7,000th Cache Milestone and Kent, Wash.

Today I hit my 7,000th cache milestone.  I wanted it to be something cool but an event in Kent came first. So I had to work around that.  I didn't want it to be a traditional because most of my milestones are traditionals except for an earthcache at my 500th.

We talked about the plan the night before and they came and got me at around 7 a.m.  I took a blueberry bagel and some oj with me for the car ride.  I was exhausted.  We had a list of caches written out of ones we didn't have in the area.  We weren't sure how the weather would hold up for the amount we had written down.

The drive up wasn't bad, no rain yet.

We started out where we left off last time we were here, in the downtown area.  We did all of the work for a cache called Kent Station but it was missing back in December.  We had to come back because some guy was power washing the area.  We got one near the ShoWare Center....I remember being there about two years ago and not finding it.  I think this is a newer series.  We walked over to a small park nearby and looked for one I had previously found, I couldn't remember where it was so we didn't find it.  We went back to Kent Station and found the cache right where we thought it would be, sweet.

We worked on a historical tour of Kent, a multi done by Mc3Cats.  The waypoints and gathering information was easy but the find, took us a while.  We had to phone a friend and he told us right where it was and that is where we all looked at least three times.  I ended up pulling it out of its hiding spot.

We found three others just down up the road from downtown, one took us in to the forest and made us climb back up a wicked hill, another was a guardrail cache and the other was at a local Top Foods and I'm glad someone grabbed this spot because it was screaming for a cache.  We didn't PANic!  Haha.

We went to a few small parks, nestled in various neighborhoods.  You really had to be on the look out for them or you would drive by them, they were that small.  The one we thought was someone's back yard, nope just a tiny park with two picnic tables.

We went to another one just down the road at a rock wall.  It was near a church and the parking lot was closed so we parked on the street and walked over to it.  Bob found it quickly.

 

The next three caches we went after took us near the event site.  This was a busy part of Kent.  One was a key holder hiding near a restaurant, one was a bolt near a car part store/pet supply shop and the other was near a grocery store next to a rock and a hard place. 

We drove eastward to a park called Morrill Meadows.  We parked and Bev was intrigued by the Cottonwood tree fluff and how much of it was in the parking lot.

The first cache took us around the short trail and we had to slightly bush whack to the spot.  We read the hints because the GPS bounced around a lot.  Bob and I found the make-shift stump it was hidden in.  We walked to the next cache, which was at a dog park at the east end.  Bev and I stopped to get a picture.  I thought it was a cool spot.

Bob got a head start looking for the dog park one while we caught up to him.  He had looked in many places already but came up with nothing.  I looked and Bev looked in the same places and came up with the same result.  Then Bev had an idea and wandered away.  She came back a few seconds later holding the cache.  Bob and I were like, where did you find that at?  She told us there was another gate it was hidden on.  We signed our names and put it back.  We walked back to the car and drove to the next cache down the road.

This puzzle cache was one I had looked at online a few months back just in case we were in Kent at some point.  It was located at the spot it said but you had to figure out the lock combination.  It was in a church parking lot and was put there by a elementary school class.  The combo was knowing three of the books of the Bible and the order in which they came in.  Bev was all over it with the help of the internet.  Yay smart phones!  We got out and put the numbers into the lock and was denied.  We must have done it wrong.  Sure enough we didn't turn the combo all the way around.  We tried it again and it opened.  We cheered and did a little victory dance.  I didn't realize at the time but this was my 7,000th cache and I should have taken a picture with it.  Oh well.

We got to twenty caches before we had to go over to the event.  One took us to someone's front yard near a random erratic rock, it was a sprinkler head, another took us to a swampy area, supposedly there is a llama farm, we didn't see any llamas but the cache really made me miss Hostess cupcakes.

