I went to bed late the night before. Doug had stayed out after work and had drinks at the bar with some of his work friends and didn't tell anyone. I got a phone call from Mom to go get him from downtown Olympia. I had just got home from grocery shopping, and I was hungry. I had called him earlier to see if he needed anything from the store and he didn't answer. It was strange because he always answers his phone when I call. Ben helped me unload the groceries and started the pizza while I drove down to where Mom said he was.
I got down there and wasn't sure which parking lot he was in exactly, but I did eventually find him sitting in his car, talking to Mom, crying. I pulled up beside him, knocked on the window and he acknowledged I was there. I told him it was time to go home and to grab all of his stuff to throw in the back of the Escape. He ended up spilling one of his bags on the ground, so we had to pick up all of that. Mom called me but we couldn't answer. We grabbed the rest of his stuff and I asked him if his car was safe here...like it wasn't going to get towed away. He said we should probably move it across the street at his agency's parking lot. He insisted that he was going to move it and I said no, I was going to do it. He hopped in the passenger's seat, and we drove it across the street and parked it. We walked back to the Escape and went home.
He tried talking to me a few times but ended up saying he was sorry and cried a little bit. We called Mom back to let her know what happened and that we were heading home. We got home, Ben had the pizza almost done, we tried feeding him pizza and making him drink Gatorade, but he fell asleep on the couch for a couple hours. Ben and I ate, and we watched some TV and then cleaned up the kitchen. I took Doug's shoes off and made him go to bed. Super fun Friday, right?
The next day, I was so excited to sleep in. This was my reward for getting up and going to work every day...being able to sleep in on Saturday morning. Ben had a 24-hour shift at the station and Doug decided he was going to come into my room and wake me up at 7 a.m. to get his car. I really didn't want to, but he insisted. I am going to use this against him when I want him to do his chores in a timely manner. I asked him why so early? He said he wanted to do it before the "crazies" showed up to the Capitol. The things I put up with from my siblings.
I put on some sweats, grabbed what I needed, and we headed back down to Olympia to go get his car. I was so excited. He asked me if I wanted to go to breakfast after I dropped him off and I told him I wasn't hungry because I was supposed to be sleeping. I appreciated the gesture, but I just wanted to be sleeping. We got to his agency, I dropped him off and we both headed home. I immediately went back to bed and woke up around 10:30 when Mom called me to ask what we were doing this afternoon.
I told her he woke me up at 7:00 to go get his car and then we went back to bed. She said, oh, you got his car already. I said, yeah...I was so pleased to be woken up that early on a Saturday. I told her that we needed him to get up so he could get some more dog food for his dog at Costco. She asked what time to head over. I said she could as soon as we hung up the phone. The quicker the better. I got up and put some clothes on, ate a light breakfast and waited for Mom to get here. I told Doug to start getting ready because Mom was coming over so we could go to Costco to get dog food. Of course, he dilly dallied.
He eventually got out of bed, put clothes on and grabbed his phone and wallet. We piled into the Escape and headed for the Tumwater Costco. I was at the Hawks Prairie one the day before and they didn't have what I came for. We grabbed his dog food (they didn't have the cans of wet food) and I got my toilet paper, paper towels and peanut butter filled pretzels that Ben and Doug seem to like. We paid and Mom decided she wanted lunch and we settled on Eagan's. I haven't been there since Covid began almost two years ago. Mom and I got the special and Doug got the double bacon burger. It hit the spot.
We went home, unloaded our stuff and Doug stayed behind. I wanted to enjoy the nice day, so I asked Mom if she wanted to go to Steilacoom with me to do some caches and Adventure Labs. She said sure, she could use some walking around. Fun fact, Steilacoom's name is derived from a Native American word meaning "little pink flower."
We headed up I-5 and followed the Dupont-Steilacoom Road. I stopped at a cache along the way that I've been to three times called JBLM GS Troop 43234 (GC765D5). I was here with Ben back in April 2020 and could not find it. I think it was missing because where I found it, is a place we searched thoroughly and did not come up with it. This time I did. Hmm. I signed our names and Ben's so we never have to come back here again.
We parked along one of the main roads for our two-hour parking. We shouldn't be here for more than two hours. I opened up the Adventure Lab app and started with Historical Tour of Steilacoom, Washington. It took us to five different historical markers around the downtown area of Steilacoom. We went to a marker for the first Pierce County Court House, which has a cache behind it, so I wrote Mom's caching handle on it so she would get credit for it. Ben and I were here April 2020, so I had most of the caches except a few.
