Friday, July 22

Ward Lake Paddle Caching

This short paddling excursion was planned pretty much at the last minute.  Some back story.  Earlier this spring, Brandon texted me asking if we had anything planned for our 20th high school reunion.  Based off of how the last one went; I wasn't too excited about having another one.  Unfortunately, I gave in, and we started planning one.  I posted all the information to the Facebook group page I created back in 2010 and hoped people would respond so I knew how many people to expect. It sat there for about two months before Allison took it upon herself to complicate it by adding an additional event the night before our official one at the park. She was undermining me because she didn't want to do what we had planned.  I was irritated and felt disrespected.

I was, for a second, interested in going because I saw Rebecca was going to go with her husband and I wanted Ben to meet her.  Ben had a 24-hour shift during our real reunion and wasn't going to be able to meet Rebecca.  She and Brandon were my only two friends Ben hasn't met yet.  It wasn't for Allison or her event, it was for Rebecca.  Last minute she and her husband backed out because she had to work late so that turned into a kayak paddle for Ben and me.  Ben and Rebecca would just have to meet sometime later on.

The weather finally cooperated over the past few days, and we were able to have summer weather finally.  This year the warm weather took forever to get here.  It was a nice evening and I asked Ben if he wanted to go to Ward Lake to do a couple geocaches.  He said sure.  There were two caches I've had my eye on for a few years now that I wanted to get but sadly, they go missing a lot. I saw that the dock one was finally back with some maintenance by paddyaddy in September 2001.  I did make sure I had my cache replacements just in case.

I haven't been to Ward Lake since the late 1990's when I was in Middle School and played for the Dynamite, a competitive fastpitch team out of Lacey and Olympia.  We used to hold practice at the Emry's property, which is now a dog park, off of the Yelm Highway.  One day Tova asked a few of us to go sit on innertubes and swim on the lake.  I spend a nice summer afternoon with Lacey, Tabitha, Lea, Tova and Ashley.  I told Ben this story once we got to the lake. 

Ben got home, changed his clothes and helped me throw the kayaks into the red truck, grabbed the Discover Pass and headed down Yelm Highway.  I really wasn't sure where the public boat launch was, so I had to look that up really quick and saw it was off of the Boulevard roundabout down 42nd.  I missed the road, so we had to turn around. We got onto the correct road and followed that until we saw public boat launch signs.  We knew we were going the right way once we saw the dirt parking lot.

We drove down the hill and noticed there were two people floating on their inner tubes near the boat launch.  I pulled up beside the boat launch and Ben and I got the kayaks and paddles out.  We changed our shoes, put the important things we needed into the cubby hole, and I took the truck up the hill and parked it, making sure the Discover Pass was visible.  I walked down and met Ben with the kayaks.

We put the kayaks into the water (the water was surprisingly warm) and shoved off towards Eeyore's GC Scrabble Challenge - a Paddling Cache (GC4RCFT).  I had spent some time making sure I qualified for it before I went for it.  I wasn't sure if Ben did but was going to make sure he signed it so when he did qualify, he'd be able to log it.  It was such a nice warm evening to kayak and we both enjoyed our time out on the water.


The cache was located at the most southern point of the lake, there were lily pads everywhere and bugs.  Luckily, they weren't mosquitoes or Ben would have been eaten alive.  Ben stayed away from the bugs anyway while I explored the only possible place it could have been.  I didn't see it after checking a few places more than once so with some of the extra containers, logbooks and baggies I brought, I took a few moments to get a cache together for Ohjoy.  I knew she wouldn't mind me replacing it for her.



I tied it off where I thought it was supposed to be, took a photo and met up with Ben on the other side of the lily pads and bugs.  He asked me where the other cache was, and I pointed in the general direction of where Abandoned Dock (GC4RDNR) was.  Along the way there, we passed by two people in a fishing boat.  We tried to stay away from them, so we didn't mess with their fishing groove.

We approached the old rickety dock and really wasn't sure what side the cache would be on.  The directions on the cache page weren't really clear.  I had to read it like five times, and I still didn't know what side of the dock it was on.  I assumed it went missing again and had a replacement cache on hand.  I signed our names on the log and found a good place to put it.  I secured it with zip ties and tucked it back away from the edge.  I still wanted to check the other part of the dock that you could get to with a kayak.  Before we left for good, I went to the to the front of the dock to check.  Sure enough, we looked very poorly the first time and there it was.  I signed our names and took a picture with the Jack's Link trackable I received for the latest geocaching promotion.


I paddled around to where we replaced the cache, took it back, shoved it into the bag and called it good for the day.  We paddled back to the boat launch because we were getting hungry.  I asked Ben what we wanted for dinner and since it was a nice day, we decided to grill burgers on the BBQ when we got home.

We got back to the boat launch, pulled the kayaks ashore and Ben waited with them while I grabbed the truck and brought it down.  We threw them in the back of the truck, along with the oars, and tied my red fabric to the back of them because they hung out the back of the tailgate. We drove home, unloaded the kayaks, Ben rinsed them off, we took them into the back yard to dry.  We got stuff ready for dinner and ate while we watched some random TV.

I spent some time getting the reunion stuff ready after dinner.  It's a lot of work to put together an event by yourself.  I was really hoping that at least 10 or so people show up.  I really didn't want to do one after the disaster of the 10-year reunion in 2012 but here we are.  I was also curious on how Allison's "class reunion" was going.  I was very anxious to hear how bad it was tomorrow from those who actually went.

Next Adventure:  20th High School Reunion and Relay for Life

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