought it home as a souvenir.

We saw a insane Trump supporter with flags and signs attached to their car.  We videoed that and sent it to Doug and Jenn.  It was ridiculous.

We made our way back to I-5 and I had a few more caches to stop and get.  I always enjoy getting letterboxes so I put I-5 Frontage Road Letterbox Cache (GC5A6GN) and I set my phone to the cache on the map.  It was just south of Ferndale just off one of the exits.  We followed the road and pulled off to the side near ground zero.  We both got out and found the container.  Inside the cache was a logbook, some trinkets and a butterfly stamp.  Ben wanted me to video him getting a tramp stamp so we did.  Haha.  We signed our names and put it back.  We got a great memory out of it.

We finally got to Bellingham and was finally going to grab some of the caches I've had on my list for years...mostly because they were virtuals and a webcam but also because they were oldies.  I didn't want them to go away without getting them.  The first oldie (May 2002) we drove to was Birthplace of Christi (GC5D7C) and to prove we were there we had to find a fire hydrant and find some numbers and letters to send to the cache owner.  Easy peasy.

The second one took us to a virtual cache called Local Meridian (GC1E63) which was hidden in  September 2001 and all we had to do here was learn something about the history from a plaque.  We added a photo to our log so they knew we visited their cache.

We stopped by the other pier to see Bellingham Bay and then briefly stopped by Waypoint Park for a cache but we found out it was missing so we enjoyed the rest of the park instead.  It had some really cool buildings.

We had a hard time finding a place to park to walk up to campus without having to pay or get a ticket so we did a lot of circles and U-turns to find a place.  We had to walk about a quarter of a mile from a residential area to campus.  I spent sometime taking it in since Lindsay went to this school just to experience some of the stuff she might have walked by or a building she may have taken a class in.  This was the last of the major universities in Washington I have not been to.

We got to the webcam, University of Christi (GCH6MJ) which was hidden in February 2004.  I had to look at the feed so we knew where we were suppose to stand.

Since it was the weekend there weren't that many people on campus.  There was a guy on his skateboard trying to do tricks and another girl walking her pet ferret on a leash.  The types of college kids we saw on campus walking around definitely fit the stereotype for Western.  We had to wait for the webcam to refresh so we could save one of us in the frame.  Afterwards we walked to the library so we could use the restroom before heading home.  I grabbed a free campus newspaper for Lindsay before we walked back to the Escape.

On the way back to the freeway we almost got hit by a college kid who wasn't paying attention while trying to change lanes.  I had to lay on my horn.  We got on I-5 and headed south towards home.  Ben wanted to go see Michael and Elaine so he gave them a call and we stopped by their house for about an hour and a half and played a few board games.  We thanked them for having us over and then we and found some food at Haggen's.  I grabbed a sandwich and chips and shared some of it with Ben.  We were getting low on gas so we stopped in Kent at a gas station.  We rolled in at home around 10 that night.  I was tired from this very long eventful day.  We drove around 375.5 miles that day.

Next Adventure:  Easter

Kerry Park, Fremont, Gas Works Park, Dick's and the Woodland Park Zoo

Mom's alarm went off around 7ish and she got up and started getting ready.  I could hear her turn the shower on.  Erika and I just laid there for another half hour or so.  I got up and got a shower in after mom and Erika decided she wasn't going to shower.  We finished getting ready and packed up our stuff.  We ate some bananas and some chewy bars that mom brought with her for a very small breakfast.

We went downstairs and checked out and took our stuff to the Escape.  Our first stop was Kerry Park on Queen Anne because mom has never been there and really wanted to go there. I plugged the coords into the Nuvi and up the hill we went. Last time I was here was on May Day 2012 when I rode up with Bob and Bev to visit Groundspeak. We came here first to get the caches and to eat our lunch. We could see the helicopters flying around anticipating the mob of people ready to break windows and cause chaos.  This time, our view had no helicopters and there wasn't that many people around. Mom was surprised and disappointed of the size of the park. She expected a larger park. I told her it wasn't for the park but the view of Seattle from up here. She did enjoy the view and we took several pictures from up here.

I even had her do the virtual, Kerry Viewpoint Park (GC62C8), up here before we left.

We drove down the hill and across the bridge into Fremont. We wanted to go see JP Patches and Gertrude since it recently turned into a virtual cache, Late for the Interurban (GC7B9AY). I haven't been to Groundspeak in a few years. We found a place to park and walked across the street to get our photo.

