Sleeping in, Football, Honey Crisp Apples and the Drive Home

My alarm went off around 10.  I got up and zombied my way to the living room.  Shannon and Willmarth soon followed.  I knew he got up with the dogs earlier than morning but everyone went back to bed.

Shannon got ready to go to church with her friend Marie while Willmarth and I stayed at the house to watch NFL football.  The only game on was Dallas and Houston.  I got hungry so I had some Count Chocula.  At half time I asked if we could go to Union Gap to get some Honey Crisp Apples to take home with me.  We got in his Escape and drove to Fruit City.

We came here last year and bought Honey Crisp apples as well.  He likes this fruit stand so we will probably always go here because the owner is a pretty cool guy.  We parked and found the area of apples.  We grabbed the two cases and set them on the counter.  He chatted with us while he added about 20 more apples to our two boxes.  Each box cost $24 bucks and I thought we got our money's worth.  Bob and Bev wanted to buy the other box off of me.  We paid, put them in the car and drove back home.  On the way home I found out Union Gap was getting a Buffalo Wild Wings in the Ghetto Mall!

We got home and watched the Cardinals and Broncos game and ate the spaghetti that he made in the crockpot.  He did some laundry and I washed out the shoes in the front yard.  Marie dropped Shannon off and she did a couple of chores before relaxing in the the chair.  Willmarth worked on his teaching exam online.  I started putting together all of my stuff and packing it in the car.  He had saved some cans for me.

About the 3rd quarter of the game is when I told them thanks for everything and I said my good byes.  I had to start going if I was going to have enough time to make it over the pass before it got dark.  I really hate the elk in Packwood.  They like to stand in the road.  The other reason why I left a little bit earlier was to grab a few caches on the way home.  I allowed myself about an hour.  I would arrive at home roughly around 8.

I got onto Hwy 12 and through Naches.  I stopped at the Arco in Naches just to get a little bit of gas.  I put in $9 just because that's all the cash I had on me.  For some reason my card wouldn't work in the machine.

I got back on the road and on my way to the first cache on my list, Bridge Over Troubled Water (GC2D8VD).  I pulled over on the pull out and walked to the bridge over the Tieton River.  I found a piece of the cache on the bridge roughly towards the center.  The view of the bridge with the columnar basalt cliffs in the distance was awesome!

About a half a mile more down the road was the second cache on the list, Ernestine (GC2D8V2).  When I got to that pull out I assumed it would be in the pile of rocks, I was wrong.  Upon further investigation and a bold guess I found it pretty quickly.  I have found some like these in the past and they make me cringe every time.

Further up Hwy 12 I stopped at a trail head for the Tieton Nature Trail walk and an old Quonset hut.  Rack of Ribs (GC2D8VW) was a magnetic cache attached to the inside of the galvanized steel shell along the bottom.  For some reason this cache took me a little bit more time than I anticipated.  Eventually I had an ah-ha moment.

I stopped and got a cache called Highway 12 (GC53VGG) and used the bushes nearby.

I can't seem to find caches without finding at least one guardrail.  Rusy Rusty (GC53VJ9) was that one easy pull out guard rail cache.  I give them props for coloring the key holder the same rust color as the guard rail.  That was the only cool part about it.

I had a 12 mile break until my next cache on the list.  I've always wanted to walk part of the PCT  (Pacific Crest Trail) a trail that starts in Mexico, follows the mountain range on the west coast, and ends in Canada.  Many hikers from June to October make this trek or bits of the trek every year.  There is a book out called Wild by Cheryl Strayed that basically tells her story about her entire trek along the trail without any hiking experience.  She did it to find out who she was.  I stopped at the driveway to the PCT and parked the car.

I took a few pictures because the area was so pretty.  I made my way down the trail to PCT:  White Pass (GC1E571).  It took me a few minutes to find it because the coords were soo bouncy.  I narrowed by search area and saw a faint geotrail off to the side.  I found the pile of bark hiding the container.

I stopped one more time on the other side of the pass at a small lake called Knuppeburg.  I was looking for a small micro cache inside of a stump (GC325N2).  Again the coords were bouncy so I had to check a few stumps.  I took a picture of the lake before I found the cache.

