A few weeks prior, the WSGA President, Chris (Mc3cats) asked if I could come up with some sort of social media to attach to this GeoTour and I said sure just give me the information and I will create it. They gave me the email addresses and passwords they wanted me to use. I created a Facebook and an Instagram account. He sent me the information and a few pictures of what the coins would look like. I got them all set up and added the information and photos to the sites. I added a few people I knew who would be interested and just let people add themselves as it grew and grew.
The Friday before, Ben and I got our stuff ready so we could spend the night at his mom's house for the weekend. We wanted to be somewhat close since we would have to get up early. We headed over after we were done with work. I wanted to grab a cache before we settled in and ate dinner. The closest one we haven't found near his mom's house was Home of SRT548 (GC6ZPP8) which was generously stocked with inactivated pathtags, coins and other goodies.
We hit the jackpot. I took a few so I could move them into my TB hotel. We headed to his mom's house where we ate pizza, played a couple rounds of dice and chilled before bedtime.
The next day we got up early so we could get to Auburn before 8 a.m. I struggle getting up early on the weekends but since it was for geocaching it made it easier. We made our way to the Les Grove Community Park Center, for the Valley Cities GeoTour Kickoff Meet and Greet (GC861Z2), where we waited for people to arrive. We got their so early we had to wait outside with all of the other early birds. I started taking pictures and posting them to the Facebook and Instagram accounts. I pretty much posted stuff as the day went on when I remembered to.
Annette spent some time explaining the rules and then we all received our passports and coordinates to the caches with some hints. This was going to be difficult because we didn't have a general map of where the caches are approximately. We were going to have to go blindly because we didn't have a GPS since we just used our phones. Let's do it!
Ben and I got into the Escape and he drove while I navigated from cache to cache. We figured there would be the FTF pirates out there so we calmly started in Renton, which was the furthest north of Auburn. We would work our way back towards Auburn. There was so much more traffic, traffic lights and driving than the TriCities Geocoin Challenge. I was pretty sure we weren't going to finish and would have to do the rest of it the next day. We were going to try our hardest to finish as soon as we could. We did get lucky and had a nice sunny day for this adventure. Sometimes May had rainy wet weather...it just depended on the year.
We couldn't believe it but doing Renton first definitely paid off! The three first caches we went to in Renton were FTF's. Valley Cities 2019: Cedar River Trail (GC87AAT), Valley Cities 2019: Other Side of Renton Riparian (GC87252) and Valley Cities 2019: Black River History (GC87KVW). We really didn't expect to see a blank log but we were very excited when we did! I have never gotten a FTF during a GeoTour before so it was a big deal to me. We drove to the next bunch of them. Some were uneventful like pill bottles hidden inside trees or placed near some rocks. There were some great views, bird houses, wooded trails and some shady forests. We finished Renton as quickly as we could. It took us a little less than three hours to complete one city.
The next city we hit up was Maple Valley. We collectively decided to work our way south as we did these and Maple Valley was technically the next city south but it was more eastward of the three other cities. We were told that one of the caches, Valley Cities 2019: Maple Valley 1 (GC87CM8) would require a UV light to find coordinates inside a small metal culvert. I recognized some of the locations we went to so I kinda knew my way around a bit. About eight years ago, Bob and I did a lot of caching in this area during the winter. We probably found up to 200 caches the few times we came out here. I noticed that some had been archived to make room for new ones and some of those places were for this GeoTour. One of those places was the Maple Valley Museum, Valley Cities 2019: MV Historical Society (GC87B4G), which I've been to at least two other times to find caches. There was another one, Elk Run Farm (GC87CQF) that you had to complete the circuit, which could take you a while) that would open up the container for you to sign. It also paired as a TB hotel. Maple Valley took us a little while because there was an active construction zone right in the worst part of town. It took us another three hours to shimmy our way through town.