The other cache in the area, was near a church and we went the hard way to it.  Bob is not one to read the directions before we go.  We grabbed it, signed it and ran back because it was raining.  We got in the car, went around the corner to the church and parked in the parking place to get the squirrel snacker one.  Then we tried to get one at the 360 Skate Park and that one was missing.  One other reason to read the cache page before you walk over to it and find out it's not there.

It was about 12:30 and we needed to get to the event, of course it stopped raining knowing we were now going to be indoors.  Everyone was getting tired of having pizza parties so Mc3Cats booked us a meal at the Golden Steak and Steer Rib House.  We got there and were shown where we needed to go.  We signed in, paid, got our tickets and found a seat.  We chatted with some people, discovered trackables, told stories, ate our food.  The food was sandwiches, salad, chili, fruit and macaroni salad.  I had everything but the macaroni salad.  I think I had way too many sandwiches because I paid for it about an hour later.

We did the raffle a half hour before we decided to leave.  He drew my number and I picked one of the geocaching triad geocoins.  I was so excited.  I thought why not have one of these since I have completed the triad.

We said our goodbyes and headed out the door.  Bob wanted to find a few more before we went home.  We got one at a park, which was a quick easy grab, one at the museum down the hill that opened at noon, this was one I had intended to get two other times but it wasn't open, and grabbed one more multi down by a baseball field that was owned by one of the cachers at the event.

For some reason I was exhausted.  The last thing I remember was getting off of Hwy 512 at the Pacific Ave exit and then the next thing I remember is waking up at the gas station in Rainier.  That's a good 35 minutes between the two.  I must have passed out hard.  They dropped me off at home and I started getting ready for my hiking trip with Lindsay.

Next Adventure:  Enchanted Valley, Olympic National Forest.

Effing Hot!

Remember that one time the state of Washington was hotter than the rest of the country?  I do and it was awesome.

Longview II

Another one of those early morning cache adventures with Bob and Bev.

This time we came prepared with our boats.  We had planned to grab the island cache in Sacajawea Lake.

My alarm went off at 6 and I had to scramble to put my clothes on, use the bathroom and made sure I had my food and drinks in my lunchbox.  I did my query last night so I wouldn't be rushed in the morning and accidentally put in the wrong town or something weird like that.

I heard the truck rumble down the driveway.  I hoisted myself up in the back and we were on our way.  It was going to be a beautiful day.

We stopped at the Denny's in Chehalis off of the 13th Street exit.  I had eaten my Captain Crunch so I wasn't too terribly hungry.  Bob and Bev shared some of their food with me since it was more than they could eat.  It was very nice of them to share.

We continued down I-5 and stopped at the Toutle Lake Rest Area to use the facilities.

We turned the GPS's on and found the first one on Bob's list.  Aaand, we drove past the exit again...

We found the next exit and grabbed the ones in that area before we returned to Longview.  We were just a little north of Kalama near Kress Lake.

We got one near Camp Kalama, it took us a little while since the coords were off by at least 65 feet.

Next we took a small hike around Kress Lake.  It was a great hike and all five of the caches were there.  Tons of people showed up to fish off the bank side.

We then drove north up Old Highway 99, as we paralleled I-5, looking for the next caches on our list.  There were two we had our eyes on.  The first one was off of a large pull out near the Jesus signs and a Lions Club newspaper recycle bin.  It was underneath the bin.  There also were some local people selling flower baskets, Bob bought two of them.   We found one more at the park and ride in a nook of a tree.  One, that Bob and Bev got to take off their DNF list.

We went over the freeway and finally made it on to Tally way for three other caches.  The one was pretty cool.  It was taped behind the sign underneath some velcro.

Then we went for a long walk along the Cowlitz River.  The cache page did not really tell us really where to go.  There were lots of no tresspassing and private property signs all over the place.  We did the best we could with the logs from previous finders.  It hasn't been found it a while because no one wanted to make the trek out here.  Also, the log book was kinda gross according to the last finder.  We saw some fishermen about half way there.