And now on my way towards home for real.  I had to follow several slow people but managed to pass them here and there when I had an opportunity.  I got to Morton and called Ben to let him know I was almost home.  I followed Hwy 7 through Elbe, Alder and the outside of Eatonville.  I got to my turn towards McKenna and got home around 8:30.  I unloaded my stuff out of the car, took a shower and got ready for work the next day.

Next Adventure:  Tornado!  II

Yakima Valley Pirate Plunder, a Nap and Cougar Football

"Strength, Stamina, Mud.  The Pirate Plunder is a challenging obstacle course that combines ever-changing terrain with 16 obstacles to test your strength, stamina, and love of mud.  You'll climb over 14-foot high walls, craw through a 140-foot long mud pit, shoot down a 75-foot water slide, and face many other challenges all while running through a blend of fields, tires and mud pits!" 

I got up around 8 and put my clothes on.  We watched some stuff about the college football game line up and  I ate some Count Chocula and a banana.  Fletcher watched me eat my food.

Willmarth got all of his stuff together and we left just after 8:30.  We had to go get an orange shirt and pick up our registration packets.  We drove down to the Mexican Walmart, this is what he and Shannon call it, and found ourselves cheap $4 orange T-shirts.  For some reason it was really hard to find T-shirts, most of them were long sleeved.  He found some cheap sunglasses, we paid and now we were on our way to our second Pirate Plunder race.

We gave the parking people our $5 parking fee and they ushered us to our spot.  We gathered the stuff we needed and made our way into the festivities.  We stood in the line to get our registration packet and our number, used the restroom and went over to the bag check tent.  Then we waited for our 10:30 start time.  Meanwhile, we had this really weird lady talk to us...we swear she was high.  She asked us some really bizarre questions.

And then it was go time!

This time we ran the opposite way; following the freeway instead of the Greenway trail.  We ran for a little while, Willmarth ran a little more this year, before we reached our first obstacle, Pieces of Eight.  We ducked and crawled over and under a series of walls in our way.  I got through this pretty quickly.  This year they made the walls a little taller.

Right away we noticed that the obstacles are a little bit more further apart this year than they were last year.

We ran through the Mutineer's Misfortune, a hoard of hanging tires, as quick as we could.  Neither of us fell or got hit in the face by a tire.  We wrapped back around and headed to obstacle #3,  The Scury Scurry.  I could hear Willmarth behind me saying, "don't use the rope, just run over the top of it!"  Challenge accepted.  I sprinted up the incline and slid down the backside of it with no problem.  I did the same thing to the other one.  I turned around and watched him go up and over the obstacle.

The 4th obstacle, Gangplank Gallows, was a platform where you took a rope and you swung across a muddy pit to the other side, avoiding the mud as best as you could.  This year the pit was deeper, muddier and a lot shorter to swing across.  Last year they set you up to fail because no one could physically swing across the pit.

The Crow's Nest was a series of webs you had to duck under, step over and avoid being tangled up inside of it.  When I got there, I didn't duck low enough and one of the strings grabbed my skull cap and pulled it off.  I had to hurry through it so I could fix my cap and my hair.

Six was the new mystery obstacle called the Quartermaster Cargo Climb and it was a series of cargo nets we had to climb up and over.  We got up and over that in no problem.

We had a long running gap ahead of us before we reached obstacle 7, Blackbeard's Blockade.  On the way towards the blockade, the Kraken's Revenge obstacle, the one you climb up a cargo net and slide down a pole, well, there were a bunch of EMT's, event volunteers and other personnel on the pole side of the structure.  We really couldn't see what was happening from where we were but we did notice signs saying that the poles were out of order basically.  We did see the participants being funneled to a make shift slide to the left of the structure.  Something really bad must have happened.  Once we got to the blockade, it was a high wall that you had to use your own strength to get up and over with the ropes provided for you.  We had to use our arms and legs to conquer it.  The next day my arms and shoulders definitely felt that.

When we finally got to Kraken's Revenge, we climbed up the cargo net and got onto the platform.  The event volunteers advised us not to look over the edge at the EMT's working on the woman that got hurt.  Too late.  I looked and I was totally grossed out.  Willmarth also looked over the edge.  Basically the woman's ankle was sticking out of her calf.  I knew I had to tell Ben about this, he would think it was awesome!  They shuffled us to the slide and down we went to the next obstacle.

