Saturday, September 4
I had set my alarm for 7 a.m. but I was so excited I ended up actually getting up by 6:45. We started getting ready to go and took our stuff down to the Escape. Ben grabbed the "to go" breakfast bags that we've become accustomed to since Covid began. It had a banana, mini muffins, water and a yogurt inside. We threw them in the cooler for the time being. Since we did get up a few minutes early, Ben wanted some coffee so we went across the street to Dutch Bros so Ben could get his coffee. He was driving so I really didn't care as long as we got to the event early.
Ben merged from the Columbia Center Blvd to WA 240 to Richland. We've been down this road countless times over the years to and from Kennewick. I told Ben we should get gas before we get to the event so we didn't have to do it later. The other day we talked to Ray and he and Brenda wanted us to drive. We found the one along the way that looked to be the cheapest. We pulled up to the Conoco and filled up. I pumped while Ben went inside and grabbed some more ice. We wanted to make sure our stuff in the cooler stayed cold. It was suppose to be almost 90 degrees that afternoon.
I set the Nuvi for the coords to the event, Tri-Cities 2021 Geocoin Challenge (GC9A0QE), at John Dam Plaza and off we went. We pulled into the wrong parking lot at first so we went to the correct one and found a place to park. We grabbed what we needed and saw Mr. Gadget across the parking row. We chatted with him for a few minutes. I still can't believe Celeste's parents Kathy and Jim used to snowmobile with him and his wife. Such a small world.
This year was going to be a little different. They had to adjust it so we would be able to have this event. Instead of 40 caches like we did past years, it was now 40 waypoints, 10 in each city, Adventure Labs. They gave us credit just like normal caches do except all of these are "virtual". There is no need to touch anything. It brought you to 40 locations where you had to find a phrase or a word. That phrase or word you wrote down on your passport. You also had to log it on your phone so you got credit as well. The format was the same except I would have liked having the waypoints on a paper map so we could see where they were approximately but this year we didn't get one. We had to use our Adventure Lab's map and coordinates. We were a little apprehensive at first just because we weren't sure how it was going to go.
We walked to the event and we were pretty early so we walked around. We took a few picture of us with the signal banners and saw how the set up to get our information was going to be.
We ran into TheSuperKnotts (Brian and Vickie) and chatted with them for a little while. When Bev and I were in Vancouver a couple weeks ago we were not able to visit with them. It was nice to catch up with them while we waited for the event to start. I was wondering when Brenda and Ray were going to get there. We haven't seen them since June 2019 so we were really excited to see them finally in person. Just as we try to text them I saw them walking over to the event.
We gave each other huge hugs and were glad that we were finally able to do this event. We were super stoked that this weekend finally arrived. We chatted for a little bit and then went and got our goody bag (a TriCities Geocoin Challenge buff) and instructions for the geocoin event.
Then we took some time to go get our picture taken with Signal for the locationless geocache (GCFROG). This has been on my list of caches to get since they told us about it back in early 2020. It was a quick photo op on the stage.
We wandered around a bit visiting with people we haven't seen in almost two years. We talked to Mc3Cats (Chris) and Peach (Annette), from Peach and Pete. Pete passed away from health complications (not Covid) back in April 2020. She visits Pete often at the military vets cemetery. I am not certain which one it is. Since then, she has met a special somebody and we got to meet him while we were visiting with Annette. She seems to like him so we will see how this new relationship blossoms as time goes on. We ran into Bob and Bev and chatted with them for a while. They were waiting for Gabe to show up and assumed he was going to be late due to a new love interest. Bob and Bev were really not that thrilled.
We sat in the bleachers with Brenda and Ray for a little bit while we waited for the event to start. It was fun just to hang out and catch up with them.
Jen, our event director, got on the mike and asked people to gather (safely) near the stage while she went over the rules for this year's coin challenge since it was slightly different. We listened to her information, then listened to one of the city cops and another lady who had a huge role in all the planning to make this happen. We were thankful they were able to figure out how to hold the event post Covid. I was so glad to be in the TriCites because I've been waiting since the first time they canceled it to go. That was over two years ago. I hate Covid.
There was no group picture this year because we had to keep our distance from each other. Lame.