I didn't actually hear how they were doing fish-wise.  The trail we were one was very well used and there were a couple of spots where the river had eroded the path away.  Some of the trees we saw fell victim to beavers.  We reached the cache zone and the coords were off by about 30 feet.  I started looking at all of the trees in the area and I eventually found the cache.  Indeed, the log book was mush so we changed it.

On our walk back it started getting warmer and once we got back to the truck I had to shed my tall socks, hiking shoes and sweatshirt.  Bob and Bev made some changes in their wardrobe as well.  We drove into Longview and got ready for our boat cache in Lake Sacajawea.  I was really excited.

We got to where we needed to be, parked the truck, grabbed the boats and made our way down to the bank, while runners and walkers watched us wondering.

We put our boats in the water and I got in safely, Bob on the other hand almost fell in.  His foot got caught on the contractor's foam we lined the bottoms of our boats with, to give them more stability.  We paddled the less than 500 feet to the small island and managed to get out of our boats, without falling in, and onto shore.

The cache was not far from where we landed.  In fact it was less than 30 feet from where we pulled the boats onto shore.  Bob pulled it out of the trees and gave it to me to open and sign.  We posed for Bev, who was taking pictures from the other side of the shore.  We closed it, put it back, got in our boats and went back to shore.  Bev took more pictures as we got out of our boats.  We pulled them out of the water and put them back in the truck.  On to Lake Bank cache, one Kyle had replaced.

Once again we could not find it.  Was it taken again or hidden really well?  We spent a few minutes looking and gave up.  We looked for one more at a nearby corner grocery store and Bob made the find.  It was finally lunch time and Bev wanted to go to Taco Time.  However, it was back in Kelso, so we had to backtrack.  We all got some crispy tacos, used the bathroom and figured out where to go next.  We even had time to email Kyle to see if he would tell us where the cache was or meet us out there.  He never got back to us.

We went to the next one on the list.  That took us back into Longview and down Hwy 4 towards the west end of town.  There we grabbed FS Kids (where Bev got to meet one of the neighbors), a park cache in a really nice looking park, and a creepy spider glued to a micro stuck inside a guardrail.

We followed the road grabbing the ones Bob and Bev hadn't found yet.  A few of them were near the Mint Valley Golf course along the dike trail.  We found three of them there and saw a bunch of wild duck swimming in the dike.  I threw rocks at them, not to actually hit them but to make them swim around.

The hot was starting to affect everyone.  We went to one we didn't end up finding but it was at a small convenience store.  I went in and grabbed a cold drink.  Later on when I logged my caches this one was actually missing.

Then we went up the hill into several housing developments and grabbed three of them.  One was a snail on a guardrail, we actually met the property owners (the CO was their daughter), one was on blackberry trail, Bob and I got cut up a bit and the last one was on a guardrail being guarded by a bee.  Bob almost got stung.

We found one on a bridge to nowhere and took a lot of time on one called Honeycomb Rocks.  We felt dumb when we actually found it.  We made it harder than it needed to be.

From there, we drove down to Willow Grove Road along the Columbia River, we noticed a huge group of them in the area.  The first two were on guardrails, one was easy to find and one was a little bit more challenging if you haven't seen one like it.  We have so we took care of it quickly.  This was the view from the clever cache.

We found one more at an anchor and then we made our way over to Willow Grove Park.  There were tons of people there.  Not surprising since it was almost 90 degrees outside!

We parked the truck and Bob needed to use the restroom so Bev and I walked over to the first one.  Uh, more caches buried inside rocks.  It hadn't been found in a while.  We gave it a good half hour before moving on to the next few of them.  Bev and I walked to them.  Bob grabbed the truck and met us at the second to last one.  All of them were there.

We walked back to the truck and headed home.  We stopped for one more on Dike Road near a farm.  We found it quickly.  We were all hot, exhausted and ready to be at home.  I came home with 37 and Bob and Bev came home with 35.  Not bad of a day.  We got home about 7ish that evening.  Until the next adventure!