Kent was our next stop. At this point it was getting pretty late in the day but we wanted to get as many as we could because we had to meet up with Ben's mom at 8, up at Purdy's Public House on the hill. We were meeting her there to meet Ed, to eat dinner and to watch a AC/DC cover band. Our goal was to finish all of Kent and get a few in Auburn before we met up with them. The caches in Kent were very spread out. We had to drive a lot to get to them. Some were down trails, Valley Cities 2019: Soos Creek Trail (GC87DFB) where we took the time to walk, one was at the Library, Valley Cities 2019: Kent Panther Lake Library (GC84ANT) (where we lost some time due to the bathroom), another was at the disco golf park, Valley Cities 2019: Lake Fenwick Park Disc Golf (GC87H5Z), where we've found caches in the past and one was at a pit on the hill, Valley Cities 2019: A Pit and a Valley View (GC87DFJ) which we paired with a virtual cache, Johnson Pit No. 30 (GC7B6Y9) since we were there. One of the last caches of Kent even took us to the new Dick's location where Ben and I considered buying some cheeseburgers but we didn't have enough change on us.
We drove back to Bonney Lake and met Trish at the restaurant. We sat down in the dining area and Ed joined us several minutes later. We all ordered our food and drinks. It was fun learning who this Ed person was that Trish was spending her time with. We talked about an array of things, paid for our food and went over to the bar side of the restaurant to listen to the cover band. Ben talked to the drummer for a while because the drummer thought he knew Ben. We found some spots to sit and awaited our show. The lead singer sounded just like the lead singer of AC/DC. It was uncanny. The guitarist was very animated and was a hoot to watch. Looking around this cover band drew some interesting people. I had fun people watching. The drunk people who thought they were dancing were the best to watch.
We stayed for a couple hours and then I started to get tired. It was time to go because we had to get up and finish the rest of Auburn and I wasn't sure how long that would take us. Ben and I left and went back to his mom's house, I showered and we went to bed.
The next morning we got up around 9, ate a quick breakfast and headed out to the furthest cache in Auburn so we could work our way towards Bonney Lake. We started at Valley Cities 2019: Riverpoint "Marvelous" Mystery (GC86PBH) which I solved the night before. We found it quickly but on our way out there was a free bike on the side of the road so we picked it up so Ben would have a bike. It just needed a new tube. The second cache, Valley Cities 2019: That &@*$#^! Spoon Cache (GC87GKJ) which we have seen pictures of and heard the stories of its existence. We were told that we would have to be very patient here because it would take some time to do and get the hang of. It took us two tries to figure it out. Once we did figure it out we got the container out quickly. We may have been here for about 10 minutes. It was a pretty cool cache with an awesome concept. I hope to see more of these unique caches in the future. We also took some time to take a picture of the new crow eating French fries statue in the park.
We didn't need to hit up the library in Auburn because we ran into Sean the day before and he gave us the code because the library wasn't going to be open the next day. So we had the code for that one. We drove up towards Ben's grandma's house were we have found a cache in that park once before. They archived it and made room for the new Valley Cities 2019: Shaughnessy Park (GC87MMT). This park has always been creepy to me. When we got there some lady was scolding her kid out in public. The gist I got out of it was the kid got a girl pregnant and the mom was basically telling him to man up. The kid had to have been at least 17 or 18. The mom was brutal, it was necessary but wrong choice in venue to get your point across. We found the cache as quick as we could. We wanted out of there.
Our next two stops were at two parks. One was along the river near the local high school and the other was at a really nice manicured park where I wish I would have brought my basketball. Both were easy finds but the one, Valley Cities 2019: Roegner Park's River Stroll (GC86RM7) along the river took some time to walk to. We forgot our pen so we asked a nearby muggle if we could borrow hers. She was happy to and asked what we were doing. We told her about geocaching and the GeoTour we were currently doing. She said that sounded like fun and she may try it.
We walked back to the Escape and made our way to the last one, Valley Cities 2019: Going Green (GC87D9K) to us to a neighborhood on top of the hill. We had to find a place to park and walk down to the small tree line along the cement blocks. It was in a small bird house. We logged our names, took our picture and headed back to Ben's mom's house.
There, we ate lunch, filled out the rest of our passports, put them in an envelope and mailed it to the parks and recreation people who would mail us our coins in a couple of weeks.
We chilled with his mom for a bit before we packed up our stuff and started heading home. It was a long weekend full of adventure, visiting and meeting some new people. I know there will be more adventures ahead of us and I can't wait!
Next Adventures: Yelm Dental Night Out with the Tacoma Rainier's
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