Before they let us go, they told us we needed to go to one of the many volunteers to grab out passport and to be safe about it. So that meant not to mob the volunteers when we went to get one. We were given permission to get up and grab one, I grabbed one for Ben and I so we had two, just in case I made an error, (we were one household so we just got the one coin) and Brenda and Ray grabbed two for the same reason. We walked to the parking log, they threw their stuff into the truck of the Escape, made a quick plan and off we went. We officially started our challenge around 9:30.
We chose to do Pasco first because it was the only city across the river and work our way around back to Richland. We knew we would be going to some of the same places we had in the past. Brenda and I were the note taker/secretaries, Ben drove and Ray was the navigator. We were a well oiled machine and tried really hard not to back track.
We all had fun inside the Escape reminiscing about past fun times and the things we've been doing since the last time we saw each other. We talked about our families, the big things we've been up to like small road trips throughout the summer, stupid Covid ruining everything and I chatted with them about my upcoming trip to Peru in a few days. They told me I was going to have a blast and they were right, I could not wait to go.
We got to our first couple of labs in Pasco. We had to use the navigator on the Adventure Lab app which took a couple of tries to figure out how to use proficiently. We noticed that this geocoin challenge ate away at our phone battery faster because it was solely on our phones. We did not use our GPS's or our Nuvi. Some of the ones in Pasco were very spread apart and we did our very best not to back track.
We had a few epic fails over the course of our day. They were mostly turning down the wrong road or driving past the road we needed and had to turn around or go the long way around. There is a railroad that divides Pasco into two pieces and only one road goes through so we had to remember that or we would be going back and forth wasting time. It took us a little under two hours to finish Pasco.
We drove into Kennewick via one of my favorite bridges in Washington State. Again, we went to some of the same locations we've been going to in years. We all recognized the areas as we drove around. "Hey, remember when we went here?" Or, "do you remember when it was really hot and we walked that two mile multi cache?" We all remembered.
We made another visit to the 9/11 Memorial at the soccer and baseball fields in Kennewick. This was the only waypoint that seemed to be broken. Several people were saying that the Steel Beams location was broken on the app. The word/phrase we needed wouldn't work when we typed it in. We saw a piece of paper on the ground being held by a rock that said what we needed to input into the app. That seemed to work but it didn't clear it from our map. Ray worried that we wouldn't be able to get credit for finishing that one. I told him that Jen must have been told about it and let's see when we get back to Richland.
This year we didn't stop at a nearby park to eat lunch. At one of the stops, we just decided to get out and make food really quick. I wasn't too hungry so I had half of a PBJ sandwich and I made Ben one. Ray and Brenda had a Snickers bar to keep them at bay. Today, we just ate and drove.
We finished up Kennewick with visits to Clover Island and the General Mills grain tower, we've also been to these places multiple times.
We made it to West Richland well before 1 p.m. We didn't run into as many geocachers as I thought we would. We did run into a few people every now and then. We did run into Bob and Bev at one place and we had enough time to to have a short conversation. I asked them how far along they were and they said not very because Gabe's girlfriend was wasting a lot of Adventure Lab time. Yikes! That's a huge bummer. She said that they will be lucky to finish before 5. I told her good luck and we moved on to our next waypoint.
When we got to the Richland Adventure Lab, I was super convinced that we were going to find one of the waypoints near WSU TriCities. It was close but not this time. Instead, it was at a small park we've been to several times with part of a submarine sticking out of the ground.
We made quick work of Richland and finished right around 3 p.m. This has been the earliest any of us have finished a TriCities Geocoin Challenge.
Brenda and I figured out the coordinates for the bonus cache and directed Ben to where we needed to go. Ray plugged the coords into Nuvi and off we went to Amon Park near the Columbia River. It wasn't too far from John Dam Plaza either. We parked as close as we could to the cache location and walked the short distance towards a wooden gazebo. No one read the hint yet and the coords kept taking us around the gazebo. Where the heck would a small cache be in the middle of the lawn? I read the hint and it was one of those circular water valve boxes. That made it easier to locate because it did blend in with the grass and the coords were slightly off. We made the find and it was our only physical cache find during the entire event. We got a group picture to celebrate the end of the day.
We drove to John Dam Plaza and parked in the same lot we left from that morning. We walked to the stage and found a table so the volunteer could check our answers. We did have trouble with the Steel Beams waypoint not working. They asked Jen about it and she said it should be working now. We typed in the word/phrase we needed and all of our Adventure Labs were completed on our phone. They checked our paper passport and said it was good. They handed us our coin and it was a pretty cool one this year. We chatted with our friend Julie for a little bit. It was nice to see her finally after two years.
