More Geocaching in Hawks Prairie and Palindrome Day (Super Bowl LIV)

February 1, 2020

I've had some of these caches solved for a while so I asked Ben if he wanted to go out for a bit and grab some caches in the area.  He said sure.  Some of these puzzles I've had solved in a notebook from 2012 and never went and got them.  We slept in and then had some breakfast.  My cat Calvin is adorable.

Grandma and Mom were at their retreat and I told Grandma I would get her mail and feed her cat while she was gone.  I drove into Rainier quickly, did what I was asked to do and headed back into town to get Ben and go grab some caches since it wasn't raining.

Our first one, A Few of Her Favorite Things:  Beadwork (GCPRRZ), I knew the general area it was located in before I even solved the puzzle.  I knew it was going to be over by Shipwreck Beads in Hawks Prairie but where exactly.  I solved the coords sometime back in 2011 or 2012 and just never went and got it.  I finally got a little bit organized this past winter and went through all of my pieces of paper and notebooks and was going to make an effort to go get the puzzles I solved but haven't gotten before they disappeared.  Sadly, some did before I could get them.

We drive into Hawks Prairie and I follow the coords to the parking lot of the Shipwreck Beads building.  I can't remember the last time I was in this area but it was probably with Grandma when we actually went into Shipwreck Beads.  The area has changed a lot over the years.  Lots of new buildings and less trees.  We find a small trail that follows the retention pond over near a grouping of trees.  We were looking for a camo peanut butter jar hanging from a tree. Bam!  There it was.  We signed the log and walked back to the Escape. 

Our next two took us to Meridian Park just off of Willamette Drive.  The last time I found a cache here was probably 2011 when I was pretty new at this geocaching game.  Wow, that was so long ago now.  Where does the time go?  Anyway, we parked in the lot and made our way to Zodiac Series:  Virgo (GC8C8E8) which was right off of one of the social trails inside a stump.  It took us a few minutes to find the right stump but we grabbed it, threw our names on in, got a picture and put it back without any of the kids seeing what we were doing.  Nobody likes muggle kids.

The next one, Where Oh Where Has My Painter Gone? (GC10Q6K) was also near-ish to the park.  This was another cache I solved many years ago and am now just going and getting it.  I think we went in the hard way but it was okay, we had no where else to be.  However, we were soon going to be fighting the darkness.  We find the path described on the cache page so we knew we were in the right direction.  As we got closer we looked for the rock the hint told us to find.  It took us a few minutes to locate the rock and once we did we had the cache in hand.  While we were looking for it, I told Ben about the cache (it was created by Lars's wife) and how I met Lars while geocaching.  It was so much fun going after FTF's with him.  Sadly, we lost him in 2018 from stomach cancer.

We followed the trail into an open area to grab one more for the evening before the dark consumed us.  Where the Wild Things Are (GC5PHVJ) was a quick easy one near a stump.  We signed our names, took a picture and put it back for the next cacher.  We followed the trail to the road and walked down the road back to the parking lot to head home.

We ate dinner, logged our caches, I worked on my blog and we watched some movies.

February 2, 2020

The next day I had to get a cache for Palindrome Day so Ben and I headed back out to Meridian Park and grabbed the other one in the open area near the one we found last yesterday.  We knew it was going to be an easy grab so we saved it to get our souvenir. 

Lost Adventures (GC8AWH3) was just off the road so it didn't take long to find it.  We did have to wait a few minutes while a guy walking his dog strolled by.  We got our names on it, got our photo and put it back.  

We headed home, made nachos and watched Super Bowl LIV.  Chiefs beat the 49ers 31-20.

Next Adventure:  An Afternoon of Geocaching in Olympia and Tumwater