Shiver Me Timbers was not my favorite.  Last year they required you do go over the pipe, then under the pipe, which you had to dunk your entire head into the pool of water and mud...I did not like that.  This year you just had to crawl over the eight or so pipes.  I got through pretty quickly only getting the lower half of me soaked.  Willmarth opted to not do this obstacle mostly because of his knee brace.

 We made it to our tenth obstacle, Jacob's Ladder.  This was the tallest structure of the event.  We climbed up this giant wooden ladder over to the other side.

Walk the Plank was backed up a little bit.  This year there was an extra part called The Wentch's Challenge.  If you chose to walk the normal plank you didn't get a shirt but if you successfully walked the harder plank you got a shirt.  Willmarth walked the normal plank because he wasn't wearing his normal glasses so his depth perception was off.  I waited patiently for my turn for the challenge.  Many of the people in front of me failed miserably.  A lot of them fell into the muddy water down below.  I noticed if you go across it slowly while you thought about it, you will fall in.  If you hurried across it you had less time to think about it and not fall in.  I basically hurried though it and had a small cheerleading section at the end rooting for me.  I made it across and they handed me my medium white t-shirt.  Why did they give them out knowingly our white shirts were going to be muddy by the end of the race?  We'll never know.

From there, we ran over a huge pile of tires in the 12th obstacle, Hornswaggle Tire Hoard.  That one was no big deal.  I waited for Willmarth on the other side.

The Bilge Rat Crawl, obstacle 13, was one we will never forget.  Last year I disappeared in the underwater trench.  This year we knew better.  We got across the first mud pit, through the pipes and though the other mud pit without falling.

My shirt made it though the first mud test.

We followed the course to our 14th obstacle, Jolly Roger Mud Scramble.  We remember having a hard time last year walking though the muddy river.  This year I had more tread on my shoes so it made it a little easier to make it through.  Willmarth walked through part of it and walked next to it to avoid getting water and mud on his knee brace.  We wrapped around and made our way to the water slide.  My shirt beat the second mud test.

When we got to the Scallywag Slide, we entered the first pit and he stood there too long and the mud engulfed his foot.  When he moved forward he fell on me, making me fall into the pit with my pretty white shirt.  My shirt failed the third mud test.  When we got to the top of the water slide we had to wait.  There was a big back up of people waiting.  They had to fix part of the plastic on the slide and grab some of the loose rocks down below.  One at a time, we all made it down into the second mud pit.

We had one more obstacle to conquer, the Marauder's Mud Crawl.  We battened down the hatches and had one last muddy crawl to victory!  It was more muddier than last year but we made it through, sore elbows, knees and all.  We made it through the finish line together, received our pirate's booty medal and bottles of water.  We took our picture and got hosed off by the Yakima Fire Department.

We gathered our bags and went to the truck to change into dry clothes and shoes.  We went over to the beer garden for our free beer.

We went back to the truck and he decided he wanted Miner's for lunch.  I was starving so I totally agreed.  We went though the drive through.  He ordered a fish and chips for himself, a chicken dinner for Shannon and I got a cheese burger and fries.

Miner's-Yakima Valley's famous hamburger joint

When we got home, we were molested by dogs, I put on some extra clothes because I was still soaked and their house was kinda chilly, grabbed my food and took a seat at the dining room table.  We ate our food and talked about the college football games on the menu.  We watched part of the Stanford game, I took a quick shower and then passed out for a few hours.  I was exhausted.  I woke up to the sound of my phone...mom called to ask how the race went.  I told her we won.  Haha.

They didn't get the Pac-12 network so we found a website to stream the WSU-Cal game to the TV.  That game just about killed me off.  No defense, a lot of offense and we had a chance to win at the end of the game but our kicker missed the field goal.  We could not believe it!!  We stayed up for a little bit longer and we got hungry.  He had a sandwich and I had some leftover chicken and rice.  About 1:00 I started getting ready for bed, told everyone good night and went to bed.  It felt good.

We survived another pirate plunder race!

