On our last morning away from home, we set the alarm for 9:15 because breakfast ended at 9:30 on the weekdays and since it was Monday morning, we had to go down to the desk and pick it up before then. Especially if we wanted a free breakfast. I had Ben go downstairs and pick up the food because I was lazy. It was the same food except that they didn't put it in a handy paper bag to carry it in. So Ben had to balance everything all the way back to our room. If I would have known that I would have went with him.
We laid in bed until about 10 and then started getting ready to go. I sat down to eat my random breakfast and had to remind Ben to get out of bed because we had to check out by 11. He got up and started getting ready. He ate his food and then we got all of our stuff organized and packed up. We took it down to the Edge and took one last sweep of the room to make sure we didn't leave anything behind. We took the keys down to the lobby, told them thanks and headed out.
Our plan for today was to enjoy the nice day, pick up a few caches for the Towns and Cities Challenge because we were here and why not? Oh and eventually head back home before it got too late. We got onto Hwy 28 and headed east to a small town called Rock Island. I had a couple caches written down for this area to find.
The first one was at the west end of town and it was called Look Out Susi! (GC2KF3X) and it was of course a guard rail. Ben stayed in the Edge while I hopped out, made the find, signed our names and put it back the way I found it.
I directed Ben to the next one, CLOSE 2 HOME (GC1J5TF) through the little farming community. We arrived at a water or grain tower found a parking spot and got out. I knew it was going to be somewhere on the structure but where? The coords were taking us all the way around a couple times. I just put my phone away and just started feeling for it. We did eventually find the magnetic container. We signed our names and put it back.
We got back onto Hwy 28 and headed west back towards Wenatchee.
I saw a string of caches nearby at the Kirby Billingsley Hydro Park and figured that it was a nice day to take a walk. There were six caches to grab along the paved walking trail next to the Columbia River. The park was pretty nice. We found a place to park the Edge, grabbed a pen, our masks (just in case we needed them) and headed down the trail.
The first one we encountered was called RiverSide (GC6938) and it was an oldie from June 2002 and a lady who was walking by asked us if we lost something because of the way we were searching through the rocks. We told her that we were good and we were just geocaching. She nodded and continued on her walk. It was nice to come across some of these older caches and glad the cache owner(s) are keeping them alive.
Further up the trail was Beaver Bridge (GC8H3RP) and it took us an embarrassing 10 minutes to find it. We just made it more complicated than it needed to be but that's what you get for over thinking things unfortunately.
I took several photos along the way because the setting was perfect, blue sunny skies, the river, snow capped hills and the swooshy trees. It was THE perfect winter afternoon. I wish we had more of these winter type days over on the west side. We get some but not as many as I would like.
The next one was called Flying Home for Christmas (GC5J1BZ) and Ben found that one hanging from the large tree. It took us a few minutes to pinpoint which tree since there were about three of them and the coords jumped around a little bit. We signed it and put it back.
Just up the trail was one that I only qualified for, it was a challenge puzzle cache and you had to have found a certain number of a certain type of cache, this one, 5,000 Traditional Caches Found Challenge (GC5J1BE) I definitely qualified for. At the time of qualifying, finding and logging this cache, I had 10, 947 traditional caches.
There were two more along this trail so we decided since we've walked all this way just to get them. We grabbed NASCAR (GC5K149) and Slab (GC5K5XC) before turning around and walking back to the parking lot.
I stopped at the porta potty (since the public restrooms were closed because of Covid) to pee. We got back on the trail and along the way, a group of people said out loud, wow, it's a great day for a walk, the weather seems like it's April or something. We agreed with them. It was a beautiful day for a walk along the river. Once we got back to the Edge, a lady was walking her two dogs and she also said something about how nice it was to be outside this afternoon. We acknowledged what she said and told her to have a nice day. We walked about a total of two miles. It was good for us because of all the junk we ate this weekend and we knew we'd be in the car for a while as we drove back home. It was nice to get a walk in before we left town.
We got back onto Hwy 28 towards Wenatchee. We put in the address for the Goodwill in town and stopped by there just to see if they had anything worthwhile. This time they didn't and we were disappointed. We finished driving through town and told Ben just to follow Hwy 2 at the junction. We drove through Cashmere and Dryden to the junction for US 97 over Blewett Pass.
The drive was nice. There wasn't much traffic, pretty snowy scenery and we listened to 80's and 90's music as we drove. We got onto I-90 west and that portion of the drive was equally nice. I loved there wasn't a whole lot of traffic. We stopped at North Bend to get gas, pee and see if there were any maple bars left in the bakery. There were two left and I took them both. Muhahaha!
We got off I-90 at Hwy 18 and experienced traffic near Tiger Summit. I will never understand traffic as long as I live. There was no reason for it once we got through it. So stupid. I checked the WSDOT app to see what kind of horror was ahead of us once we got onto 167. It was bad so we found some roads to go around it. Ben knew roads since he grew up in this area. It saved us a little bit of time. We got onto 512 and then onto I-5, where there was a little bit of traffic.
Before we got to Lacey, I asked Ben what we wanted to do for dinner. Both of us didn't feel like making anything so we decided to finally try Popeye's since there was one in the Hawks Prairie area. Neither of us have been here before but we've seen the hundreds of commercials about their chicken sandwich. We bought two chicken sandwiches, fries and drinks and drove home. We ate our food, unpacked the Edge and our kitties were glad we were finally home. We spent sometime cleaning the house, washed laundry and watched a little bit of TV. We went to bed at a decent time so we could start the new short work week.
It was nice to finally get out of the house and travel somewhere even if it was somewhat localish. We got to relearn how to snowboard again, play in the snow, see some cool places and pick up 48 new caches.
Next Adventure: Doug's Hello Kitty Birthday Bash
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