We walked to the Orr Pioneer House and answered the question, then up the block to where the first Washington Territorial Jail was and then walked up hill several blocks to the Old Steilacoom-Olympia Road intersection. All of these places had historical signs we had to read and get information off of it. It was fun to learn about them. The fifth stop would have to wait because it was quite a drive out of town. I switched over to the other Adventure Lab, A Walk Around Downtown Steilacoom.
I knew these would overlap so I figured why not do this one before we leave town to get the fifth one in the last Adventure Lab. We walked down to the Steilacoom Historical Museum Assocation and had to figure out how many buildings were being ran by the historical society. We found out that the museum opened in April...we were a month too early. We continued down the hill to the Steilacoom Town Hall and found out the year we needed to complete this visit.
We walked over to the Steilacoom Tribal Cultural Center and found the number we needed on the fire hydrant out front. We walked another block towards the Sound to the fourth location at Pioneer Orchard Park. I noticed that they did some renovations on the bandstand since the last time I was here. It looked nice. We got the info we needed and walked to our fifth and final location for this Adventure Lab. That took us to the ferry terminal. This ferry took you to Anderson Island, a place I have yet to go. The Ferry to Anderson Island question was easy and I found it instantly on the large reader board out front. Adventure Lab completed!
Mom and I took a few photos and I saw I haven't found the cache that was down here, Selkie (GC7PE4J). It was the perfect time to search for it since the ferry just left and no one was around. I walked down to the dock and tried looking for it. I knew it was going to be similar to the dock one in Olympia. I just had to find the rock block that moved. The only one that moved easily isn't where the cache was. I called Bev to see if she remembered where this one was. She said it was like four years ago and she couldn't remember. I milled around for a little bit and saw one of the blocks near the middle of the dock was moved. The cache was inside the hole! I wouldn't have even looked here if the block wasn't already moved. I signed our names and thanked Bev for helping me look, lol. It actually took a lot of effort to move the block back to where it was. It fit pretty tightly.
We left the ferry terminal and walked back to the Escape. First, we stopped at this shop Mom wanted to go into. It was called Norse and Sea. We looked around and Mom ended up buying a gift for Amy, a really unique beverage koozie that looked like a winter jacket, and I bought a cool blue whale key chain. I gave Mom money when we got back to the Escape because I left my wallet in the console. I didn't think we were going to do any shopping.
We walked back to the Escape, which was only a few blocks away, we got in and I looked at my maps to see which one of the two places we had left to get was closest. That was the bonus cache, A Walk Around Downtown Steilacoom BONUS Cache (GC8XHZ1), for the second Adventure Lab we did. I plugged the final coords into the cache page and away we went. Mom decided to call Amy to let her know about her gift and to ask a little bit more about our upcoming trip at the end of April.
I approached GZ and had to make a U-Turn because it was a one-way road. I drove back where we came from and had to go up the side road, up the hill, made a left turn and I was on the correct road. I parked and told Mom to wait while I went to find it since she was chatting with Amy. There were some construction guys working so I did my best to ignore them, and they ignored me. The coords jumped around a lot but I managed to narrow it down to start searching. It took me a couple minutes to realize what I was looking for. Derp. I was looking for a flat light switch cover on the crosswalk sign. I made the grab, got our names on it and replaced it quickly.
I walked back to the Escape. Mom was still talking to Amy.
I went out the way we came and down one more block to get onto Chambers Creek Road to get our fifth stop of our first Adventure Lab. It was another stone with historical information on it. It talked about the Chambers Creek Mill that used to be in this area many years ago. I turned the Escape around and went back into Steilacoom so we could start driving back towards Dupont and I-5. Mom talked to Amy almost the entire way home.
I decided that since it was a nice day, I was going to mow my yard the first time since early October. When we got home, I immediately changed my shoes, got the lawn mower out, dumped some gas in it and started it up. It took a few tries to get it going but it went. I listened to my podcast while I mowed. Mom was inside helping Doug sort out and pay his bills. She came out and told me she was heading home. I waved and she went home. It took me about 20 minutes to finish the front yard. I didn't want to fight with Doug about picking up his dog poop in the back yard just quite yet, so I let it go for now. He was going to have to start doing that weekly as the weather gets nicer.
I went inside, got cleaned up, ate some popcorn, watched TV, worked on my blog, logged my caches we found today, and I ended up going to bed late again because I decided to vacuum the house tonight instead of tomorrow. I was going to save the easy things to get ready for Grandma's birthday party the next day.
Next Adventure: Grandma's St. Patrick's Day Themed Party
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