Memorial Day Weekend: Ancient Lakes Trail, Ancient Lakes Road Series and Crab Creek Power Caching

For some reason I woke up before my alarm went off around 6:00ish, the night before I had set my alarm for 8.  I must have subconsciously thought I needed to get up earlier than intended so we could get all of the stuff done that I had planned...almost like I had anxiety that we wouldn't have enough time to get everything done.  The weird part was that I felt rested and didn't need to sleep anymore.  I got on my phone and checked my messages while I let Ben sleep for a little while longer.

7:30 rolled around and I started getting ready for the day.  I had to coax Ben to start getting ready.  The faster we could get ready, the quicker we would be out on the trail before it gets hot.  It was suppose to be 85ish degrees in the middle of the state today.  It's not bad because it's a dry heat rather than the moist or humid heat on the west side.  Ben eventually got ready to go.

We ate our little boxes of cereal, a few doughnuts and some milk for breakfast.  I made sure we had all of our stuff that we needed in the Escape with us including our lunch making stuff, drinks and caching stuff...like our notebook full of notes.  I've tried to be paperless when I cache but I just can't do it.  I write notes down of the ones we find so I can log them when I get home as well as having them for when I update my blog.

We loaded our stuff into the Escape and stopped at the Chevron to top of with gas.  That is the one important thing to do when you're driving in the middle of nowhere without cell service.  Make sure you have enough gas.  We got onto I-90 east and drove out towards where we were yesterday.  We got onto the highway to Quincy and followed Nuvi to the Ancient Lakes trail head.  I told Ben we would have to do the mini power trail when we were done hiking.  He thought that was a good idea.  We stopped at the rest area outside of Quincy to use the restroom since we weren't sure what kind of accommodations were at the trail head.

We followed Nuvi's directions through a series of roads through farm land.  We finally get onto Ancient Lakes Road, part of it is paved and the rest of it is a dusty dirt road.  There was a vehicle front of us so we gave them room so we didn't get completely dusted out.  Once we got to the trail head, we arrived around 9 a.m. and found a place to park.  This place was busy!  I expected it to be during a holiday weekend so I wasn't really that surprised.  I changed into my hiking shoes and socks, made sure we had everything we would need and shoved it into my back pack along with our Nalgene's.  We walked past a group of people and got a GO COUGS from them.  Of course I said it back. 

We walked to the entrance and followed the old jeep trail to the left towards Ancient Lakes and through the towering coulees (basalt cliffs on either side of the carved out valley.)  The views were stunning and it was nice to be out of the forest of Western Washington for a while.  

The middle of the state has some incredible geological features thanks to the Glacial Lake Missoula and the massive flood that came through here millions of years ago and carved out a lot of these cool features we see today.  It's amazing what erosion can do!  We stopped at several locations to take pictures and to take in the views.  We walked past a couple people walking back to the trail head.

We walked a little under a mile before we stopped for a giant rock nugget and a waterfall cascading down from the basalt cliffs.  I was surprised this spot didn't have an earthcache.  Other trails had them but we would have to come back another time to do the other trails in the Quincy Wildlife Recreation Area.  You could spend days here exploring.

We continued on towards the lakes and after a little less than a half a mile, we were overlooking one of the Ancient Lakes.  It was such a great view from here of the entire area.  We chose a path to take down to the lake.  Once we got down there, I took off my back pack and we relaxed a bit; taking in the views of this really cool recreation area.  A couple lakes over, we saw a bunch of people enjoying their weekend camping and hanging out.  We both ate a snack and had some water.  It was getting warmer.

On the way back, we took the same path and about halfway back to the trail head we were surprised by a a snake.  Luckily, it wasn't a rattlesnake.  We were on guard the rest of the way there.  

The basin views were amazing after our almost two mile hike.  I saw we were getting closer to the trail head so I got my caching app ready to grab 3 Ancient Ladies (GCVCPQ) which was hidden in the rocks to the right of us.  It was a pretty easy find but we had to hurry because people were coming down the trail and they could see us.  I got our names written down and hidden back before they walked by.  

We walked back to the Escape but picked up the first cache, Ancient Lake Road #33 (GC5WWM5).  Yeah, we did the series backwards.

