Wednesday, November 11

Geocaching and Chores on Veteran's Day

I am not a huge fan of having an observed holiday in the middle of the week.  I'd rather we observe it on a Monday or a Friday then we're able to have a three day weekend.  It just kinda messes up the flow of the work week but a free paid day off...sure I'll take it anyway.  

I had talked to Bev about possibly doing some caches in LBA Park that morning as well.  I had the puzzle solved and she had the final for the Zodiac Series that was put out in 2019.  I found most of them but not all of them.  There was one more I had to get to find out the final coords inside the park but just never went and got it so Bev provided the coords since we were going to LBA.  I told her to meet me  there at the parking lot around 10 and told her that Mom might be joining us.  I still had to find out what she was doing.

I asked Mom what she was going to do that day and she said she had to finish a quilt project so she wanted to go to Hobby Lobby.  I asked her if she wanted to go on a short adventure with Bev and I at LBA Park and she said sure as long as I came with her to Hobby Lobby later.  I told her sure.  We had somewhat of a plan for our day off.

That day, I got up, got dressed and grabbed a breakfast bar and my water and waited for Mom to get here.  We took the Escape to LBA Park where we pulled in and saw Bev's car.  She had gotten there minutes before we did.  I looked at my phone and came up with a plan on how to get these caches without a lot of back tracking.  I looked at the trail system on my phone and found the appropriate set of trails to Brought to You From East Asia I - Thailand (GC8G65R).  A lot of the leaves were falling and had fallen from our past wind storms so it made for a very colorful fall walk. 



It was dry so we didn't have to worry about wet foliage and super muddy spots.  I did expect to see mud puddles in the low areas though and hopefully none were going to be in our way.  I gently put it back into the lock n lock and hid it back where I found it.  


We moved on to the next one in that section of trails.  Bev had already found Zodiac Series:  The Long Awaited Final (GC8M7WJ) so she and Mom just enjoyed the walk as I zeroed in on it.  It wasn't hard to find since it was an ammo box just right off the main trail. I still have to finish the rest of the series before they disappeared. 


Instead of back tracking the way we came in, I decided to continue following the loop but we had to turn around because one section of the trail was severely flooded.  There was no way around it.  We went back the way we came and eventually got back to where we started at the junction of trails just beyond the fence we passed through.

The third cache we came for, Patch Takes Another Walk (GC92E0G) was along the edge of the park alongside the road we came in on.  While we walked towards it, we noticed a couple of people out in the woods taking pictures of some wooden structures someone had made with different sizes of limbs.  Mom went in there and took a few pictures.  We continued on our way to the cache.  When we got there, Bev and I remembered that there used to be one here years ago that has since been archived.  We figured it was going to be a similar kind of hide...a fake log.  So we spent a few minutes looking for the fake log and walked past it several times because it was hidden very well.  Bev ended up spotting it.  We took the lid off of it, signed it and put it back where we found it...with a couple leaves over the top.

We took the main road back to the parking lot since we were practically there anyway.  We thanked Bev for coming out and meeting us for a geocaching autumn stroll.  She said we should do this more and I agreed.  We just had to have some decent weather which now that we were heading into our wet, rainy winter, those days seemed long and miserable.  I told Mom and Bev that we now cleared out LBA Park once again...that is, until someone else adds more caches to the plethora of trails in the back forty of the park.  We all left and continued on with our day.

Mom and I headed over to Hobby Lobby to get her fabric.  When we pulled in, we noticed the giant line and decided, should we do this?  We have nothing better to do today.  We got out and waited in line.  It went faster than we thought it would.  We found Mom's fabric and browsed around for a bit.  Then we got in line to pay for our stuff.  We were in the check out line longer than we were in the store.  Once we were finally done, I wanted to go inside the Tractor Store to see if they still had the chicken coop gingerbread house kit.  Nope, apparently those go pretty fast.  Dang it.

Mom was hungry so we stopped by the Taco Bell on the way back to my house.  I haven't had Taco Bell in quite sometime.  We shared a couple of soft tacos and a chips and cheese nacho side.  Mom went home and I spent about two hour in the back yard raking the leaves and stuffing them into bags.  The trees aren't even in my yard and I have to clean up after them.  Grrr.  


I washed out the kayak that Erika left here since she didn't have room at her apartment and Ben finally got himself a kayak and a paddle after waiting for several months.  We will have to wait for some decent weather so we can go out and use them.  We still need a kayak rack for the vehicles though.  I smashed some of the cans in the garage, cleaned up the floor and moved our shelving into the dining room since we will have to soon anyway when Christmas is here again in a few weeks.  

Ben came home from spending his day of in Puyallup (he had to get his battery for his new car replaced) and we ate leftover chili while we watched Total Recall.  I definitely started to feel sore from raking leaves and putting them into bags earlier today.  I was excited that tomorrow was my Friday because I took Friday off so I could have a three day weekend for my birthday...even though I don't get to do anything fun this year for it.  Stupid Covid!

Next Adventure:  A Friday the 13th Covid Birthday

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