St. Patrick's Day Game Night

Me and my friends have been having a game night once a month if we can for a few years now.  For March, we decided to have an early St. Patrick's day celebration.  Ben's days off changed to Friday and Saturdays so we all decided to have a game night on a Friday so he could come.  Lindsay wanted to host this time so we let her.

I wanted to make dessert and it had to be green.  Since Nicole is gluten free and we always make foods and desserts not gluten free and I started to feel bad about it.  I made green gluten free cupcakes.  I learned that gluten free cakes were made with really weird ingredients and that the batter is very gritty.  Once the cupcakes baked, they were very dense.  Don't get me wrong they were pretty good. I also made some watermelon cupcakes as well because I've never seen them before and I wanted to try them.  Sort of an experiment.

The watermelon one was even tasty.  I was a fan.

Friday arrived and I knew I wouldn't have that much time to get ready.  I immediately went home and took a shower while Ben drove to my house.  I decided to look somewhat nice since I got a shower in.  I did my hair and put on a little make up.  I had him pick up some more beer and chips.  When he got here he helped me grab the cooler, the games and the cupcakes.  We took his car over to Lindsay's.

The gate was open when we got there and we decided not to park behind anyone.  Auki greeted us as we walked into the house.  And we saw the Christmas tree.  I can not believe their Christmas tree was still up.  Christmas was months ago and that tree is a huge fire hazard.  We all sat at the table and started playing some games.  One was Heads Up, made famous by Ellen DeGeneres and the other one was called Anomia, that one got your mind thinking quick.  We ate our food prepared by everyone.  Megan made gluten free potato soup, Lindsay made cabbage rolls, Celeste made some sort of potato salmon thing and Nicole made some dip.  There was plenty of food for the night.  Lindsay and Justin also had a giant container of gummy worms.  Ben and I drank green beer and everyone else drank soda or green wine.

Megan told everyone she and Matt were expecting their second kid sometime in July. We all congratulated them.

At about 10 is when everyone decided to go home.  Most of us worked the next day.

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!  Go drink some green beer.  :)

Next Adventure:  Pi Day Event

My Geocaching Story: Meeting Ben

I’ve been geocaching since July 2010 and I became addicted instantly.  I’ve always enjoyed traveling, learning about new places, history, geography and this hobby has definitely enhanced every aspect of my said interests.  It gave me a reason to be outside more than just the occasional hike or walk in the park.  It has allowed me to go to places I never thought I would ever go to. I've been to 10 states, Route 66, Area 51 and various local landmarks and hotspots.  I live in a small rural Pacific Northwest town and have seen just about ever square inch of the area (and beyond) because of geocaching.

Every adventure needs a caching buddy right?  Of course!  I’ve always wanted someone I could go geocaching with; plus it is safer in numbers.  I spent most of my “newbie” experiences by myself learning as much as I could about the game.  As I became more educated about finding them, hiding them, using a GPS, making queries, cache machines and events, it was time to find someone to create memories with.  After a few years I considered myself a seasoned geocacher.

My area was really hard to find someone my age to geocache with.  Everyone was married with kids, retired military, people who had no interest in the hobby, etc.  Since this is the technology age, I decided to try my luck with online dating.  One night while I was searching the interest geocaching, a few profiles popped up near and far.  I looked at them all.  I engaged in a few conversations about geocaching but none really went anywhere and sort of just trailed off.  One of those profiles was interested but they lived on the east coast and I knew that would never happen.  A couple of months to a year went by and I was looking again just for fun.  I noticed a profile that really stood out.  He enjoyed geocaching, sports, outdoors, was around my age, lived locally but I didn’t respond because I didn’t think they would be interested in me.  The next day I received this message, “I think I found myself a geocaching buddy!”

I was beyond excited.  I could not wait to meet him in person.

We started texting and tried to figure out when we should meet and where.  About a week later, we met at one of the local parks.  I showed up wearing my geocaching gear…sweatshirt, cargo pants, hiking boots and he showed up wearing the exact some thing.  I swear this wasn’t planned.  We introduced ourselves, shared a little bit about our lives and went right into geocaching.  I had already found the ones inside the park so I had him find them.  Instead of it being awkwardly uncomfortable when meeting new people for the first time, we actually got along great and I enjoyed his company.  We also engaged in another hobby of ours after we found all the caches in the park, our love of disc golf.  It was a 9-hole course and I managed to throw my disc over the fence into the neighborhood’s yard.  I was mortified.  He just laughed.  We ended up getting it back after I used him as a ladder to get up and over the fence to retrieve the disc.  We still joke about it to this day.

We started dating about a week later after several conversations and geocaching adventures here and there.  It was so great to be able to share the experiences with him.

Six months later we did the exact same thing we did when we first met.  That park will always be a special place in both of our lives.  We will continue to frequent that park as long as we live in the area.  We plan on spending our future together.

I wouldn’t have found him without geocaching.

"Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look."  -Jodi Picoult

Valerie Larson (cougarcach24)

Rainier, Washington

The Lamprey Challenge and the Satsop Nuclear Power Plants

The U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife put out a geotour.  Instead of a coin we would get a pathtag upon completion.  There were six puzzle caches ranging from Montesano all the way to Chehalis.  This geocaching challenge was created with the intent to educate the public about the Chehalis River Basin and the Pacific Lamprey within.  The Pacific Lamprey is a relatively unknown, often underappreciated and declining species of fish that is a critical contributor to ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest and is culturally important to many tribes.

