Ben and I decided to go somewhere for Memorial Day Weekend. We threw around various places in Eastern Washington and came up with the Ellensburg area. We haven't been there in a while. Ben was in charge of arranging the hotel while I planned out the day's activities and where we were going to eat dinner. Unfortunately, we also hit a snag. My second Covid shot was scheduled for Friday when we were suppose to leave and I had no choice. So we couldn't leave until after that was done. It was scheduled for 1:40. I was apprehensive about it because people have reported that they've felt terrible after receiving their second one. I was hoping that my shot wouldn't ruin our mini vacation.
I went to the store earlier in the week and got some groceries for our trip, did laundry, did a little bit of research of the area so we knew what to expect and could not wait for the week to end so we can go! It's been a while since we've been somewhere together. The last time was the Wenatchee area in January. Erika wasn't going anywhere this weekend so I asked her if she could come over once a day and make sure the kitties had food and their litter box was cleaned. She said she could. I left sticky notes as reminders of where stuff was.
That day I worked until 11:30, we ate lunch and Ben got his stuff ready to go. Once I was off and had eaten food, I finished getting the rest of my stuff ready since I worked on it a little the night before. I wanted as little to do before we left. Ben loaded up the Escape, we got the kitties stuff ready and made one last pass of the house before deciding to head out.
We left earlier than I anticipated. I wanted to stop at the Walmart near our house to see if they had a hard shelled eyeglass case for my glasses. I didn't want them getting crushed by something accidentally on this trip. I meant to earlier this week but forgot to get one. I ran inside quickly and discovered they had the cheap reading glasses but absolutely no cases. Ben was also surprised they didn't have anything like that either. We drove into Yelm. I called Mom to see what she was doing and told me she was at Walmart. I asked if she could look for a hard shelled eyeglass case for me since they didn't have them at the tiny Walmart near the house. She said sure. I added that we were at the doctor's office in Yelm for my second Covid shot so if we got done before she did that we could meet somewhere. She said that was fine and to just call her.
Ben stayed in the Escape while I went in. I used the restroom first, checked in and had me sit in the waiting room. They came out really early and I wasn't done filling out the form yet. I followed her into the room, got shot in the left arm, got a Band-Aid, she filled out my cards and waited in the front for about 15 minutes. My phone was dying so I had to refrain from getting on it. My 15 minutes were up and I walked back out. I got done with my appointment almost before my actual appointment time started. By coming early we were able to get out of town earlier. Mom had just pulled up so we had some great timing. She was on the phone so she just handed me the glasses case and told me I could pay her later. She quickly said to have fun and she drove off.
We got gas at the Arco on our way out of town. Gas is cheaper at Arco and it's easy to get in and out of their when you're driving east on Hwy 507. We turned at the Y and got onto the 702 to Hwy 7. I didn't want to follow a bunch of trailers through Eatonville so we opted to take Hwy 7 around Eatonville through Alder to Elbe. I call it the swirly way because it is very curvy. Ben was not a fan of this road. He got a headache.
It took us a while to get from Elbe to Morton because we did have to follow a bunch of trailers, campers and RV's on our way to Hwy 12. Some pulled off at the store in Morton and some turned right towards Mossyrock but there were still a bunch heading east. We put some miles behind us through Glenoma and Randle but as we got closer to Packwood, I had remembered that they flea market was this weekend. There were going to be a lot of people here. I was hoping we would get through quickly because I really wanted to be in Ellensburg around 5ish.
Unfortunately, we got to Packwood and traffic literally stopped a few times. People were letting groups of people run across the road. We were never going to get through here if traffic kept letting people through here. Why don't they have a specific cross walk for pedestrians? It would eliminate people running across the busy highway wherever they wanted. We noticed there were lots of people not wearing masks. There will probably be a spike in Covid cases in Lewis County in the next few weeks. We had a dumb girl in a car ahead of us trying to turn on Skate Creek near the gas station and had plenty of time several times to turn and get off the road. I got so frustrated I went around her so we could continue on our trip. I saw several other people did the same.
We scooted along through the pass and overheard, while we were changing the radio station, that there was a 16 mile back up on I-90 eastbound. I was sooo glad we chose to drive Hwy 12. A bunch more trailers, campers and RV's pulled over when we got to the top. It was pretty much smooth sailing going down the pass. I noticed that the weather was beautiful over here and I was excited to finally be in summer-like weather for a few days. It didn't take us long to get to the Hwy 410/Hwy 12 junction to Naches and to the junction at I-82 to Ellensburg. We started up the grade and I called Mom to let her know we made it over here and we were one our way to Ellensburg on the freeway.
We stopped at the rest stop at the top of the ridge so we could use the restroom and walk around after being in the Escape for a few hours. We both used the restroom and had to get the rest stop geocache, Redmond View (GC7NKQW). We made the quick grab and took in the view of the valley down below. It was very windy but warm.