Erika decided to stay in the Escape and watch us.  We answered the questions, found the trackable bricks and ran back across the street.  Mom watched this show as a kid and it makes her happy when she can come visit.

We drove down 34th Street onto North Northlake Way and pulled into the parking lot of Gas Works Park.  Erika said she had never been here before.  I thought she had been here before.  I wanted to do the virtual here while we explored.

HQGT:  Gas Works Park (GC7B665) took us all over the park to gather information from two locations.

We goofed around a bit while we worked on the information.  For being a not so great day and the threat of rain there were quite a few people out wandering around the park.

We took our necessary pictures to finish the virtual and then walked back to the Escape.

It was almost lunch time so we drove up the hill to Dick's Drive-In on 45th Street since it was on the way to Woodland Park Zoo.  We each got a few burgers, some fries and a shake.

I got a strawberry shake.  Mom ended up dropping hers on the ground so they gave us a new one.  I know, we can't take her anywhere.  We sat in the Escape and ate our food.  There were some strange people wandering around the area.

I typed in the address into Nuvi so she could take us the most efficient way to the Woodland Park Zoo.  We got there around noon.  We parked in the hippo lot for $6.  We made sure we had everything we needed and paid only $18 to get into the zoo because of Erika's $4 military discount.  She turns to mom and says, I see why you wanted me to come.  You wanted to use me for my military discount.  We all just laughed because some of it was true but I think mom wanted to have a daughter weekend.  We presented our tickets to the admissions girl and headed on in.  We stopped by the souvenir store to see what kinds of stuff they had.  Mom looked at the sloth stuff while I looked at the penguin stuffed animals.  I got a few postcards, a magnet, a stuffed penguin all in a small reusable bag.  My penguin is adorable.

We looked at our map to see the route how efficient we could be.  We got here too late to feed the penguins and I was bummed out.  There is always another time we can come up here and do that.  We don't live that far away.  We started out with the African Savanna and saw things like the lions, the zebras, hippos, giraffes, warthogs and some of the African birds.

Mom and Erika saw the other souvenir store and went inside there to see if they had anything different while I visited with the penguins.

We moved on to the Northern Trail section where they had mountain goats, elk, bears, wolves and otters.  We found out one of the otters had some babies and you could view them on a webcam.  They were adorable.

Our next stop was across the walkway to Australasia.  There, we saw the emus, kangaroos, we got to see all the cockatoos and parakeets.

We walked over to the Trail of Vines (Tropical Asia) where we saw the rhinos (who were taking a bath) the orangutans, lemurs and other various native birds.

We walked back across the pathway into the Banyan Wilds where we saw the tigers, the sloth bears, several different kinds of birds (who made a lot of noise) and some more otters.

We finished our visit at the Tropical Rainforest, where we saw jaguars, different types of monkeys and gorillas, mom's sloth, frogs, snakes and toucans.  Being inside the building (since it was temperature controlled) really felt like being in the Ecuadorian rain forest because it was so humid.

Our last section of the zoo was the Temperate Forest.  We had to go see the red pandas (since this was the last weekend they were going to be at this zoo and the reason why mom wanted to come here), the foxes, the various birds, the bug room and the barn yard animals.

Near the red panda exhibit was a cache called World's Smallest (GC4J2H4) which was nearby the Pudu's.  They were the world's smallest deer and they lived in the Chilean Andes.  I found it quickly and wrote my name down as fast as I could before someone walked by wondering what I was doing.

Since we've seen all of the zoo and we walked about 7 miles we figured it was time to go.  We got back to the hippo lot and plugged our home coordinates into the Nuvi.

I had no idea how to get back to I-5 from here but once I was on I-5 I didn't need the GPS anymore.  I highly considered stopping at UW to get the virtual cache inside of the library but the traffic was iffy, it had started raining, there was some construction near one of the visitor's lots and it was parent's weekend.  We did look into it before we came up here for the weekend.

We got home around 6ish and mom headed back into Rainier after we helped her put stuff in the Expedition. We told her that we had fun and we should look into doing another outing somewhere.  She said she had plenty of places to go hiking once the weather started getting nicer.

Next Adventure:  Hands Across the Border Event, Peace Arch, Bellingham, WWU and a stop in Mount Vernon