We were to correctly answer two trivia questions per cache to obtain the corrected coordinates, print out the passport, locate the cache and use the stamp within to mark the appropriate box on the passport, mail the completed passport to claim your pathtag.  There were only 75 pathtags so first come first served.

This challenge was published February 23.  I couldn't do it until a week day so I chose Wednesday and I saw it was going to be a nice day.  I knew I couldn't ask Bob and Bev to go because they already completed it.  I knew Ben worked Wednesday night and I felt bad for asking him to go with me but I didn't want to go by myself.  I gave him the choice and he said he would go.  I told him I would be there by noon.

The night before I solved all of the puzzles and learned a lot about the lamprey.  I made a query and got my clothes, trackables and some of the the food together for the trip.  I liked getting ready the night before to make the day of easier.  

I got up, put my clothes on, made some sandwiches, grabbed some drinks and put everything in the car and headed out to Rochester.  He was still in his bed when I knocked on the door.  I knew he would be but I didn't know about the story from work that early morning.  Apparently, two cocktail waitresses got into a cat fight just before he was done with his shift and he and another co-worker had to break them up.  He came home with scratches on his back and side and he had to stay after to fill out reports.  He didn't go to bed until about 8 a.m.  I felt bad getting him out of his bed but he wanted to come with me.  He zombied out of bed, put some clothes on and his shoes and we left around 12:20.

I decided to go out to the furthest one and work our way towards Chehalis.  The furthest one was Friends Landing (GC5KZWJ) and for some reason Nuvi hated its directions.  It was so close to Hwy 107 it actually thought you could access it from the highway.  In reality, you had to drive to Montesano and take a well used road out towards the river.  Luckily, I read all of the logs and the driving instructions before we embarked on this journey.  We parked less than 200 feet from the cache hiding in the log.

We got back in the car and plugged the next one into the Nuvi.  We got back onto the freeway and got off at the Hwy 107 exit towards Preacher's Slough (GC5KZWH).  We had to wait for some construction at the bridge.  We didn't have to wait that long.  Then we accidently drove past the parking area to the cache.  We turned around, parked and found out this was one of the two we had to walk to.  It was a chilly yet nice walk in the woods along the slough.  When we approached the cache, we had a slight hiccup while looking.  This one was actually hidden pretty good.  Then I saw the piece of wood hiding it.  Here it is!

On the way back towards the car we stopped to look at the slough.  On our way back to Hwy 12 via Hwy 107, we had to stop again at the bridge for a few minutes.  We also ate our sandwiches and chips as we drove.  It was roughly 1:30.

Our next stop was the Satsop River (GC5KZWK) with the giant power plants looming over us in the distance.  We followed Nuvi and she didn't quite know where to go once we got to the bridge.  She wanted us to drive off into the river from the bridge but I knew better.  We found the road the lead us underneath the bridge over to a parking lot for boat trailers.  A lot of these places were going to were used for fishing.  We parked as close as we could.  We just had to walk the 80 feet into the trees, where again, we found the cache hidden inside some logs.

Since we were so close to the Satsop power plants I had to go see them.  I spend most of my childhood driving back and forth from Ocean Shores and Westport we would always see these structures in the distance.  They always reminded us of The Simpsons.  I always wanted to go see them up close but we never had the time or we had to be somewhere else when we were in the area.  We drove up the hill and followed the roads.  There they were...the landmarks of Grays Harbor county!

If we had the time I would have found the other caches up here.  I will have to save them for another time when we're not in a hurry to get back.  We drove through the back roads towards Porter.  The fourth cache on our adventure today was literally at a fishing hole right off the road next to Porter Creek (GC5KZWM).  This time I pulled up beside it.  We only had to walk about 30 feet.  You could almost follow it without a GPS...everyone before us had left behind an obvious geotrail.  I had Ben stamp the passports and I wrote our caching names on the log book.

We got back onto Hwy 12 and made our way to Centralia the back way through Grand Mound.  The next one was along a trail I've heard of but have never gone to yet.  I know there are caches along the trail but those will have to wait for another day.  Discovery Trail (GC5KZWN) was the furthest one we had to walk to.  We pulled up to the parking lot and it was over a quarter of a mile just to get to the actual trail.  Once on the trail, it was another ways to walk.  It was a nice day so there were a bunch of people walking their dogs.  We hurried out to it and hurried back.

On our way to I-5, we stopped at Safeway to use the restroom.  Grandma called me while I waited for Ben.  So I talked to her for a bit.  Now we were on I-5 heading south towards Chehalis and to our last challenge cache.  I've been to this park once before many years ago.  I celebrated one of my earlier milestones just before dusk.  Alexander Park (GC5KZWP) was off of Hwy 6 just after the bridge but before Adna.  This was the area that was destroyed in the 2007 and 2008 flooding when the Chehalis River's dike system failed.  Everything was covered in flood water and I-5 was closed for nearly a week.  You can still see the devastation in certain areas.  We parked and I had to change the batteries in the GPS.  It led us near the banks of the Chehalis and again the cache was hidden inside of a log-stump like tree.

I asked Ben if he wanted an early dinner he said no.  I knew he just wanted me to take him home so he could have a couple hours of sleep before he went to work.  I told him that was fine.  We got onto the freeway and headed towards the Rochester fire house.  When we got there, he grabbed his stuff and we said our goodbyes.  He went inside and went to bed.  I stayed out in the parking lot and filled out the rest of the passports to mail.  He came out in shorts to give me one more kiss.  Isn't he sweet?  He ran back inside to get maximum sleep time.  I put the stamps on the envelopes and mailed them on my way out of town.  

Until the next challenge!

Next Adventure:  St. Patrick's Day Game Night