We all wanted to go to Texas Road House for dinner so Brenda put us on a waiting list. The last time I went to one of these was in September 2018 when Mom, Erika and I were in Tennessee. This one in Kennewick is the closest one to where I live except for the one on JBLM, which I do not have access to. I would have to have an active duty military escort on base or an Army vet, like Erika, escort me on base. It's more trouble that it's worth. We made our way back to Kennewick.
We parked and went inside to meet up with Brenda and Ray. We didn't have to wait that long and were seated right away. I ordered a strawberry lemonade and Ben got a beer. While we waited, I had two of those soft warm dinner rolls with that tasty cinnamon butter. We all ordered steaks, potatoes and veggies. Mine, specifically was a 11 oz sirloin steak, medium rare, green beans and salad. I could not wait for my food to come. I have been waiting years to come here again. Our food came out and it was utterly delicious. We had a great time eating and sharing stories with each other. It was so good to see our friends again.
We paid and said goodbye to Brenda and Ray. They made it a day trip by leaving really early from Spokane and heading back the same day to Spokane. It was a long day for them. They told us that if we ever decided to come over to Spokane to let them know. I told them we sure would even though it probably wouldn't be until next year now that the winter would soon hit the Cascades.
I asked Ben if we could go back out to the power trails so we could do the Triple-H series and he said sure. There were 37 of them but for some reason I had logged one of them from past trips out here. I set the Nuvi to the first one in the series, Triple H #1 (GC3KKJ6), and we headed the 15 miles out there. We had maybe a few hours before it got dark so the sun was slowly setting. We decided to do about 15 caches each and I jumped first.
Sunday, September 5
We had the alarm set for around 9 a.m. We laid there for a while and eventually got up, got dressed, packed up all of our stuff. We made sure we had everything and Ben went downstairs to bring the cart up so we could bring all of our stuff down at the same time. We took it out to the Escape and when Ben returned the cart he checked us out and got a receipt.
We bid farewell to Kennewick, headed to the closest gas station (I really liked the gas prices here) and got onto the freeway. We both didn't really have a lot of time to waste even though I really wanted to stop and get caches on the way home and hit up Miner's in Union Gap for lunch but we didn't. We had to be home by 2 p.m. Ben had a bag tag event at Woodland Creek he wanted to participate in and I had to meet Mom in town so we could take care of a bunch of stuff before our trip to Peru on Tuesday. This was pretty much the last day to take care of stuff since I won't have time the next day.
The ride was pretty uneventful through most of it but we made pretty good time until we got to the pass. No one would pass the corn trucks and the corn truck would not pull over and let the traffic they've accumulated pass them. This has probably been one of the slowest trips home from Yakima. This drive usually took us around four hours took us five hours this time around. We barely made it home just before 2.
Ben got ready and Mom met me at the house so we could go do our stuff. We hit up Costco first, then Walmart for a few things including shampoo, conditioner and soap (Mom and I were going to share it on our trip), The Dollar Tree so we could pick up some face shields for Peru so we didn't have to worry about buying them there. I wasn't very excited to wear them but at least we were prepared. She took me home and I unloaded my stuff. She headed home because she had to start at least getting her stuff together. I had to do the same since I won't be home due to the concert tomorrow.
Ben got home, ate a quick dinner and he told me he didn't do very well during the bag tag and ended up with a worse tag than he started out with.
The next few hours were spent getting ready for our Fantasy Football draft since I wouldn't be able to do it tomorrow or Tuesday before the season started. I got in touch with Willmarth and he said Sunday night worked fine for them. I just had to ask all of our people if they were available to do the draft with such short notice. I had sent Willmarth all of the emails of the participants a few days prior so they could be invited.
Each year we do a snake draft so if you are first or last, you get better choices. This year I was fifth and I knew which players I wanted if they were available of course. Our draft was about an hour long and I had to do Mom's draft as well because she couldn't figure out how to do it on her computer. So I did both and tried to pick somewhat decent players.
I started getting my stuff ready on the table so I could start packing it. I had a lot to do before we left on Tuesday.
Next Adventure: Hella Mega Tour: Weezer, Fall Out Boy and Green Day
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