Next Adventure:  Sleeping in, Football, Honey Crisp Apples and the Drive Home

Geocaching Along Hwy 12 and Yakima

My boss gave me the weekend off so I could drive over to Yakima to participate in the Pirate Plunder again with Willmarth.  The night before I got everything together, including my pirate gear and set is aside.   I remember last year the mornings being cold and the afternoons being warm.

I went to bed at a fairly decent time because I might have to work on the Friday.  When I got up in the morning I had a text message that said, "enjoy your 3-day weekend, have fun matey, arrr."  I slept in a little bit longer just because I could.  I originally planned to get up, get ready, pack the car and leave and be in Yakima by 3 or so...that didn't happen.  Mom had the day off and I had to help her get a few things done before I could leave.  I was kinda annoyed.  I ate a sandwich and watched the latest episode of Project Runway.

I helped her clean the house a bit, I took some stuff to the Goodwill and stuff to the recycle, got the mail and guess what was in the mail...my pathtags!!  I was so excited they finally came.  I immediately posted them on our Cachers of Puget Sound page.  A few people already want one.

I packed my stuff in the car and helped her to a couple more chores before I left.  I wanted to be gone before everyone got out of school.  I finally got to leave around 3, I stopped at the Arco and got gas and decided to go in and get a few snacks and a drink.  

I drove towards Eatonville and got on Hwy 7 through La Grande, Alder and Elbe.  I made one stop in Alder near the public boat launch to grab a newish cache called Alder Lake (GC5CKKV).  It was a magnetic Altoid can near the bathrooms.  A couple in a van were parked nearby and were taken care of their dog.  I walked down to the lake, which was very low, and snapped a few pictures.  It was a beautiful warm day for October.

I got back on the road, drove through Elbe and made the turn towards Morton.  I found two caches along that stretch of highway.  The first one Luxury Underground (GC5BR3W) was a medium sized Tupperware container sitting behind a sign.  The coords were a bit jumpy but I managed to find it quickly.

I got back in the Escape and drove a little further down Hwy 7 to the next one.  It was down a dirt road, near some sort of group retreat place.  I pulled over, got out and looked for the cache near this giant tree.  I got stung by a couple nettles but managed to find the cache before the mosquitoes got to me.  Ginormously Green (GC214NK) was right where the hint said it would be and the coords were a tiny bit off.

I decided to stop in Morton to grab one more.  Mostly to avoid following trailers, semi trucks and just in general people driving slow.  I found Morton Depot (GC1E59T) and it surprised me when I opened it.  It was a bird house.  You moved the latch and pulled on the front and a little toy bird comes out tweeting.  I was surprised and pulled my hand out of the way.  I took the container out and logged my name.

I called Ben to let him know where I was and about to start over Hwy 12 and White Pass.  I told him I would text him when I got to the top of the pass. I needed to put some miles behind me so I didn't arrive in Yakima in the dark.  I drove past Glenoma, Randle, Packwood and up the grade.  I got behind some slow vehicles so I decided to pull over in this small pull out to grab a cache, it was called Flat Top Falls (GCX34Z).  The cache was a magnetic key holder on a guardrail but the view of the falls was pretty awesome.

I put some more miles behind me but stopped at the Mount Rainier view point mostly because it was clear and I wanted a good shot of it.  I got out and took a picture of a Mexican family who was traveling east.  They thanked me.  I got back in and went over the summit, let people know where I was and went down the grade towards Naches.  

When I got down I was tired of following this slow car so I found a couple of quick caches along the road and pulled over.  The first one was White Pass Scenic Bypass (GC53Y04).

The second one was called Wild About Wildlife (GC13DRC) that was about 100 feet off the road underneath a pile of rocks near some sage brush.  It was starting to get cold and I was still in a tank top.  I went and found one more, Just Hanging Around (GC53VG8).  Indeed, it was hanging in a tree.  

I got back in the car, drove through Naches, let everyone know I arrived safely and made my way to Yakima.  I got to Willmarth's house just after 7:15.  I got molested by dogs, chatted with them for a bit.  We ordered pizza, watched Shark Tank and various ESPN shows.  Shannon went to bed and we stayed up until 2:30 digging through his old high school bins.  We found some really neat stuff and some funny pictures.

I got my clothes together and finally gave up around 2:45.

Next Adventure:  Yakima Valley Pirate Plunder, a Nap and Cougar Football