I drove but since the caches were on both sides of the road, Ben got out on the ones on the right side of the road and I got out for the ones on the left side of the road.  If we couldn't find them, both of us would look so we had two sets of eyes on them.  Some were very easy and we could see them from the Escape and some were harder to find.  My Escape got really dusty when people drove by.  When we got to Ancient Lake Road #28 (GC5WWKT) we freaked out a kid that was walking down the side of the road.  We blew by the cache and had to back up to where it was.  I'm sure the kid thought we were going to kidnap him.  We assured him that we were geocaching.  He nodded and continued on walking.

It was definitely hot as we both got out of the Escape grabbing caches on either side of the road.  There were a few that I had a hard time finding.  The coords weren't exact but they got us to the general area.  Most were hidden near a pile of rocks or tucked in a bunch of sage brush.  The sagebrush wasn't Ben's friend however, we were able to get him to remember to take his allergy medication that morning so it wasn't that bad.

As we approached the end of the 30+ cache mini series, I was ready for a restroom and some lunch.  Ancient Lake Series #1 (GC5WVPN) was the last one and it was where the dirt road part of the road met the paved part of the road.  It was near the sign next to the road.  We pulled off the road at the turnout, grabbed it, signed it and took a photo.  We finished this series of caches under an hour and a half.

We followed the farm roads back to the rest stop.  We both went and used the restroom and then I went to go find the cache, Quincy East Rest (GC3TVBH).  For some reason I had a rough time pinpointing where it was.  The coordinates kept going everywhere.  I eventually stopped looking at the phone and just checked every spot along the fence.  I turned around and there were three people walking towards me looking at their phone.  They must be geocachers.  I said, you must be looking for the same thing I am looking for.  Sure enough, they were cachers from Salem, Oregon on vacation to go see their grandma in Wenatchee.  We found the cache together because I originally overlooked it and felt really dumb.  We chatted some more as we walked back to the parking lot mostly about our travels and where we were from.  It was nice meeting them.  Ben was near the Escape talking to a biker guy, who was from Eastern Washington somewhere, puttering around on his bike for the weekend and they were talking about motorcycles. 

I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the back of the Escape and handed one to Ben as he kept chatting with the guy.  I ate mine at the back of the Escape, put away everything, organized it and spent some time writing down some notes in my notebook.  After about an half hour, I asked Ben if he was ready to head to the next power trail and he said yes.  He thanked the guy for the chat and we got into the Escape to head to Beverly.  Beverly is southwest of Royal City.

We got onto Hwy 28 to Quincy and took the highway south back to I-90.  We got onto I-90 and at the interchange we got off onto Hwy 26 towards Pullman, however, we made a turn onto 243, if you stayed on that it will eventually take you into the TriCities.  We followed that road along the Columbia River until we reached Beverly and Lower Crab Creek Road.  Over the past few years I've heard people talk about this power trail and put it on my list of caches to do some day.  Well, today was that day.

This was Ben's first time doing a power trail this large.  So I told him about the last one I did which was years ago now but that was a few hundred in a span of like five days.  I also shared the concept of the rolling log to make these type of caches go quicker.  Usually it was the entire container and log but for today, it was going to be the logbook.  We found the cache, took the logbook, signed it in the Escape on the way to the next cache and we traded logbooks.  We continued on like this until we were done with the series.  We started at 01 - Crab Creek (GC73GP3) and ended on 97 - Crab Creek (GC73ZZN) with many caches not in the series in between plus the spur.  We switched off every 20 caches just so neither of us got super tired because it was hot outside.  It took us about 2 hours to do the entire thing.  

Some memorable points during the Crab Creek series:

My 12,000th cache was 17 - Crab Creek (GC73K3Q).  Due to the sheer amount we found so far and not knowing how many I needed before reaching this milestone it was not documented in photos.

A small truck carrying a load of garbage and scrap metal drove past us, stopped about a half a mile ahead of us, got out, then got back in the truck and drove off. It didn't look like they adjusted their load or was checking to see if there were any problems.  Ben and I thought it was weird.  We kept our distance until they were out of view.

A coyote ran in front of the Escape a little under halfway done with the series.  It was insane watching it dart from on side of the road to the other.  I had not been that close to a coyote before except at zoos and wildlife sanctuaries. 

There were a few along the road that were hidden pretty good and a couple times both of us had to get out and search for them. 

Ben finally got to experience somewhat of a power trail and he said that he would like to to more in the future.  I have my eyes set on Walla Walla soon and maybe take a day to do some of the TriCities ones when we are there in September.

