I have been trying to finish my Fizzy grid for years now. I finally got to fill in a couple without knowing I needed them. Some of them will require special trips and others weren't that far away from home. One of them was a 4.5/1 and it was between Gig Harbor and Port Orchard. I've also been eyeballing the 9/11 Memorial virtual cache in Bremerton for a while as well. I figured since we needed to go up to the Bremerton area let's go to Cougwear too!
I saw I wasn't doing anything that weekend, so I asked Bev and Mom if they wanted to go with me up to Gig Harbor, Port Orchard and Bremerton. They said sure, sounds like a good time. The night before I put together some caches that I wanted to get in the area and told them to be at my house by 9 a.m. I got gas on the way home from visiting a wedding venue with Ben.
The next day, I got up around 8:30, got ready really quickly and they showed up around 9. We all made sure to use the restroom one more time, I ate a bagel, we got into the Escape and left. We merged onto I-5 north and hoped that we did not run into any traffic. We got off at the Hwy 16 exit towards the Narrows Bridge. I mentioned that's it's been a while since I've been over this way and was having a hard time remembering when that was exactly.
We get into Gig Harbor, and we had Nuvi direct us to where we needed to go. It had been several years since we came to Cougwear, our first stop of the day, and I really couldn't remember exactly where it was, even after the three times since 2016. We found the address, pulled in, parked and went inside and were glad it was open because Mom thought she saw something that said otherwise. We went upstairs and was greeted by a young girl running the shop, she said that they added three new rooms of gear to look at. It was a lot of stuff to look at. Holy cow!
We spent the next half hour-forty minutes looking through stuff, I found a decal for my Escape and some Christmas stuff for my Cougar tree I plan to have during Christmas time this year. I was super stoked to put the decal on my Escape and decorate my small tree with Cougar stuff. I thanked the girl who was running the shop.
We walked back down to the Escape and left. We headed to our first cache up near the Burley area of Kitsap County, There Are No Females...(GC6FKQA) which would fulfil my 4.5/1 on my fizzy grid. We pulled up, parked out of the way, got out and started looking. We knew it would be a tricky one. We all started looking while enjoying the fun-loving minions. We looked and looked and looked and looked. Mom found a weird piece that didn't look like it belonged, and we read some of the logs stating that they found the log on the ground. Upon further searching, we found a piece of the log and thought it might have been part of the snap bracelet found on one of the minions. I messaged her for a hint, she didn't respond, and then we sent her the pieces that we found through the messenger through pictures. We all were going to claim it as a find. We got in the Escape and left to Port Orchard.
While in Port Orchard, we did the Adventure Lab, but the Farmer's Market was going on. It made parking difficult but luckily, we found a place to park right away. We did two waypoints to the Adventure Lab near the waterfront and then did the next two in downtown. The coords were bad so we had a hard time finding them but we did eventually! We walked back to the Escape and drove up the hill to get the last two, it was a six waypoint Adventure Lab and there wasn't a bonus cache afterwards.
We got back onto the highway and stopped at Torpedo Park (GC7YMF9) because of beach chairs and a cache. We sat in the chairs and found the cache. We were there for maybe 10 minutes. We all hopped back into the Escape and made our way around the Sinclair Inlet and around to Bremerton. Then I remembered that I haven't been up here since Lindsay and Justin's wedding back in July of 2018. I just don't come up to Kitsap County very much.
We followed the highway through town and then drove over the Manette Bridge to the community of Manette in east Bremerton. I had two caches on my list in this area because I enjoy graffiti walls. However, we had a heck of a time trying to find a place to park. After three attempts, we finally just parked at the apartment complex up the hill and walked down. I really didn't want a ticket or have my car towed if we parked near the wall. We got to the wall, Manette Graffiti Wall (GC9P5FT) and admired the weird artwork. The virtual cache had us pick one we liked and take a picture with it. I chose the Japanimation character because Ben likes this kind of stuff.
