I saw throughout Facebook that there was going to be a 20th Anniversary for cache machines. I haven't been on a cache machine since the Shelton Cache Machine in December 2018. With everything that was going on in my life at the time, made it hard to plan for them. Then Covid pretty much murdered them altogether. There had been some chatter on whether or not they were going to continue after Covid.
Late November to early December I started to make plans and hoped that the weather was decent during that weekend in January. I told Ben about it and he seemed interested at the time and even made plans to get a hotel the Friday before so we could attend the pre-cache machine dinner. As it got closer, we saw the weather was going to be unfavorable and we both got sick right after New Year's Eve, so we decided not to go.
Instead, a few days before, I asked Bev if she just wanted to go to the event and maybe get a couple caches on the way there. She said she would ask Bob and get back to me. I told Ben that Bev and I were probably going to go to just the dinner, he said that was fine. Bev got back to me the next day and told me that she was able to go. We hammered out a time for her to be at my house on that Saturday.
At three on Saturday, Bob dropped Bev off, I had all my stuff together and we drove off in the Escape. We got gas and headed up to Bremerton via I-5 north. The traffic wasn't bad, and we made great time getting to Hwy 16 over the Narrows Bridge. We followed Hwy 16 up through into Bremerton and followed the GPS onto the east side of Bremerton, over the Manette Bridge. We got there in about an hour. I asked Bev since we got here so early, it was still daylight and it wasn't actively raining, if she wanted to get a few caches while we waited for the event. She said sure.
We checked to see which ones we didn't have together because we both have been to Bremerton on different occasions and found different caches. We knew we both didn't have Whitey (GC6Y1FE) because the last time we were here it was missing so we had to DNF it. We found a place to park (in a non-parking spot) the Escape and walked over to the "small" park. We saw another guy was standing there looking for it and found it just as we approached him. He knew we were there for the same reason. We explained to him that we were here a few months ago and it was missing but glad to see it was there. He handed it to use to sign and we put it back.
We decided to move the car out of the non-parking spot to the actual parking lot. I wasn't sure if there would be any parking at the next one, so we opted to walk to it. It wasn't that long of a walk plus it was nice to get out and walk anyway since we've been in the Escape for an hour. We approached E 9th Street Mini Park (GC9D45H) and saw there was plenty of parking spots and we could have driven. Oh well. We found the correct hole, hanging about mid-knee in the bushy tree, made the grab, got our names on it and put it back just as another group of cachers showed up. We walked back to the Escape and headed to the next cache. We had to be careful because one of the main roads we needed, Perry, was closed.
I set 15-TGS: Vivien's Light Fantastic (GC3BMY5) to our phones and had Bev direct me to where we needed to go and she almost led us astray, haha. We flipped a U, parked and I got out to grab it so we could sign it inside the Escape. It was a fake rock, easy peasy. We got our names on it and put it back where I found it. We had no idea even if these caches we were finding were on the cache machine route.
We drove further up the street for Carter's Cache (GC1WNHJ). We found a place on the side of the road, got out and walked to the wrong side of the fence. We walked back around and onto the flat pavement, avoiding all of the puddles from the rainfall, to grab a fake magnetic bolt on a metal piece in the corner. They are always hard to write your names on because the logbook was so small.
We got back in the Escape and drove up Trenton Ave, cut across Stone Way near the school and onto Perry (this section of road wasn't closed) and found the event, 20th Cache Machine Anniversary Dinner (GCA2QY6) and location, Chaos Bay Brewery. We parked and went inside. We tried to get there as close to 5 p.m. as possible. We saw that we were one of the first groups of people there, so waiting for food and finding a table wouldn't be that difficult. We stood at the counter and decided what we wanted to eat and drink. I ordered a beer (the Amber ale called Time Trap), burger and fries. Bev had the onion rings and a drink. We paid and saw Rhonda and her husband were behind us, so we chatted for a few minutes.
We found a table to sit at and Rhonda and her husband came over to join us. It was fun catching up with them, chatting about random things and sharing our recent caching adventures. As we ate, several people stopped by to say hi including Brad, Antoine, the mom from PNWfamily and a few others. Then all of a sudden, a ton of people showed up about the same time and it filled up fast. I was glad we got there when we did. A lot of lackey's from HQ came and it was fun to see the support for Travis and his cache machines. I saw the logbook was being passed around and went to sign it.
This was my 9th cache machine. The first one I ever attended was in Wenatchee back in March 2011 and I had an absolute blast! I wish I could have done more over the years, but I had an unreliable vehicle, a crappy job and no money...at one point my weekends were taken away from me for about a year.
Brad had a presentation for Travis and a couple people spoke on his behalf including Andrew and Abby. Travis started cache machines back in 2004 mostly because he wanted to hang out with friends and have them find the caches for him, haha. He said that he's not planning on doing anymore but not saying that he's going to completely not do them anymore. He said if someone wanted to take it over that he would help them. There was a rumor that there might be one in Yakima this spring. We will see if that happens.
We took some group photos, hung out at our table for a little bit longer, used the restroom and Bev and I left. We found Good Eats (GC1W8TN) in the parking lot before we headed home in front of a business called Larson's Restaurant and Lounge.
We drove through Shelton because we didn't want to pay the toll at the Narrows Bridge. We made our way through Shelton, Bev called Bob to let her know where we were and that we would meet him at the Neighborhood Walmart off of Yelm Highway because he hasn't figured out how to get to my house. He said okay and would meet us there. I needed to go there anyway to get juice for Doug.
We both got to Walmart roughly at the same time. Bev thanked me for the fun time, she hopped in their Kia and they went home. I went inside the store, grabbed some juice and went home. I got in a shower, logged my caches and started watching Season 4 of Stranger Things.
Next Adventure: A Funeral, 90's Game Night and Doug's SpongeBob Birthday Party
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