My Adventures and Places Life Takes Me: Early Birthday/Anniversary Weekend: More Power Trails, Milton-Freewater and Hop Thief

It was out last full day in Walla Walla. We got up at 8, got ready, ate our bagels, fruit and yogurt in our room, made sure we had all of our stuff with us and left the room. We drove to downtown, found a place to park and went into the Starbucks, which was the event site of Goodbye Wala Walla (GCAER76). Ben got in line for a coffee, and I decided that I didn't need anything. We sat at the table, signed the logbook, talked to Brad and the other geo peeps about random things. It was a fun visit.

We told everyone safe travels home and we went out to hit the power trails again. I knew we weren't going to get them all during this visit, but we were going to try to put a pretty good dent in it. We drove out to Lower Waitsburg Road to where it met up with Hart Road and started where we left off. First one was Scraggly Snag (GC3M87Y), and it was a quick park and grab. It was my turn to jump out while Ben drove.

Heart Near the Cross (GC5GDPK) was another quick park and grab after starting the Hart series (GC6REB2). Because we started from Walla Wall and worked our way north towards Prescott, we did the Hart series backwards, starting from 53 and ending at 01. There were some that had been archived, 52, 42 and 37. Halfway through the Hart series, we stopped to get one called A Heart Stash for U! (GC5EH9K) and guess what? It was a cache hidden in a pile of rocks just like the others! Woah!

We moved onto our next section, the rest of the Lower Waitsburg series (GC6CDWP) and this time Ben jumped out. There were 33 of these. We had done bits of this power trail throughout the last few days. Again, like all the others, we had to replace a lot of them. Some of them were washed away due to the rain and others didn't survive harvest. The rolling log and having practice over the past few days made us super-efficient. A little more than halfway thorough, we found another random cache 7th on 7th (GC3M8FM). It was a quick park and grab. Along this stretch of road, we actually saw a couple vehicles drive by.

We finished up the Lower Waitsburg series, drove south and got onto Martin Road. The Martin Road series (GC52AXY) started at 2 and ended at 21, for a total of 20 caches. I jumped and made sure I had a cache ready to go each time I got out of the Edge. At the end of that road, we took a short lunch and bathroom break on the side of the road. I made a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and we had Doritos to go with it. When you're out in the middle of nowhere doing power trails, you eat PBJ sandwiches, and you can't be shy about peeing on the side of the road.

I was running out of containers, and we brought a lot of them. I was getting worried that we would not have enough to finish the rest of the power trails we planned on doing. My fingers were crossed. The rest of the MWR series (GC5PVA6) was spread out a lot over the Middle Waitsburg Road. Several of them were archived so we grabbed the ones that we could and replaced the ones that were missing. We were able to get MWR 22, 18, 17, 16 and 15. I got out and jumped to get these.

We started on the Smith Road series (GC5F6NX) and Ben got out and found as many as he could that were still available to us. There were 7 that we were able to get that weren't archived. We had to replace a bunch of these containers along the way. Ben finished out our last power trail, Sapoli (GC24M90) and the Sapoli East series (GC4QV81) 1-7. There were several more power trails but those would have to be another trip over. There is just not enough time unless you are one of those crazy people who geocache in the dark and literally all day long. I can do it most of the day, but I do get tired, need food and some chill time.

We had spoken to his mom earlier that day of what we could bring back for her. We knew this was wine country, but she was trying to cut back on her alcohol consumption, instead she wanted us to bring back some honey. I looked on the internet to see if there was a place that sold that kind of stuff that wasn't in downtown. We came upon a place called Klickers. It was a produce and knick knack store. There were a lot of people there choosing their pumpkin for Halloween.

We found a place to park and went inside. There were lots of local goods, ice cream, drinks, produce and antique-y things. Ben and I wandered around for a bit and called Trish to ask what kind of honey she wanted since there were many different flavors and kinds to choose from. We ended up purchasing a bottle of honey, BBQ sauce and a bag of huckleberry scones. We paid, put the stuff in the Edge and went back outside to look at the pumpkins and wander around. It was such a nice day!

We decided to leave and return to Evil as ABCD (GC5566K), a cache that stumped us the day before. We had chatted with some people the night before at dinner for a hint. We showed up with a hint in our back pockets. We found a place to park and after checking a few spots we finally found the darn thing. It was one of those old CD's that you would get in the mail for a free trial of something and they turned it into a geocache. For some reason I thought we may be looking for something similar to this. I just didn't know what when we were looking. We were happy to finally cross this one off of our list.

I asked Ben if he wanted to stop at a quick Adventure Lab and he said yes. We started driving towards Fort Walla Walla and College Place. We stopped at the Mullan Road Adventure Lab. It was a quick little historical area where we answered questions on the information boards. We were probably there for less than 10 minutes. I wanted to go to Milton-Freewater while we were down here and had added it to our itinerary for the day.

As we drove, I told Ben about the last time I was down in Milton-Freewater, it was June 2012. I was with Willmarth and Shannon we drove down to his brother's place in Elgin/La Grande and passed through the TriCities, Walla Walla and Milton-Freewater. We were there to pick up the dogs, Zoey and Fletcher. Once we got to town, he showed us where his grandmother lived and where he spent some of his time while he was a kid visiting during the summer. Ben thought that was cool.

We got down towards the state line and crossed into Oregon. Gas was exceptionally cheaper here, by at least 50 cents! Wow! We traveled down the Oregon-Washington Highway (Hwy 11) and into town. I had the Adventure Lab open, Milton-Freewater Adventure, where it took us around town to the various hotspots. One took us clear out to the cemetery and we had to follow a slow bozo for a couple miles. We were glad to get rid of them. Once we were done with that, I wanted to find a traditional cache, so we went to the one nearby, Orchard Park Cache (GC138C3). It hadn't been found in over a year, so we attempted it anyway.

We were there for a while and after reading through a bunch of logs and changing the perspective, I saw it, but I couldn't reach it with my fingers. I sent Ben to the Edge to grab the tweezers out of my caching box. I reached in with the tweezers and made the grab. This one is hidden very well. We signed our names and I put it back exactly how I found it. We will see how other cachers do in the future.

We got back on Hwy 11 and drove back into Washington. It was about dinner time and our neighbor, Rhonda, suggested places to eat. She had been there a few months prior and really liked some of the restaurants she went to. She recommended a Hop Thief in College Place, so that is where we went. It is a pub restaurant that you pour yourself the alcohol. What you pay is how much it weighs. It was an interesting concept.

We went inside and were directed to a table. Our waitress explained how the beer worked. We got a card that was attached to our debit card (for collateral) it didn't matter if you were paying with it or not since we were paying in cash. Each time you got up to fill a pint, you stick the card in the slot, and it knows how much you got and at what price. You paid for what you poured when you left. We both ordered food, the Walla Walla burger and joes sounded good to me while the white pizza sounded good to Ben. We got up and poured ourselves a beer.

We took it back to our table and enjoyed it with our food. He ended up with two different beers, the red ale and the coconut and peanut butter chocolate stout. I had the Amber ale and a small cider that tasted just like an apple pie. We drank and ate our food while we watched Sunday Night Football between the Bills and Giants. The Bills played terrible but ended up winning. We paid, Ben got his card back, I got some stickers, and we headed back to the hotel.