The alarm went off around 8:30 but we didn't get up until about 9ish. We got ready for the day with our hiking clothes and shoes, washed the rest of the dishes and made the same food from yesterday so we could use it up. I tried my Keto cereal I bought from Costco for the first time, and it wasn't that bad. We cleaned up and finished getting ready.
We got the rest of our hiking stuff together, made sure we had plenty of water and chewy bars. I even threw in a couple apples just in case. We were going to do the Valhalla hike, out near Stevens Pass, but there was still snow and ice in spots and we didn't want to risk it. We had a really late winter and spring that spilled into our summer, so our summer started super late this year. It was disappointing. Instead, we chose the Icicle Gorge Trail, which is a 4.5-mile loop around the Icicle River.
We looked at the several maps on the computer the night before, so we knew where we were supposed to go and if we needed certain passes. We did need a NW Forest Pass, which we could purchase at the trailhead for the day. At only $5, the pass was pretty cheap for a memorable experience out in the wilderness.
We left around 10:45ish and headed to the Icicle Gorge Trailhead, which was west along the road the Icicle Chalet was on, roughly around 18 miles from downtown Leavenworth. Icicle Road is also FS76 and the paved road eventually turns into a potholed filled gravel road, which makes travel to the trailhead take a little longer. There were several spots along the road to enjoy views of the river and tons of spots to stop and climb the towering intrusive basalt rocks along the river valley.
We finally arrived at the trailhead and there were plenty of parking spots. It looked like this was a popular place to enjoy a day hike with all the vehicles that were already here for the day. I walked over to the registration board and grabbed an envelope to fill out and stuff money into. I filled it out while we were getting our stuff ready, put the $5 bill inside and kept the ticket part to stick in our window just in case a ranger came by to check. I took it back to the registration board and dropped it in the slot.
We finished putting our socks and hiking shoes on, grabbed our water, my backpack, and walked over to the beginning of the trailhead. We briefly looked at the map, snapped a photo (just in case) and started our walk along the Icicle Creek. I had terrible service out there so luckily, I saved the caches on an offline list, but if my phone restarts itself at any point, we won't be able to see them.
And we were off!
We hiked the trail clockwise, so the creek was on our right side, as we meandered up and down on the small elevation changes. The natives named the creek Nasikelt and if pronounced correctly, it sounds a lot like "icicle", but rumor has it that some of the early settlers mistook the proper native name and called it Icicle.
Early on, less than a mile into our hike, we crossed the Icicle on a really nice footbridge. This is where the first cache, Chatterbox (GC599E) was but didn't search for it because we forgot to look at my phone to see that it was there. We enjoyed the creek and the views from the bridge.
We rounded the corner and slowly gaining some more elevation and we made our way into a crop of trees. During most of our hike, Icicle Creek was in view. There were several places that we stopped along the way to take pictures. I love hiking along rivers, it's so peaceful. We gained more elevation as we got up on a great 360 view of the river and surrounding areas. Ben messed with a chipmunk for a few minutes while my breakfast caught up with me. I guess the Keto cereal makes you poop. I went to find a spot hidden away from view to do my business. We moved on along the trail after about 10 minutes or so.
Within about a half a mile or so, we found ourselves in a mostly grassland, thinly vegetated, dry area of the trail. You could see some of the mountains in the distance were still snowcapped. We took several pictures along the way through. It was such a nice day! It was so much fun exploring a new area with my fiancé! It was so weird to say that.
As we reached the midway point of our hike, we made our way to another bridge. This time it was a smaller footbridge over a picturesque part of the creek. We took a small break here while we enjoyed the area. We gathered up all of our stuff and continued down the trail. We made the turn and hiked through the Rock Island Campground. I told Ben we may have to come back and camp here someday and he agreed.
This part of the trail was canopied with forest, so we got a lot of shade while hiking this area. I tried to open up the cache that wasn't too far away from where we were. The distance showed but I could not open it up to check the hint, so we were going to have to guess. Hiking the Icicle (GC7QFPK) was a little difficult to find but Ben and I fanned out and he ended up finding it behind a tree. We signed our names, got a picture and put it back. I was getting hungry, so I pulled out my apple as we continued down the trail.
I saw we were getting closer to A Brownie Elf in the Forest (GC7QFQ0) but because I could not open the cache page due to the cell coverage, I could not see any information about it. We ended up looking for it for about a half hour. When I did get some cell service, I found out it was missing. Bummer. We moved on and meandered our way throughout the rest of the hike. The parking lot wasn't too far away from where we took a half hour to look for that cache. There was another one called Icebox (GC6C23) but we were not able to do the multi cache because of the cell service. Maybe next time?
This was an easy hike for Ben and me, but we are pretty active, so we didn't have any trouble walking the trail in its entirety as quick as we did it. We took a couple breaks but those were mostly to enjoy the area and take pictures. It is family friendly, and I do recommend doing it in a clockwise direction. We got back to the Edge, took off our socks and shoes and made our way back to the chalet.
