This was the last pending item on my list from 2020 that I had scheduled to do. I have been waiting two years to finally get this event out of the way so I could plan new places and things to do. This event was also postponed twice thinking we were going to be able to do it last summer, but it didn't happen. So, here we are.
I asked Mom if she was interested, and she said no and then I asked Ben if he wanted to go, and he said he was going to do a shift at the racetrack in Grand Mound. I guess I was going by myself that was until Ray and Brenda decided to drive over from Spokane to stay with me and go to the event with me. This was decided literally days before heading up to Seattle.
Bob and Bev were supposed to go with Gabe and had every detail worked out several weeks ago and he basically stood them up for his girlfriend who lives in Federal Way. He wasn't going to tell them until Bev called him on the Thursday before. He assumed that I was going to take them up and bring them home without talking to me about a new plan. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. You make plans with someone, and I expect you to honor those plans. If something comes up let them know so other arrangements can be figured out. What if Mom and Ben were going with me? With Brenda and Ray, my Escape would have been full, and Bob and Bev would be stranded either at home or in Seattle. I was pretty irritated at Gabe for his petty decision making.
We did manage to figure it all out, so everyone was able to go and come back. Bob, Bev, Ray and Brenda were going with me in my Escape up to Angle Lake, ride the train to Westlake Center and the monorail to the Seattle Center. We didn't have to find parking, get stuck in traffic or waste a lot of time. The roundtrip train ($6) and monorail ($6.50) ticket were totally worth it.
On Thursday, I cleaned the house and mowed the lawn so it would be presentable for when Ray and Brenda come from Spokane on Friday. That Friday, I had my one-on-one with my boss and Ray and Brenda showed up around 3:00. They went and grabbed a few caches in the area before coming over. Once I logged off, we hung out for a while, I gave them a tour of the house, showed them where everything was, and we went outside to get the cache in the front yard. They had a great time looking at the trackables and trading them in for new ones.
Around 5:30, we hopped into the Escape and headed into Olympia for an event at Lion's Park to meet up with other geocachers. I wasn't sure who all was going to come according to the will attend logs. We usually get more people than what the cache page says. We made a mistake and had to turn around to get to the park. I had never been here before but have seen the puzzle cache on my map for a while and wanted to come out to do it. I knew we wouldn't have time to while we were here and might have to come back another time due to dinner.
Welcome to Olympia, Washington (GCGC9Y53G) was hosted by a cacher named Truvtter from Kansas City, Missouri and her goal is to host an event in all 50 state capitals. She is also a quilter, and her logbooks are quilt squares that the attendee's sign with fabric markers. She is in town fot the celebration event in Seattle. Quite a few people came, including some from out of town, we signed her quilt square, chatted for a bit and had a raffle. She raffled off an earthcache kit and a quilt block. Bev won the quilt block, and I was off by one number!
We did briefly think about staying to work on the puzzle, but we were getting hungry, so we went back to the house to meet up with Ben, who recently got off work. We figure we would have enough time to do the puzzle on Saturday or Sunday before they leave to go back to Spokane. We drove home and ate burgers, chips, corn on the cob and beans for dinner off the grill. We sat outside on the patio furniture and table, that Rhonda gave us, and shared stories as we ate.
We brought everything inside, did the dishes and put the extra food away. We hung out for a little bit more and then got ready for bed since the next day was going to be a very long day. I told Ray and Brenda if they needed anything to help themselves and showed them where the extra pillows and blankets were. They thanked me and told me they would see me in the morning.
The next morning, I got up around 6:20 and started getting ready to go for some reason my phone didn't charge the night before. I guess I was lucky that the phone went off when it did. I plugged it in and hoped it had enough power by the time we got to the train station. Ray and Brenda also got up around the same time, ate a quick bowl of cereal and I had some yogurt and half a blueberry bagel.
Bob and Bev showed up to the house around 7 a.m. We through all of our stuff in the back, I had packed my bag on Thursday and Friday as I remembered stuff to shove in it. Off we went to I-5 north and we arrived at the Angle Lake parking garage around 7:50, found a place to park (in spot #399), grabbed everything we would need and headed to the ticket kiosk, purchased our roundtrip tickets to Westlake Center.
We sat there waiting for our train to depart for about 10 minutes. During that time, we sat there and talked to The Dips. It took us a little less than an hour to get to Westlake Center--there are 12 stops between there and Angle Lake. We got off the train and headed upstairs to the Monorail, I paid for a two-way ticket to the Seattle Center.
We got on and took the short trip to the Seattle Center. We got off and went into the Armory to use the restroom because none of the train stations nor stops had public bathrooms. Then we went to the event, Geocaching 20th Anniversary Celebration (GC896PK).
From there, we wandered around for a bit, signed the giant 2022 logbook, stood in some lines, did the nearby Adventure Labs (some didn't have specific geofences so we didn't have to walk a lot), talked to a bunch of people we haven't seen in a while, renewed my WSGA membership (because I was taking on WSGA caches for a Geotour), chatted with Chris, picked up some swag from various booths, talked to Rich, Lisa, JD and Josh, bought some merch and hung out with the group I came with. We were probably there for 5-6 hours or so. I also handed out some of my pathtags.
We all started to get hungry but didn't want to stand in line with the food trucks, so I suggested Dick's, which was a couple blocks from the Seattle Center. Everyone seemed to agree with me, so we made our way a couple blocks north of the Seattle Center to the Queen Anne Dick's. It had changed the last time I was here back in 2013 when I came with Bev for the Pacific Science Center event we went to. All the tables and chairs were gone (due to Covid) and the prices went up. I ordered the cheapest stuff on the menu, two cheeseburgers, a fry and a strawberry milkshake. We stood at the public counter and ate our food. I joked around about having Dick's in our mouth.
We walked back to the event and used the restroom one more time, talked to a few more people, I went back into the building with all the booths one last time and then decided we were pretty much "funned" out for the day. We got back onto the monorail, then down to the train station and finally back to Angle Lake.
We looked for the cache, Angle Lake Train (GC6TWE7) before we got back to the Escape and left. We had to find the correct level to find the cache at...once we did, it was an easy find.
We soon headed home and only had to slow down in Fife for a little bit, other than that, we encountered no other traffic. The day went as planned and everyone got to do what they came for. We all arrived at my house around 4:30, Bob and Bev went home, and Ray and Brenda went with me to a couple caches and then back to Lion's Park. Lion's Pride (GC6PQ6W) was more difficult than we anticipated. We had to call the hotline to figure out where the last lion was because it was not easy. We all saw it but thought it was a piece of garbage. We found the final cache and we were probably there for at least an hour.
I took them to the Treehouse Inn - A TB Boarding House (GC7YQP9) at Harvey's Pack's house and then we ate dinner at the Mayan because Brenda wanted margaritas. They had nachos and I had water and chicken chimichangas. We went back to the house, hung out and logged caches. Ben came home from the racetrack later on; we visited a little bit longer until bedtime. That was a long day but glad to finally be done with events pending from two years ago. Now, we can start making new plans and doing new things. It was a relief that all of those things we planned on doing in 2020 were finally done and we can now close that chapter of that book.
Next Adventure: Spokane Trip: Lacey to Spokane
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