I saw there was a meet and greet event in Vancouver and even got personally invited by the cache owner on August 11th that said, "Howdy! As one of the Excalibur finders, I am extending a personal invitation to you. I am having a geocaching event, outdoors of course, this Saturday afternoon in Salmon Creek. Here is the link http://coord.info/GC9E5M8 I hope you can stop in and say hi. -Debbi."
I asked Bev if she got the same email and she said yes. She asked me what time we were going to leave on Saturday and I told her to be ready by 11ish. She said she could do that. I told her to bring water because it was going to be a hot day. Ben couldn't come with us because he was on shift that day in Tenino and Mom decided she wanted to stay home after yesterday's adventure. I didn't blame her since it was a long day and we got back late. I wanted to go because this is summer and we have to do as much as we can while we have nice weather.
I got up around 9 a.m. and took a blueberry muffin with me to eat along the way to Rainier. I let Bev know I was on my way. It didn't take me very long to get there and she was ready when I pulled in. Bob decided he didn't want to go with us and he told us to have fun as he continued on with his day. We headed to the freeway via Tenino and Grand Mound. I was hoping for a smooth ride down to Vancouver.
The ride down wasn't all that bad. We talked about the upcoming TriCities geocoin challenge, my trip to Peru, the stuff Bev has been doing, talked a little bit about fantasy football and other random things that came up. We approached our exit so I got into the correct lane and found out we needed to get off at the next one because there was no through road to this park from this exit without going all the way around. We didn't have time for that so we turned around and got back onto I-5 and got off at the next exit.
We followed Nuvi's directions until we got to Salmon Creek Park and neither of us had been here before. We turned off the road and followed the directions to a gravel parking lot with a geocaching sign indicating us where to park. I recognized some of the vehicles. We knew most of the people attending were going to be from Oregon. We parked and got out. We saw there was a geocache nearby, Taunting My Best Bud Again (GC2CC1F) so Bev and I grabbed it before joining the event. It was next to a tree and an easy find. We walked over to the event and Debbi (verano) was happy to see we made it. We signed the logbook for Salmon Creek Park Meet and Greet (GC9E5M8), got a ticket for the raffle later on and blended in with everyone. It was already hot.
About a half hour in, Bev and I decided to get the tree closest geocaches since we had about 45 minutes to wait until they did the raffle. We broke away from the pack and headed west in the park. This park was huge and you could spend several hours walking around. We only had about an hour and it was hot. The first one on our map was Salmon - Crossroads (GC7B5FF) and it took us a few minutes to find the right tree. Someone had posted that there might be bees near ground zero so we had to be careful just in case there were. We found the right hole in the tree and pulled out a bison sized tube with a twist cap on it. Bev signed our names and we put it back.
The next one, Salmon Small Bridge (GC6FKQB) was further down the trail and we passed a group of people walking a bunch of dogs. We exchanged some pleasantries and tried to figure out where this cache was. It was taking us all over the place. There was a pond nearby, an almost dry creek bed with a small wooden bridge over it and a dry-ish landing amongst cottonwood trees. We found the downed log the cache was hidden in. We got our names on it and put it back better than we found it. We walked over a small bridge to the next cache.
Salmon Holly (GC6FKQJ) was a little bit further of a walk away. We got out of the trees and into a huge open field to where we were exposed to the sunshine. We did bring our water with us. We followed the gravel trail over to the south side of the park near a row of trees and bushes. We saw the small road that lead up the hill and a bunch of holly trees. My first guess was that it was hidden on the back side of the tree away from view. It wasn't there. We read a few logs and the last few people didn't find it so we were at a loss. Hmmm, we were going to look everywhere before we gave up. I read on. Someone said something about a stump and I didn't see a stump so I grabbed a stick and started moving the holly bush out of the way. There it was, a small stump hidden in the holly bush. I grabbed the container and we signed our names in victory! We put it back and almost walked away when Bev said she still had part of the cache in her hand. I grabbed the stick again and retrieved the cache. We put the stuff back into it and hid it back. We walked back to the event since it was getting close to raffle time.
We walked through the baseball fields and decided to use the restroom before making our way back to the event. We took turns inside the hot box. We went to the event, mingled again, grabbed some cool water that was being offered since the water in my Nalgene was warm now. I was told I had to move my Escape away from where I parked it. Apparently, it was way too close to a gate. Then some guy asked me where the lake was and I told him I wasn't from here and showed him my caching map to possibly where he wanted to go. He thanked me anyways.
We made it back to the event just in the nick of time for the raffle. Sadly, we didn't win anything this time. We thanked Debbi for a good time and decided it was time to head home since I had some stuff I had to do. I did take some TB's for my hotel at home. We hopped back into the Escape and got back onto the freeway to head back home. I had a couple caches written down at the two northbound rest areas and I wasn't sure if Bev had them or not yet. She looked on her app and she and Bob did have them. She said I could stop and get them if I wanted to.
PIT STOP (GC40F1K) was at the Battleground northbound rest area and she and Bob picked that one up a few months prior when they were down this way last. We parked in the car parking lot and found out we should have parked on the other side since it would have been a shorter walk. We walked to it anyway and smelled pee along the way. I walked up the short hill in the east side of the rest area, got stabbed by a stick on the back of the shoulder but I found the cache! I wrote my name, grabbed the TB and put it back. Some guy was watching us from his parking spot. We just ignored him. We got back to the Escape, noticed a guy sleeping in his truck next to us and left.
We got back onto I-5 and I saw I was running low on gas as I got to Kalama. I told her I was going to stop in Kelso at the Arco to fill up since it was a place easy to get in and out of. We approached the exit, I got off, pulled into the gas station, filled up and we left. We were in and out of there in about 10 minutes. I didn't realize we used that much gas but the last time I filled up was Port Angeles the night before.
We were near the Toutle River Rest Area (GC8D39W) and I decided to pull off the road into the rest area to grab this one as well. Bev said she vaguely remembers getting this one with Bob. She didn't remember where it was but somewhere out near the trees. She decided to stay in the the Escape while I tiptoed around dog poop to the cache site. It took me a a few minutes to find it because it wasn't in any of the obvious spots plus the coords bounced around a little bit. I signed my name quickly, put it back and got back onto the freeway.
It was smooth sailing all the way until we got off the freeway at our exit. I got into Rainier and dropped off Bev, she said she had a good time and that she would most likely see me again at the TriCities geocoin challenge here in a few weeks. The next couple weeks were going to be busy.
I picked up Mom and headed into town to take care of Erika's dogs since she and Zach were up north visiting Shane and Linda and didn't want to bring the dogs. We fed them, made them go into the back yard to use the potty. We noticed that Toby has lost a lot of weight and was more active. He launched off of the porch when we got the soccer ball out. Emmett was not impressed. We were over there for about a half hour or so and then told them to be good until they got home. We went to Walmart to pick up the sandwich making things for Grandpa's birthday. I was hungry so we got a couple of chicken sandwiches from KFC, went to Fred Meyers for a couple things and then I drove back to my house to dump off the stuff, drove back into Rainier, dropped off Mom, went into Tumwater to check on Alicia's dogs and then went home and made cupcakes. I saw the Seahawks lost to the Raiders 20-7 in their first preseason game. Let's not hope this is what the season will be like.
Next Adventure: Grandpa's Birthday at Bonaventure
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