On the way back, we stopped for two caches, Ice Fall (GC87XXX) and Icicle Creek Hollow (GC2DVA8). Ice Fall took us a little bit of time to find because it was hidden among the boulders that lined the banks of the creek. Eventually, we pinpointed the container, signed our names, took the TB and put it back. I ended up with a scrap on my knee. Icicle Creek Hollow was a quick grab at an informational sign. We thought it was going to be hidden on the sign, but we found it in an awkward place behind the sign. We got our names on it and went to the chalet.
There, we changed our shoes, picked up our phone chargers and made sure we had our wallets. We decided to drive into Wenatchee for some food. Sadly, there isn't a Buffalo Wild Wings in Wenatchee yet, so we had to find something else in that food genre. I did a quick search and found a place called Sweetwood BBQ over by downtown Wenatchee. I set my phone to that address and navigated Ben to the correct place. We pulled into a spot in front of the building and went inside. I was glad to see it wasn't busy.
We browsed the menu to find out what we wanted. We ended up getting a platter. Three different kinds of BBQ'd meat, beans, cornbread, coleslaw and fries. It was a lot of food, but it was delicious. We knew we would end up with leftovers so we ate as much as we could of the stuff that doesn't heat back up very well, like the fries and cornbread. The trio of meat (chicken, brisket and pork) were really good. We packed up our leftovers and headed out.
Making Errands Fun #4 (GC7PBKB) was less than 200 feet from where we parked. Of course, we had to go grab it. Quick and easy. I wanted to go do the Adventure Lab, Let's Get Outside Wenatchee, in Walla Walla Point Park, so we drove over there after dinner. We parked in the lot and began our five-point adventure. There were also a couple caches along the way as well. We picked up Linston (GC50JXM) and Hideaway Again (GC6Z1F9). When we were done with the Adventure Lab, we tried looking for the bonus cache, Let's Get Outside Wenatchee! Adventure Lab Bonus Cache (GC8Z233), but we couldn't find it plus, the mosquitos were terrible! Ben had enough of the mosquitos and started heading back to the Edge. We were even wearing repellent.
Ben wanted to go get gas, so we found the Safeway that was nearby. While he pumped gas, I walked over to grab Making Errands Fun #1 (GC7MDW9) in one of the lamp skirts. It was really hard to be stealthy but somehow, I managed. I signed our names, put it back and walked back over to the gas station part of Safeway.
I asked Ben if we could stop by Walmart because I wanted to see if they had any new Cougar sweatshirts. They didn't have any, but we did get some more drinks, I bought some green shorts and Ben found some mucus medicine because he was having a rough time with the sage brush since he is allergic to everything in the spring and summer. We left and I wanted to make two more stops before heading back to Leavenworth.
We stopped at Wenatchee Confluence State Park for a very popular TB hotel (GC273E6) by Mr. Gadget #2. For some reason when we were here last, we didn't grab this one. Not sure why. We parked as close as we could get to it, got out and could see it from the parking spot. We walked around the fence and studied it for a few seconds. Signing the log was easy but you needed a code from the cache owner to trade out TB's. At this point, we didn't care about the TB's, so we just signed our names, Ben got tired of standing there being eaten by mosquitoes, so he went to the Edge as I finished with the cache.
We got onto Hwy 2 and made sure we were in the correct lane to go west towards Cashmere. I told Ben where to turn once we got to the first intersection to turn off the highway into Cashmere. I told him that this is where the Aplets and Cotlets were made and navigated him to Riverside Park where the Spirit of America (GC63VMD) and the 9/11 Memorial was. I had to stop here. I have been to several 9/11 memorials all over Washington State and was even able to visit Shanksville, PA and the United 93 crash site in November 2019 and this past spring I was able to visit the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in NYC. These memorials are very important to go visit if you can. This one is Cashmere was very well done.
We drove the quick stretch down Hwy 2 west to Leavenworth and back to the chalet for the rest of the night. We decided to use the hot tub since this was our last night before having to head home the next day. We changed into swimming suits, showered, jumped in, relaxed about a half hour while we enjoyed the mountain air, got out and showered again. We decided to do a load of laundry while doing the dishes before we settled down for the night.
August of 2018 was a rough one for me. Probably the worst one in my life thus far. That August, we lost my grandmother Eileen, and I was absolutely devastated. I never knew what it was like to lose a loved on until that point. Mom, Erika and I needed to get away, so we planned a trip to Nashville, Tennessee. While we were there, we booked a tour of the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg. I always bring home a souvenir from wherever I go. I bought a fifth of honey whiskey to bring home with me and it sat on the shelf from when I brought it home to our last night in Leavenworth. So almost four years it waited for a special occasion. This was a special occasion. We opened it up, poured it into our whiskey glasses with some ice and toasted to a new chapter of our life.
We played 10,000, Speed and Phase 10 for a little bit. We each won a couple games so no one would be a sore loser. Ben and I set up the TV and watched The Nutty Professor while we finished up the laundry. I looked up geocaches to grab the next day on our way home while we watched. That movie will always remind me of happier times. Grammie loved the part in the movie where the mother clapped her hands together yelling Hercules!, Hercules! and would often imitate it during family get togethers. It has been a while since I've seen the Nutty Professor.
We soon got ready for bed afterwards and hit the pillows around 1 a.m. It was nice to sleep after a long day. Poor Ben had mosquito bites all over his body.
Next Adventure: Leavenworth to Lacey
No comments:
Post a Comment