Since every geocaching event this year was canceled due to stupid Covid I asked Bev if they were going to go out for International Earthcache Day. I saw there was a new earthcache inside of Deschutes Falls Park, which was not that far away from us. Most of the earthcaches were miles and miles away so we were pretty thankful there was one local. I told her that we were going to go grab all the caches in that area since there were a few new ones. OhJoy had published a couple of her Brought to You From's, a virtual cache that I helped 13Survivors with and there was a traditional off of Piessner Road, where I spent two summers at Camp Cascades as a prep cook. She asked if I could pick her and Bob up as we headed out that way. I said sure, we can all go. I am going to make Mom and Ben go with us too. We set a time and it was a date!
The night before I made sure I had the two puzzles solved and loaded onto my caching app. I also made a list of the caches we were going to get.
That morning, Ben and I got up around 10ish, made pancakes, bacon and eggs and kinda watched college football on TV. Most of the good college football games were postponed or their season was pushed back like the Pac-12. We weren't suppose to start until after the first weekend in November. I highly doubt that all those games will be played. We will be lucky if we get four games in before post season...if there is one.
We got dressed and got the recycle ready since we were going into Rainier. I called Mom to make sure she would be ready to go once we got there and she said sure. We got into Rainier and dropped off our recycle and I saw some people I knew. Jaime Evans, a lady who was a teacher at Rainier a while ago who I got to know and Raj, a guy who I know who works at L&I. It is a very unlikely couple but they are crazy about each other and make it work. I am happy for them. We chatted for a bit and then Ben and I made it over to grab Mom. We took her Expedition over to Bob and Bev's so all of us could fit in the vehicle comfortably.
We arrived that afternoon and picked them up. They were ready to go. We drove out to the falls, which was roughly a 20 minute drive from Bob and Bev's house. When we got there we noticed a bunch of other cacher's cars in the parking lot. One lady was leaving and one was just getting there. We made sure we had our Discovery Pass, grabbed the things we would need and set out down the hill. Bob couldn't find his GPS so that sucked. He said he probably left it on the table when he went to grab his other things. I sure hope the caches were saved on my phone since there isn't cell phone service out here. I checked and all of them were there but unfortunately we couldn't open the earthcache questions. At least the weather was nice for us...for now.
We walked to the virtual first, Deschutes Falls ~ In Memoriam Jay Nelson (GC88ZXT). It basically wanted us to learn that staying behind the fence and warning signs were very important when enjoying the falls. I ran into 13Survivors a few springs ago while getting one of his caches in the park.
He asked us who we were and we chatted for a few minutes. He asked if I was interested in helping him with the virtual he was rewarded. I said sure and asked how I could. He knew that my cousin Jay, died here back in February 2010 and wanted some information about it. So I emailed him anything that would help him get his cache page ready.
We got our photos and started off to the earthcache, Upper Deschutes Park - an eroded mountain (GC8CDJ0) at the other end of the park. Thankfully, Cool Cow Cachers was walking towards us and we were able to get the questions from him. We chatted for a few minutes and then thanked him for his generosity.
We got on the wooded trail and walked to the earthcache location. I thumbed through the list of geology questions and we talked them through together. We got our pictures at the location, enjoyed our time and then decided which one to walk to next.
I looked at my phone and pulled up one of the puzzle caches. I had to decide which one was at this end of the park and I chose correctly!
Brought to You From Russia (GC8G665) was way the heck out here. We weren't sure if we were still in the park as we made our way down this terrible unmanicured trail. We had to climb over downed trees and step over other brush and debris. Mom and Bev stopped because Bev is not an "off road vehicle" and I was surprised she walked this far while Ben, Bob and I continued on.
We weren't that far from the cache at this point anyway. Mom stayed with Bev. We found the area and saw where it could likely be. I saw the ammo can and of course they are Russian nesting dolls. I opened every single on of those containers, wrote our name down and put them back together.
We met back up with Mom and Bev and walked back down the horrible trail. We got back to the open earthcache location and looked at the phone to see where the last puzzle cache was. It was along the trail on the way back to the car. We started back to the main trail when the sky opened up and started to pour down rain on us. I had wished I brought my other jacket but oh well can't do anything about it now except to stay under the trees where it was less wet. We walked past a guy who I've never met before but Bob and Bev knew him. His caching name was JackPenny and he was having a hard time finding Brought to You From Mongolia (GC8ENQR). So we looked for it together. It was hard to find. The hint kinda helped but it really didn't. I decided to expand our search away from where it was telling us to look. I finally found it and it was 50 feet off the solved coordinates. Everyone was happy we finally found it since it was still raining.
JackPenny thanked us for helping him and he went to the earthcache and we walked back to the parking lot. We piled back into Mom's Expedition and left the park. I knew Ben didn't have Brought to You from Australia (GC7YP5N) yet but the rest of us did, so we stopped and let him find and log it.
The last one on all of our lists was a traditional cache, #1 Statistic Padding Cache (GC8RZZQ) and it was on the guardrail of a new bridge that was above a low spot in the road. Apparently this area receives a lot of rain and typically floods here. I guess they were tired of it and put a bridge in here. We found the cache and then I took them just a little bit further up the road to show them where Camp Cascades was.
We dropped Bob and Bev off at their place and they thanked us for a nice afternoon. I told them we should do this again soon. They agreed. We went back to Mom and Dad's house and I asked Dad to help me with the Escape. The Escape had been making weird noises and Dad said that he would take it to TK during the week to have it looked at. Dad took Ben and I home and I was going to be carless for a few days which was okay since I work from home. I really didn't need to go anywhere.
Earlier that day, Jenn messaged me to ask if Ben and I wanted to come over to watch the Ole Miss and Alabama game with them. We said sure. We weren't doing anything anyway. We changed our clothes and put on some more comfortable clothes. We drove over and they ordered pizza from Dominoes and it was delivered to the house. We brought drinks with us. The game ended up being a shoot out but Alabama eventually won. During the game, their dog Charlie decided to sit on me while we were all on the couch. He was wearing his new Seahawks sweater.
We thanked them for the invite and the food and headed home. I worked on my bills, cleaned up the house, did some laundry, dishes, logged my caches from earlier today and we watched TV for a bit. Ben eventually got onto his video game to play with Josh. I took a while to work on my blog for a while. My goal was to get it caught up and I was doing pretty good.
I am not sure the next time we will be able to go out and geocache because we were getting into our wet fall and winter months and it makes it hard to go out. I hope we have a few weekends where we have some dry mild or dry cold weather.
Next Adventure: Mom's 60th Birthday Party
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