I was so disappointed in the weather and wanted to do something for Memorial Day Weekend since we had nothing planned and Ben worked a 24-hour shift (then later we found out he got Covid from Doug). I saw the SW WSGA was hosting a CITO, Orchards Park CITO (GC9RHRX), in a park I've never been to in Vancouver that Saturday. I was going to go rain or shine and was really hoping it would be sunny or at least dry that day. I asked Mom if she wanted to go, and she said she would think about it, and I asked Bev if she was interested. She said she was, but she would have to talk to Bob.
We got everything squared away with a plan by Thursday night.
The day off, Mom called me at 8 to tell me she wasn't going to go because she got her second shingles shot at the pharmacy after work the day before and wasn't feeling all that great. I told her she was lame. She didn't care. I hung up the phone and proceeded to get ready. I got dressed, ate yogurt and my bagel, got the recycle together and made sure I had everything in the Escape. I told Doug I would be home later that day. I headed into Rainier and dropped off the recycle.
I drove over to Mom and Dad's house really quick to drop off the potatoes for Zach's birthday party we were going to have on the next Monday but since Doug and Ben had Covid we would have to postpone it. I gave her the potatoes anyway. She handed me money and told me to bring her back pizza from Papa Pete's. I told her she was still lame she wasn't going but agreed to it.
I picked up Bev and made sure we had all of her stuff. So far, the weather was okay. Bob and Bev were going to hit a milestone so we had to figure out which caches to get so we could make their 17,000th find a memorable one. We got onto Hwy 507 and made our way to Tenino. From there, we got onto I-5 at Grand Mound and merged onto the freeway. Traffic wasn't that bad, and the weather was still decent. I was hoping it would hold off as long as it could.
I looked to see if there were a few we could get in Kalama. We got off the freeway at Todd Road and grabbed one along the river called, Outdoorsy #1 (GC5FXZM). It was a quick find along a paved trail. We drove further and parked near the McMenamins, Kalama Harbor Lodge. We walked the short distance to Somewhere Along the Boardwalk (GC567BB). We got to the coords and I immediately found the hiding spot by grabbing the loose rebar but didn't look at it closely enough. We were there a long time until I grabbed the rebar again (because it HAD to be where it was) and looked at it better and found the nano cache. I felt dumb. We signed our names and put it back.
We drove to the other side of the freeway onto S Cloverdale Rd to pick up a few of them, we were only able to get one of them because Bev had the others. They had DNF's Honey, Love Bears all Things #42 in I-5 Series (GC45K2K) a couple years ago and today, we found it. It's always nice turning a frown upside down.
We got back onto I-5 to do the first part of Alien Broadcast (GC4WPTK) which was a pretty famous multicache in the Vancouver area. You had to park at the coordinates, which was literally a one-car pull off near a stop sign. I didn't realize that intersection was so busy. We had to have the radio on to FM and find the transmission between 88-108 MHz. We were able to find it quickly which gave us the coords to the final location. We didn't have enough time to grab the final since the event at Orchards Park was about to begin soon so we would get it on the way home.
I plugged in the coordinates to Orchards Park and away we went. Neither one of us has been to that park in Vancouver before. We arrived just before the event started. I backed in the Escape into the questionable parking lot with water filled mud puddles. We got out, changed our shoes into boots and waterproof hiking shoes, grabbed our garbage grabbers and walked into the park. We looked for the WSGA banner and TheSuperKnotts, Vickie and Brian. We said our hello's and they told us how the event was going to go. We signed a waiver, they handed us our yellow Signal garbage bags and told us to walk around and pick up trash along the trails.
Bev and I started and walked along the eastern part of the park next to the road. We found a pretty good amount of trash before we were done. We also picked up three caches, Famous Adages (GC66164), Famous Aphorisms (GC66166) and Famous Epigrams (GC6616K). They were all hidden near trees or stumps but because of the tree cover we didn't find them right away. The coords jumped around a lot but with some persistence, we found them.
After about an hour of walking around, it started raining. At least it waited until we were almost done but I still wasn't happy. I was so tired of how this spring was going. We hardly got to do any hiking because it was always raining. It always was on the weekends too. Luckily, we were prepared and underneath the trees to keep us from getting super soaked. We used the really creepy bathrooms at the west end of the park before heading back to the event area for a group photo and a raffle.
We got back to the event, unloaded our garbage bags and waited a few minutes while everyone assembled for the group picture. I'd say a good 20 people came to pick up garbage.
We got right into the raffle. I am not a WSGA member, so I only got one ticket while Bev got two. I won a trackable tag in the general raffle while Bev won a CITO tag in the WSGA member's raffle. She had a 50/50 chance at winning because there were two tickets, and she did. She was excited. I was also able to finish Let's Improve the Outdoors (GC8NEAT) --the locationless cache that was created to celebrate the 20 years of Geocaching, improve the outdoors and to earn a rare type of geocache.
We thanked TheSuperKnotts and walked back to the Escape. I wanted to grab at least one more before we left Vancouver, since the rain was not going to let up. We navigated our way through unknown Vancouver streets and finally to A Bug's Lodge TB Hotel (GC5BK9K) in the front of someone's house. I tried putting in the code, which was the address to the house, and kept failing. Bev said to try it backwards, so I did, even though the hint didn't say that. It ended up working and thought the instructions were dumb. I swapped two TB's for two other TB's and signed the logbook.
We made our way to I-5 north, stopped and got the Alien Broadcast final at a cemetery three miles from the original posted coords. It was a really small cemetery and of course there was someone there. There always is. We walked over to the large tree near the fence line and made the grab. We made Bev a sign in the Escape before we walked over to signify her and Bob's 17,000th find.
We got back on to the freeway and continued north to Castle Rock. The rain and mist made the freeway horrible to drive on.
We stopped at Papa Pete's for some dinner. We got there around 4:20 and it was hoppin'. I bet their customer traffic has tripled since the one in Centralia closed earlier this year. We walked up to the counter and ordered. The lady told us it would be at least a half hour until we got our pizzas. We were okay with that. Bev ordered our pizza and I ordered Mom's pizza to take home. We didn't realize we'd be sitting there for an hour waiting for our pizza. We had used the bathroom, washed our hands and went over the caches we found as well as chatting about random things. Bev called Bob to let him know where we were.
They finally called our name and scarfed up our pepperoni and black olives pizza. It was so good and hit definitely hit the spot.
We left just before 6 p.m. to head home. We were there longer than we anticipated. The rest of the drive was messy rain. It made it hard to see when we drove past semi-trucks. I've said it once and I will say it over and over again, I HATE this weather!
We got into Rainier, and I dropped off Bev after chatting for a little bit. I went over to my parent's house and dropped off Mom's pizza and filled up my water jugs. We talked about Doug having Covid so I didn't stick around too long, just in case I was an asymptomatic carrier. I drove back into town, got gas and checked on Alicia's dogs. I stopped by the store for chicken, ice cream and juice...among other things. I got home, brought everything in, put it away and got cleaned up.
I logged caches, ate popcorn, watched Thing Thing About Pam and then went to bed. I was so glad it was a three-day weekend even though the weather was terrible.
Next Adventure: Celebration of Life: Remembering Tom McFadden
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