Last weekend I wanted to go fill in one of my Fizzy squares, but the weather was too rainy, and no one could come with me because they were all busy with other things. Now that the weather has dried out some, I was able to convince Bev to go with me to Chambers Bay to get a geocache needed to fill in my Fizzy grid. I wasn't sure if Bob and Bev needed the same square or not, but it was an opportunity to get out of the house and do something fun on a dry day.
I asked her if she wanted to go, and she said she had to ask Bob and get back to me. The Friday before, she texted me back saying she could go, and Bob would drop her off at my house as long as I take her home afterwards. Not a problem. I took some time to look at the map to see what other caches we could get but the main show was Sixty Four (GC91MHP), inside of the old, abandoned Steilacoom Golf Course...but how to get there? I saw there was a parking lot nearby and our goal was to park there, and I guess walk to the tree we needed.
The next day, I slept in until about 9:30, ate a quick bagel, picked up a few things and by that time Bob was dropping Bev off. I grabbed my pack, water, a soda and some Fritos just in case we didn't get to having food for some reason and needed a snack. I set the Nuvi to the cache, got onto I-5 north and away we went. She was getting over having a cold. We chatted about random things, and it really didn't take us very long to get to Lakewood.
We missed the road we needed to turn into to get to the parking lot I saw on the map. Instead, it took us through a neighborhood and to a cul-de-sac. We found a place to park in front of a vacant house. We walked to the end of the cul-de-sac and discovered that it didn't go through, it was a cliff. We walked back down, and a lady pulled up into her driveway in the nearest home to our left and asked if she could help us. She said that we were on her property, and we said that we thought it went through to the park. She said, oh...you from this neighborhood? We said no, and she said oh. She explained that if we got back onto Onyx Drive, park at the neighborhood park, walk across the street and that road will take you into the park. We thanked her because she could have been really rude, but she wasn't.
We walked back to the Escape and did exactly what she told us to do. We made it to where we needed to go, parked, walked across the street and followed the trail into the park. It took us through the disc golf course and up onto the old, abandoned golf course. We looked at our phones to see how much further we had to go, and it wasn't far. We approached the set of trees our phones were pointing us to and figured out which one it was before climbing it. I looked up to see if I could see the cache and I could. I pointed up to it but Bev couldn't see it...it was hard to see.
I looked for the best place to put my feet and hands. It was challenging and made me use muscles I haven't used in a while. Climbing up was easier than climbing down.
This is what I wrote in my log:
"I needed this D/T square for my Fizzy. I thought about doing this one last weekend, but it was too rainy. Instead, I called Bev, and we came out today. We missed the disc golf parking lot, and the GPS took us to a neighborhood where one of the residents pointed us in the right direction. They told us to park at the small neighborhood park and walk across the road down to a dead-end street, there, we found an entrance and a trail next to the disc golf course. We found a good spot to cross the course, avoiding flying discs, and made our way to the other trail that took us to ground zero.
We found the correct tree, saw the cache, and I had to do some magical body maneuvers just to get off the ground, since I am short, but it's a good thing I grew up climbing lots of trees as a kid living in rural Thurston County.
Bev was my cheerleader as I climbed higher and higher. There was a spot along the way that got sketchy, but I managed to find places for my feet and hands to keep going. I got up to where the cache was, found a good place to lean, and signed the logbook. The logbook may need to be changed soon, it was a bit damp and tore easily, but still okay to write on. We got a few pictures, both from above and below and then made my way down.
There was a spot where my foot touched one of the smaller sized branches and snapped but luckily, I knew how to hang out and there was a bigger sized branch just slightly below it for my dangling foot. It was all good. I made it down but that last step is a doozey if you're a shorter person.
Thank you for placing this cache! It was quite an adventure and was happy to do something a little different than just finding the same type of hide over and over again. Cache gets a favorite point and fills in my Fizzy!"
Afterwards, we decided to go walk over to get Shady Cache (GC8TAC7). We spent too much time there and couldn't find it. It was like a needle in a haystack since the foliage was stirred up so much. It really could have been anywhere if it was still there. We made our way back to the Escape. The entire outing took about an hour or so and we got in a good walk.
From there, I put in the address to the Narrows Brewery and off we went. I've been on a brewery kick lately. It's been fun trying new beers from different places, especially my Amber ales. I had never been down by the marina before. We saw the brewery was open, but we wanted food first. We went into Boathouse 19 and had to put our name on the reservation list. I am not sure why we had to do that...it really didn't seem like the place was that busy. Oh well. We went outside to enjoy the fresh air, views of the Narrows Bridge and then went inside the bait shop to waste time and just for fun. I got a text about 30 minutes later letting us know our table was ready.
We were seated, ordered water and both got fish sandwiches (we are at the Sound so of course you order fish) and I got fries and she got the buffalo cole slaw. The food was good, Bev made a mess on her plate, and I made fun of her for not being able to take her anywhere. Haha. She offered to pay for my food to make up for the birthday lunch from 2021. I thanked her and said that we were going to go next door to try out some of the beers on tap.
We went inside and I thought the artwork on the walls were pretty cool as we made our way to the tasting room/bar area. I looked at the choices and ordered two tasters, one called Eldie's Amber and a Peanut Butter Cookie Blonde Ale because that one sounded interesting. I kept my tab open just in case I wanted to try anything else. I had Bev taste them to see what she thought of them as well. I walked over to the "to go" section and picked up a six pack of the Amber ale so I could take it home and share it with Ben. I also bought a sticker.
I closed out my tab, walked back out to the Escape to head back towards home. I told Bev we couldn't end our day on a DNF, so along Bridgeport Way, we stopped at a park to look for Suspended Aspen (GCA2B13) inside there. I know we've been to this park before, but it's been several years, and that cache has long been archived. We parked and walked inside. There were a lot of homeless people camped out near the gazebo. We tried staying away while we looked. It took us in circles but after squatting down and looking around me, I finally spotted the darn thing. We signed our names, put it back and walked back to the Escape. We were there way too long looking for it.
I set the GPS for Rainier. We followed Bridgeport Way all the way down until it connected to I-5. Bev and I chatted about more things and she shared stories about when she and Bob were younger and lived in the area and all the places they went and activities they did.
We merged onto I-5 south, got off at Mounts Road and drove into Yelm and then to Rainier. I dropped off Bev, had to stop at Grandma's house to pick up Ben's blanket she fixed for him, along with some Valentine's Day stuff. I had intended on just dropping off a few things at Mom and Dad's house but that turned into me like staying for an hour and a half. Why? Because Erika called me to complain about Doug and his car. It soon involved Mom and Dad talking with me and Erika on the phone. This was so poorly timed. I needed to go home so I could get the house ready for the Superbowl party the next day. I finally just said that I had to leave and left around 7:15 and got home just before 7:45 and immediately started working on getting the house ready. I was up until about 2 a.m. after I got cleaned up. Most of it was done and all I had to do the next day is finish the food, vacuum and decorate. Today was long and I knew I was going to be sore after climbing that tree.
Next Adventure: Superbowl LVII
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