We turned around and grabbed Lower Crab Creek (GC73MAF) and Crab Creek Cascade (GC2FQDM) on Road E SW.  We drove north towards Royal City picking up caches along the way.  We picked up two at the intersection of Hwy 26 and Road E SW.  The first one was a lamp skirt called Chubby Girl 30 Just Had to Do It Today (GC2BFW9) and the other was across the highway at a guard rail called Chubby Girl #3 Air Time (GC1A1DY).  Both were pretty easy.

We get onto Hwy 26 and start driving west back towards I-90.  We stopped for Small Town Cache (GC73JYR) which was another guard rail cache right off of the highway and F SW Road and then grabbed the last one in Royal City, Chubby Girl #6 Royal City (GC1GK4T) I wanted to pull off near the gas station (the one with the large American flag) and get it from there but Ben wanted me to stop off next to the highway.  We knew it was in the guard rail.  I decided to pull off next to the highway, Ben got out, found it and signed it.  We got back onto 26.  We continued west looking for Beverley Burke Road to the left.

We turned left onto the side road and grabbed the Peanuts series.  We found all of them (there are 6 all together) except for Peanuts - Snoopy (GC2BGQD), that one hasn't been found since last September and it could have blown away in the wind (the wind gets pretty strong in this region) because it wasn't hidden back correctly.  Bummer.  

The final cache, Peanuts - Hey Hey The Gang's All Here (GC2BGQK) except the gang wasn't all there.  We were missing Snoopy.  At least this cache was here.  We parked in a driveway and walked the hundred feet or so to the rocks that it was hidden in.  The container was crammed with toys and other knick knacks.  We walked back to the Escape and decided where to go next.  It was almost 4:45 and getting close to dinner time.  I told him that we can grab a few more back to I-90 and he said sure.

We pulled back onto State Route 243 and followed it north to I-90.  The next cache, RPS 1 Wanapum (GC204W6) which was in the parking lot of the dam visitor's center.  When Ben and I arrived it was empty so we didn't have a tough time finding a place to park.  We followed the phone to a beat up log that's seen better days.  We made the find and got a photo of the dam from this vantage point.  We walked back to the Escape.

There was one more, Wanapum Lake (GCNDCN), along this road that we wanted to stop and grab.  We pulled off the highway onto this very sketchy rocky side road.  We parked and walked the 300 feet or so to the cache.  I am glad we decided to walk instead of driving to it.  It was on a cliffside overlooking the Columbia River and Ben and I had a really hard time trying to find the cache.  It was listed as a regular so we looked for a place that would hold a regular.  After a while we were convinced it was muggled.  I started looking through past logs to see if anyone could shed light on it.  I saw a photo of a rusty beat up Altoid can.  I told Ben we were looking for a small and not a regular and that it was an Altoid can.  Within five minutes Ben finally made the find.  We admired the view of the river.

We got back onto the 243 and merged onto Hwy 26 and then eventually got onto I-90 west towards Kittitas.  I wanted to get one more cache.  We put the coords into Nuvi and she directed us to the nearest exit of the freeway.  We followed the road through downtown Kittitas and down one of the side roads that leads to the freeway but there is no on or off ramp.  Bison on the Bridge (GC7J64F) was a bison tube hidden in a post hole near an irrigation canal next to I-90.  It was literally a park and grab.

We got back on one of the side highways that took us into Ellensburg.  There, we decided on a BBQ place, not our original place we wanted to go to because they closed their doors in January 2020 to pursue just catering, but at least it was a BBQ place.  We drove up to it and it looked like it wasn't open.  There were no cars or trucks.  We were disappointed.  We drove up to the door and it was closed on Sundays.  How lame!  Ughh!  I asked Ben what he wanted to do now and we both decided on teriyaki.

We went to the only teriyaki place in town, ordered and went to the nearby grocery store while we waited for it to get done.  We had about 15 minutes to kill.  We went inside and grabbed some drinks, allergy medicine and a pint of ice cream for after dinner.  We went back to the teriyaki place and picked up our food.  We drove back to the hotel, unloaded our stuff, got comfortable and ate our food.  We watched the Sounders and Austin FC tie 0-0.  They took a goal away from us because we were supposedly offsides.  We ended up watching TV, logged some of our finds, filled out my blog a little bit, got cleaned up and relaxed.  My arm still hurts.

We went to bed around midnight again.  I was tired from getting up early and being out in the sun all day.  We forgot about our ice cream, Ben put it in the refrigerator and it melted.  I am not sure why he put it in the fridge but we had to toss it.   

Next Adventure:  Memorial Day Weekend:  Ellensburg to Yakima and Home