After several hours of really bad sleep, the alarm finally went off at 7 a.m. I literally slept like garbage the entire night. I'm sure Ben did as well on the tiny futon, plus all the times I woke him up telling him to stop snoring. We all used the restroom, washed our faces and got dressed. Brenda made us each a smoothie and Ben and I had a banana.
We helped Ray take a few tubs and bags of stuff out to their car and we drove separately because of the after-event activities we each will be doing. It didn't take us long to get to Valley Mission Park as we followed Ray and Brenda in their hamster car. When we arrived, we checked to see if our paperwork was on the board, and it wasn't. They haven't updated that weekend's reservations. Ray brought a copy of his with him just in case someone wanted to argue with him.
We helped them get the totes and bags out of the Kia and decided how we wanted to arrange the really heavy metal picnic tables around the covered area. We were busy getting everything ready to go when a red neck family in a broken-down truck showed up. They wanted to have a baby shower at this park and was wondering if they could share the covered area with us. Ray told them no because he paid for it for most of the day. I think they ended up having it at the park just not the covered area because we occupied it.
We set up a sign in table and a prize table. The others were just kinda off to the side just in case someone wanted to sit and visit. Ray had printed off small Portuguese flags as the raffle tickets. We wrote our names on the back of them and gave them back. We helped Brenda arrange all the prizes on the prize table. As we approached event time, people started to arrive for Goodbye Spokane...Bom Dia Portugal (GCAAXT0). I was excited to see how many people would come.
As people funneled in, we got to chatting with some of the people because some did recognize us and others did not. They asked us where we came from and how we knew Brenda and Ray. We got into talking about caches in the area and then caches people wanted to get not so local. We talked about travels, the TriCities Geocoin Challenge and how much we all were going to miss it, we talked about HQ in Seattle, Fizzy and Jasmer caches. It's amazing where your conversations go when you are talking with other geocachers because everybody's got different aspirations and goals to complete. There were about 20 people who came.
Ray welcomed everyone, shared about the big move in October and told everyone that they were going to miss home but excited for the next chapter. He and Brenda went into why there were so many raffle prizes on the table and simply put, they can't bring it with them. So, they figured doing a raffle would be a great, fair way to divvy it out.
They had so many items we went through five rounds of raffle. They had many different types of containers, stickers, flashlights, tags, trackables etc., and even things they had when they were WSGA chapter reps. It was crazy to see how many things were on that table. Between Ben and I, we came home with 10 different items to use eventually in our hides. The event lasted about an hour or so. It was fun to go to an event where we got to meet new people.
There was a small lull between the geocaching event and the family gathering that started around lunch time. People could come and go as they please due to work schedules and whatnot. People brought their own lunch and chairs. I was excited to meet Ray and Brenda's family. I have gotten to know them through their stories and photos throughout the years. The only person I have met personally is Ray's son, Matthew, when I went to go stay with them when they lived in Vancouver.
I hopped in the car with Brenda, and we went to go pick up some KFC for lunch, the traffic was terrible, but we managed to make it there and back in one piece. We came back to the park and realized we didn't have any plates to put our food on. I told her Ben, and I would hit up the closest Dollar Tree to grab some plates, she said that would be great. We hopped into the Escape, found the closest Dollar Tree and headed out. As we got closer, we saw an accident at the nearby intersection. It looked like someone forgot their brain at home. I am glad we were able to avoid the traffic chaos.
We got to the Dollar Tree, grabbed some plates and paid. I saw there was a Value Village next door and I had to go inside of it to browse. I found a No-Li pint glass and a fish plushie, similar to the ones that are yeeted at Kraken games. I paid and we headed back to the park. A few of their family members and friends had arrived and started to visit. I grabbed Mom's camera I borrowed and started taking pictures for them.
.jpg)
As more and more people started to arrive, we made our rounds to meet everyone. Some of them have heard of us and have seen photos of us over the years. We briefly sat down to eat some chicken, mashed potatoes and a biscuit before spending the next two hours chatting and visiting with their family and friends. As it wound down, more pictures were taken, and Brenda took a short ride on Wes's Harley Davidson. She had a blast!
People gathered up their things and loaded up their vehicles. Overall, about 20 people came to hang out with Brenda and Ray. Afterwards, we cleaned up, everyone said their goodbye's and we went to go find two caches.
The first one was near the park, overlooking I-90 called Caitlyn's Cache CLXVIII "Another Dead End" (GCZHP9K). This one took us a while to locate but we found it. Brenda wanted to go avenge another DNF that has been bothering her for a few weeks.
From there, we got onto I-90 and got off at Barker Road and drove to Mill Blade (GC9G3BD). We both found parking spots out of the way, we got out and asked Brenda about the cache since she's been there before. She said she's tried many things. So, we started trying things and none of them worked. We did pick up, what looked like a discarded pieced of wood, but didn't think it had anything to do with the cache. We tried many different ideas, wrote down lots of possible combinations and came up with nothing. We were there for a long time trying just about everything we could think of. Then Brenda and Ray had to go get gas and meet up with some friends for dinner. We told them if we could figure it out, we would let them know.
We were there for another half hour or so trying different combinations and on the last try, the U bolt fell off the cache. It was held together by nuts on the inside, and they eventually wiggled loose, and I was able to get into the cache to sign the logbook. We weren't sure how we were going to put it back together since we didn't find out the code. We did our best, tucked it back where we found it and hoped for the best. We did message the cache owner what had happened. We didn't hear back from him for a couple weeks and he even threatened to take our find away because we didn't open it with the code. I told him it wasn't our fault the U bolt fell off of it. We called and told Brenda and Ray, we did open it, but it broke and that is how we got inside of it. I told them we were going to log it. **A few weeks later, I found out, through other cachers, that the piece of wood held the answer to figuring out the code for the lock.** We made this cache harder than it needed to be.
They asked us what we were going to do, and I told them we were going to meet up with my friend, Fitzy, at No Drought for a beer and the Cougar/Beaver game. They said that they would see us back at the apartment when they were done. I told them I would let them know when we were on our way back.
We met up with Fitzy at around 4:45 and stayed until about 8:00. We visited, talked about the wedding, moving and other various things, drank beer and ate popcorn. I had Kokomo Pilsner, and it was tasty.
Chaise's brother and his goofy friends ended up at the bar, so we hung out with them for a while. Chaise didn't come because he wasn't feeling too well. Cougars beat the Beavers in a Pac-2 show down, 38-35. The boys wanted Fitzy and us to come to another bar with them downtown, but we declined. She ended up taking them down there and then went home.
Drove back to the apartment and got there around 8:30, got in a shower, hung out, visited and relaxed. Ray spent some time downloading the pictures I took of their family event earlier that day. We went to bed around 11:00. Again, was super uncomfortable but I was so tired, I slept a little better than the night before.
Next Adventure: Spokane Trip: Heading Back Home with Some Geocaching
No comments:
Post a Comment