We looked for the traditional nearby, Manette Graffiti Wall Up-Close (GC9QYWD) and Bev and I both overlooked it while Mom found it like a mic drop. It was hidden pretty well, and we both missed it. We signed our names, put it back took a few more pictures of the wall and then walked back up the hill to the Escape. From there, I asked Mom to find a place to eat and she chose the Boat Shed.
It was on the same side of the bridge as we were, so it made it easier. However, the restaurant was located down by the water and parking was interesting. We had to drive down the small one-way road to park down below since the upper parking lot was full. We parked, got out and went inside. We were seated out on the dock with a great view of the Sound and the bridge. She got our drink orders and food since we knew what we wanted. We all got strawberry lemonades because Bev didn't love her tea. Mom and I got fish and chips, and Bev got a Caesar salad. We enjoyed our food and our view. We shared a blackberry cobbler for dessert. Bev accidentally threw her pen in the water down below us and we laughed at her.
We paid, the waitress almost lost my card when it almost fell through the deck and into the Sound but luckily it didn't. I looked at the app and saw there was a cache nearby, Whitey (GC6Y1FE) and we went to look for it for about 20 minutes and didn't find it. We think it was supposed to be in the nearby guardrail and it was missing. We left the area, went back over the bridge, turned right onto Washington Ave, followed that road until we saw the Evergreen Rotary Park.
We parked, grabbed Zinc-Element 30 (GC9P0EE) really quick while we waited for our turn at the 9/11 Memorial--the reason why we came to this park.
But we had to go do the others because this lady was hogging the memorial and got irritated when we were trying to answer the questions. So, to avoid confrontation, we walked over to the boat launch/park area to try the letterbox, The Sleeping Giant (GC9Z1CQ) and obviously did it wrong because we couldn't find the cache after searching for at least 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I found another cache container that wasn't supposed to be in this park. It wasn't even supposed to be in this city after we looked up its GC code. We signed it and put it back. I told Bev I would message the cache owner when we got home. It was from Poulsbo, called Muriel Iverson Williams Waterfront Park (GC9GWR9) which was about 11 miles line of sight from the park we were in. We wondered how the heck it got there. I suggested aliens.
We attempted to look for the final to that letterbox and finally gave up. There were lots of people in the park playing on the playground equipment and a birthday party featuring Ariel from the Little Mermaid and Elsa from Frozen. Mom and Bev used the facilities while I walked to the corner of the park to pick up Gallium - Element 31 (GC9P0FY), the magnetic key holder was hidden underneath a picnic table/bench. I met back up with Mom and Bev and told them about the cache. I still kept my eyes open for the clues for that darn letterbox. Lame.
We walked back to the 9/11 memorial and finished exploring it without anyone scowling at us or being in the way of us completing the requirements and taking photos. We probably hung out there for about 10 minutes to make sure we had all the info we needed. We saw this memorial has parts from all three locations from that day: the steel from the Twin Towers in NYC, a piece of the facade of the Pentagon in DC and soil from the crash site in Shanksville, PA. This memorial was thoughtfully put together.
We went back to the Escape and drove into downtown Bremerton to do one of the Adventure Labs. There were several of them, but we didn't have a lot of time to do a bunch of them at the same time.
The Zombies in Your Neighborhood Adventure Lab, was a sequential lab that took us to five various locations in downtown Bremerton to gather "supplies" such as we stopped at a clinic to gather medical supplies for the zombie apocalypse. It didn't take us long to finish it.
We decided we were done and made our way back towards Olympia through Shelton because then, we didn't have to pay the toll to go over the Narrows Bridge. It was probably longer but we didn't care. We did end up stopping in Shelton to do Frisbee'rs Shelton Logging History Adventure Lab and the bonus cache (GC9HD44). That one was also pretty quick.
We headed back to my house, and everyone got out, grabbed their stuff and Mom and Bev got into the Expedition and headed back into Rainier. I got in a shower, I logged our caches and relaxed for a bit until it was time for bed.
I only need nine more caches for my 13,000th cache milestone!
Next Adventure: Tacoma Rainier's Game with Tammy
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