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 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 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
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