As the beginning of May approached, I checked to see if there was going to be a Blue Switch Day event in Thurston County somewhere. Last year, Ohjoy had a Community Celebration event at Priest Point Park, which encompassed Blue Switch Day, and I ended up being able to go since it was after work, but Ben wasn't able to go. The weather was very cold, but it didn't rain on us. I saw there was going to be one at Priest Point Park again, but the park was changed to Squaxin Park to honor the Native Americans from the area.
Global Positioning System (GPS) when first developed was only available to the US military. Later civilians were allowed access with Selective Availability (SA) but the GPS signal accuracy was greatly reduced.
May 2, 2000, on the instructions of President Bill Clinton, the US government turned off its Selective Availability. By "flipping the switch" everyone had access to high accuracy GPS signal. Twenty-four satellites around the globe processed their new orders, and instantly the accuracy of GPS technology increased tenfold. Tens of thousands of GPS receivers around the world had an instant upgrade. Even though there was not a blue switch, for some unknow reason, geocachers refer to this day as Blue Switch Day.
With the availability of accurate GPS signal the world changed forever with the introduction of new technologies that today we take for granted. Gone are the day of the road atlas!
May 3, 2000, saw the first geocache hidden by Dave Ulmer in Oregon and the beginning of the game that we know today.
I logged my will attend on the cache page and then wrote it on the calendar to avoid double booking myself if something else were to come up. I told Ben about it, and he said he would have to come directly after work to attend.
I logged off at 4, grabbed what I needed and headed over to the park formally known as Priest Point. I was early so I got a choice to park in the main lot over by where the event was going to be held. There were a few geocachers already there because you could see several back windows with travel bugs on them. I assumed they were walking around the various trails picking up caches they didn't have yet. That is what I had planned on doing while I waited for others to arrive. Last year I ran out of time to find Priest Point Park (GC8A4JN) and decided I would look for it again the next time I was out that way. It had me going at first but the only place it could have been is where I eventually found it. I got my name on it, put it back and headed back up the hill to the event.
More people started to arrive to the WSGA Southwest Chapter Celebrates Blue Switch Day (GCA7HB2), and Bob and Bev rolled up in their hamster car. We chatted a little bit about what was happening, she asked some questions about Arizona and wondered when Ben was going to arrive. I told her probably pretty soon since it was almost five. We made our rounds among the people that we knew, Dan, Rhonda, Nicsac and Sagefox. Nicsac was asking me about some of my geocaches, so I told her what I've been up to. I even had a chance to tell her about some of my caching adventures in Arizona and picking up GC57, the oldest in Arizona. She thought that was pretty cool. Ben arrived and soon mingled with the crowd.
We chatted a bit more after signing the logbook for the event and then Gabe took reins and said some stuff about him taking over the Southwest Chapter of the WSGA and then Ohjoy shared some information about some of the newest caches in the park. She handed us a printed-out piece of paper for the earthcache, Name That Rock! (GCA7H04)) because she wasn't sure if it was going to publish. She had hoped that it would by event time, but it never did. She said we could log it as soon as it published, whenever that would be.
Ben, Bev, Bob, Wayne and I went into the forest to complete the multicache, Do You Have the Snickers? (GCA7Z96). I, among others, aren't really fans of multicaches because some information can be interpreted differently to others and often, we get the wrong information recorded. Most of the time I will skip multicaches unless they were straightforward and can't be interpreted in many different ways. What was really funny about this cache is that we did just that, misinterpreted the information that was asked on the cache page. However, we found our mistake, fixed it and it led us to the cache next to some tall Douglas Fir trees, a pole, and a leaning tree. We wrote our names on the log and put it back where we found it.
Since we were already halfway to the earthcache, we continued walking down the trail with the coordinates from the handout Ohjoy gave us, we knew we were getting close when we saw a group of people, Sproutter, Go-pher-It, Manahoonie, Nicsac and Sagefox who were just finishing up. We spent a good ten to fifteen minutes answering the questions provided on the paper. I led the discussion because I have a small background of geology. I knew how the erratic got to this location and knew a little bit about its composition but some of the other answers was your interpretation of the information. We got a fun group picture before heading back to the event.
Ben grabbed the letterbox, Be Erratic! You're 21! Happy Birthday! (GC8VX07) on our way out of the forest. It helped that we had some direction from the others because I didn't remember it was out here. We walked back to the event while Bev and brought up the rear. I took a couple pictures of the trail while we chatted about random things. We crossed the really cool bridge before leaving the forest. We mingled with people for a little bit longer while I took Ben over to the cache, Addiction Cache #9b: I Still Want One of These (GC27Z74), near the wooden chair swings.
Gabe said something to us about a cache publishing not too far away from us around 7ish. We decided to stay in the area until it published. He gave us a hint on where it was supposed to be so as it approached 7, we got into our vehicles and started down East Bay back towards Olympia. It published as soon as we left so we had an idea of where it was, except parking was going to be a little bit tricky. We got close to the location and saw that we had to flip a U, to park on the opposite side of the road. Lame.
Once we all got parked, we jogged across the road and started looking at the small park for East Bay Overlook II (GCA812E) together. Frisbee'r got there around the same time we did. Bob was the one who came up with the cache in its hidey hole. We all shared the FTF with its hider, Gabe. We all got together and took a quick selfie before putting it back, we chatted for a few minutes and then got back into our vehicles. We made another U turn and headed into Olympia and back towards home.
We ate dinner, relaxed and hoped that the nice weather would continue into the weekend. We got a new souvenir to add to the collection and it was nice to get a FTF, I haven't had one in a while. Good times!
Next Adventure: Dominick the Warrior and Mariners vs. Astros
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