We continued on I-82 and finally we were heading into Ellensburg. The view from up here was amazing. You could see Mount Stewart in the distance. We followed the freeway to the junction of I-90 and then got off at the main Ellensburg exit and to our hotel. Ben booked us three nights at the Red Lion Inn. We checked in, took our stuff to room 144 and since we arrived at a decent-ish time, I wanted to go out on the Old Vantage Highway to do a 20 cache mini power trail. We grabbed what we needed and took off. Again, it was very windy.
We drove into Ellensburg near CWU and followed that road out to the Old Vantage Highway. There was a mixture of the PSE series and the (K) series sprinkled along the highway with one cache we found that wasn't part of either series. The last cache I had written on the list was the earthcache inside the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park.
We started roughly at 6:15ish and our first cache on the list was PSE: The Gate is Greener (GC74RDV) was hidden inside of a gated recreation area. We parked outside the gate, unlocked it, looked for the cache, logged our names, put it back and walked back out the gate. We made sure we locked it behind us.
We started the (K) series starting with (K-12) Historic Highway 10 (GC92RRK). This series is relatively new as it was published back in November 2020. They've been found almost 50 times before we showed up and will probably be found a lot over the summer as people get out and do these power trails. Most of these were right off the road, near pull outs, mostly guardrails and sage brush. We didn't have any trouble finding these. I love how remote this road was. We did see a few cars here and there but we were pretty much out here by ourselves. It was super windy so we had to make sure we didn't get slammed in the door when we got out of the Escape.
A few miles down the road we stopped at PSE: Welcome to Wildhorse (GC74RBX) which was at the Wildhorse Wind and Solar Facility. We were the only ones there so it was easy to find both the caches that were here. It was super windy so all the windmills that were here were pretty active. It made for a great background for some of our pictures. We found both caches and then moved on for the rest of the (K) series.
At about the halfway point we picked up (K-8) Historic Highway 10 (GC92RR6) and a little further down the road Burned, Rusted and Still Standing Guardrail (GC2WFZA). The first one was a quick park and grab on a fence post and the second one had us scratching our heads for a few minutes until we actually read the cache page. I pulled it up and read it out loud so Ben could hear me. There is no physical container here, you must log the guardrail. Luckily, I had a Sharpie in the Escape. A few weeks prior, I cleaned out my red Escape (to get it ready to sell) and made sure some of that stuff went into my blue Escape, one of those things was a Sharpie for such occasions. Ben wrote the date and then his name, handed me the pen and I added my name to it as well. We both felt kinda dumb after that as we got back into the Escape to head to the next few (K) series.
We put in a couple miles down the hill grabbing three more. (K-5) Historic Highway 10 (GC92PDQ) was another quick one on the side of the road. We made the grab, signed our names and put it bac where we found it. We had about seven more until we made it to the last of the (K) series and into Vantage.
It was around 7:30 when we found our last cache of the (K) series mini power trail. (K-0) Historic Highway 10 (GC92PDC). We pulled over and both got out for the lame guardrail cache. We signed our names, got a photo to commemorate the last one and put it back. We drove into Vantage for the earthcache.
I followed the road that led us into the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park and I made sure I had my Discover Pass even though I had my old Escape's license plate on it. The place doesn't seem that busy and we weren't going to be here for very long. We just had to answer some questions off the signage that overlooked the Columbia River. Tree of Stone Earthcache (GC1C09Y) had us read a couple of signs about what the area used to look like over 15 million years ago. Forests and water once covered the area and as it changed a chemical process petrified these ancient trees that we saw today. We got what we needed and then saw we needed to go to the interpretation center just up the road (we passed it on our way here) for three more waypoints we had to answer questions on. It was getting late and we needed some dinner so we decided to do the rest of it the next day coming back to Ellensburg.
We got onto I-90 and drove west to Ellensburg. We got off at the exit and tried going to Taco Del Mar because it was next to our hotel. They closed at 8 so they ruined our plans. Ben knows Ellensburg better than I do since he did a fire camp here once, he remembered this burger place over by the college and we were hoping they were still open. Campus U-Tote 'Em was still open so we got in line, ordered two burgers, a fries and an Oreo shake. We paid, waited in the Escape until they called our number since it was still super windy. We sat for about 10 minutes, Ben went and grabbed it and we took it to our hotel and ate it.
We watched TV, enjoyed our food, tried going to our reserved time in the pool and hot tub area but there wasn't a hot tub so we went back to our room and I took a hot shower instead. I was so excited to sit in a hot tub, oh well. It was so nice to be warm and clean after a long day. We played 10,000 and talked to Trish on the phone for a bit, she had been drinking so she was silly. We logged the caches we found today and made some notes for my blog. We started getting tired so we started getting ready for bed. My arm started hurting even worse and I worried how the next day was going to go. We went to bed around 12:30.
Next Adventure: Memorial Day Weekend: Old Historic Highway 10, George, Quincy and Ellensburg
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