Renton and May Creek

My alarm went off around 7.  Bob was picking me up around 7:30.  I got all my stuff ready the night before including my lunch.  I used the bathroom, put my clothes on because it was going to be a cold one.  Layers are magnificent.  I saw the truck headlights coming down the driveway...we were on our way to Renton. 

We went into Spanaway, got onto 512 through Puyallup, onto 167 and merged onto the 405 towards Renton/Bellevue. We really weren't sure how to go about the May Creek area so we figured it out as we went.  We found out we were on the wrong side of the creek but managed to grab one before driving to the right side of the creek.  We found legit parking but did not find any parking coords for the area...

We started with the mail truck cache I found interest in a few weeks ago.  How do people find these things and how are the preserved from the public?  I was stoked!

After finding the mail truck cache and taking pictures, we did the May Creek multi, which was somewhat confusing but not at the same time.  It was a very pretty walk.  Too bad the leaves had fallen already.

We must have done the multi right because it led us right to it.  For some reason when we have questionable, not very clear, multis we do them wrong.   Yay!  We moved on to the northwestern part of the trail.

We walked past, what we assumed was another cacher because he looked the part, a tall man in sweatpants staring into his phone.   We got to the treehouse cache and found out the man was indeed another cacher by the name of Fish Soup.  

The cache was about 100 feet from the actual tree house next to a pile of old logs/stump pieces.  Bob was on that one right away.  We continued to the next one.  The next few caches were pretty straight forward and right off the trail.  We completed a mc3cats puzzle the night before.  It was a cipher cache so I learned a little bit about ciphers.  It hadn't been found since October.  We had a hard time zeroing in on it.  By the time we found it, our GPS said 140 feet off!  

We got to the end of the trail of caches and near the other set of parking coords.  We found an area that had a trail come through at one point.  It was built in the 1880's and torn down in the 1920's.  The trestle that they dug up left footprints in the ground.  We had trouble locating that one too but we eventually did.  Then a few people walked by and I assumed they were doing the same thing we were doing and they were.  We introduced ourselves on the run.  

Our next cache was a pretty hardcore one.  We had to take a steep trail down to the creek, snake our way to a log to cross the creek, without falling off, there was a lot of frost on the moss attached to the tree trunk.  I made it across without any problems.  Bob tried to find his balance and had to go back and get a stick to help him across. 

I started on the old stump and he met me a few minutes later.  We looked and looked and looked.  We knew it was going to be a hard one.  Finally I got the idea of climbing up on top and searching.
 

There it was.  A black container with a green lid smiling down on us.  I grabbed it and threw it down to Bob, he signed our names.  We put it back, walked back over the log bridge and back up the hill to the main trail.  

We walked back to where we parked the truck.  We were exhausted.  We scarfed down our sandwiches we brought in our lunchboxes.  We moved into the housing developments for caches.  There were about 7-10 northwest of where we were.  Some of them required us to walk down a short trail...some uphill, and some required us to bushwhack.

I hate sticker bushes.

We had some help from some kids at a cache on the Newport Hills overlooking Lake Washington and Seattle in the background.  They were Seahawk fans and were really excited about the game tomorrow.  We moved onto another area before calling it for the day.  We found a gnome and the cache was in its butthole.  We giggled.

We got a few more and started for home.  The traffic wasn't bad.  We came out with 20 for the day and had to come back up to Renton for the WSGA holiday party and the same grange from September.

Next adventure:  Covington, Washington.

Off Roading Nature Walks, Castle Rock

I got up around 6:45 and threw my clothes on and washed my face.  I grabbed my lunchbox, my back pack and the extra bag of clothes when I was soaked later on today.  Bob came exactly at 7.  I grabbed my keys and he grabbed my bike, just in case we needed them.  I locked the door, jumped in the truck and we were on our way to Castle Rock.

On cue, we stopped at the Toutle Lake rest stop.  I sat in the car and Facebooked.

We got back on the freeway and took the first exit to Castle Rock.  There we grabbed a few puzzles I solved the night before.  It felt great knocking out some puzzles.  Sadly, one was missing.

We grabbed a few others in town while we were there.  We had to find a way to get across the river for a few and Bob remembered a road that led to a park.  We went out there for a while.  Around 10ish, we headed west to the group of them we came for.  Bob stopped for a couple he had gotten already for me to get since we drove by them.

We got to gate, parked the truck and put our rain gear on.  We were going to get soaked.  We were disappointed the walk didn't go in a circle.  We went up one side, walked back and then walked up the other side and back.  Some were hard to get to and others were right off the road.

It rained most of the time, a bit off and a bit on.  Luckily, we were in the trees when it did most of its raining.  We got up to the last one of that walk and it was missing!  A lot of the ones we've found so far were last found in Dec or Aug of 2011, over a year! We didn't go that far to not find a container so we left a piece of paper underneath some rocks just to prove we were there.

It was over a half a mile hike up the hill and back.  We got one more and then started back to the truck for the next grouping of caches.  We saw a lot of creeks snaking their way through the trees and brush.

We made it to the right road and went from there.  The first one we tried looking for wasn't there.  So we moved onto our second hike of the day.  Another gated dirt road off into some trees.  At this point I needed 3 more to reach 4500 caches.

This series of three were called the Off Road Caches.  The difficulty and terrain would give me another square on my fizzy challenge.  Plus, these were definitely for seasoned cachers just because the GPS doesn't work well under forest like that.  No problem for Bob and I.  We grabbed all of them without any problems.  One of the caches we found out in the open so we put it back as the hint suggested.

I got my 4500th cache!

We walked back to the truck and drove to the other two caches down the road.  One was missing but we thought we would try it anyway since we had to turn around.  No luck, it was missing.  We got to the pull off next to the road overlooking the creek.  For some reason the coords bounced around a lot.  I went on top of the hill and Bob went down the hill next to the creek.  Neither of us were close.  We found it eventually in a crotch of a tree that we didn't see the first or second time.

From there, we headed south towards Longview and grabbed a couple before getting onto the freeway and jetting home.  We listened to Ronnie Milsap, like we do every time we go on a long trip.  I've actually learned most of the words since the first time I heard it last year.  We got home about 5 and I immediately got out of my wet clothes, that gained 20 lbs, and jumped into the hot shower.  Afterwards, I washed my clothes, ate dinner, relaxed and logged my caches.

Onto 4600!

Next adventure:  Renton-ish

A Day in Seattle

Since it's a new year and people make changes in their lives, dad decided to finally do something to the back bedroom where Doug used to live.  He wants to change it into a sorta canning room/storage.  So that meant gathering up some of Doug's stuff and taking it to him in Seattle.  We decided on the next free weekend.   We put all of his clothes in his plastic storage bins he got for Christmas last year and set them aside until the weekend.   We decided to go this weekend since we had no plans and dad really wanted the stuff to be gone.

We called Doug after work on Friday telling him that we were coming up for a few hours.  He was like, okay.  We also told him mom really wanted to go to the ferris wheel.

Saturday morning we got up and gathered all the garbage to take to the dump.  Sonny was going to be here around 10.  He was also taking Grandma's garbage.  We hoped there was enough room for our cans...

We got the dolly and wheeled them to the back and Sonny was pulling in, perfect timing.  We got all but one.  Oh well.  We all piled in and headed to the dump.  There weren't that many people there so we didn't have to wait.  Some of those cans were freaking heavy.  I'm glad I didn't fall in.

He dropped us off at home and we started getting ready to go to Seattle.  I got all the stuff together we were going to take and drove towards Yelm to get gas.  On the way through Yelm, we got some money from the cash machine and off to I-5 we go!

I put in coordinates to an earthcache about a mile north of Doug's place.  It said we would get there around 12:50.  The drive up was excellent, no traffic.  Until we got to downtown.  It was chaos.  We weren't sure why either.  Then it cleared up and got horrible again as we crossed the bridge.  We got to our exit and drove over to the earthcache.  It was called the Wedgewood Erratic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedgwood_Rock

We parked right up next to it and took our pictures and inspected the thing.  We had to know how high it was and how big around it was.  To prevent armchair logging, they did require you to take your picture in front of it.

It was literally a rock in the middle of a large neighborhood in Seattle.  Quite random.

We drove the mile south back towards Doug's house.  We parked the car on the one way road and walked with the bins to his house.  Mom has only been here once.  We put his bins in his room, used the bathroom and went back to the car and headed towards downtown to the piers.  It's a good thing I kinda know my way around plus we had a GPS with us.

We got off the freeway and drove towards the waterfront.  I couldn't remember which street to take so we just picked one and went with it.  We picked one too close to Pike's Place Market and had to drive around the sea of people.  We finally got to where we needed to be, at the parking lot underneath the viaduct.  We found a spot, paid and walked along the piers.

We went to Ivar's fish bar and had lunch.  There were lots of seagulls outside begging for french fries.

We walked towards Pier 57, where the Seattle Great Wheel was.  I remember seeing this the first time when I came with Shauna to the Rent play back in July.  We got in line and bought our tickets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Great_Wheel

When it was our turn, we were told to go to #39.  Once everyone was on for that round, we went around a full 3 cycles.  The views were awesome.

We got off and walked up to Pike's Place Market just for fun.  Mom wanted to go so we walked around with her.  We looked at all the stuff people we're selling, the gum wall and of course mom's fudge/carmel apple place.

 

It was getting dark and our time on the meter was almost up.  We wanted to get a picture of the 12th man flag on top of the Space Needle before we left.

Go Seahawks!

We dropped Doug off at home.  His roommates were all home getting ready to figure out what to do for the night.  I grabbed some of the beer cans to recycle and mom and I were on our way home.

We stopped by the Walmart at Hawks Prairie for a few things we were out of and were finally on our way home.  We listened to the Green Bay/Minnesota game.  Packers won.

We got home, relaxed and watched some TV.