Manson and the Wedding Rehersal

We got up around 11 because we really didn't have a plan that day.  Ben had asked Josh what he was up to and he told him then needed to go into Wenatchee to finalize a few things and to get the keg.  Josh didn't get back to him right away so we went into the cafe and ordered breakfast.  Josh got back to him while we waited for our food.  He wanted to leave now and we couldn't.  Ben just opted not to go and that we would meet up with them at the rehearsal.  He had his brother and Tommy to go with him.

It took about a half hour for our food to arrive.  I ordered chocolate milk, french toast, eggs, bacon and it came with a side of fruit and Ben ordered a scramble, which came with some English muffins and a side of fruit, he also got the chocolate milk.  It sure was tasty.  I haven't had a breakfast that good since we went to Hood River, Oregon for our year anniversary.

We ate our food and discussed what we wanted to do until we had to go into Wenatchee.  Ben suggested that we go over to Manson to explore since he hadn't gone anywhere past the casino.  I said sure!  Let's do it!  We got back to our room and grabbed the stuff we needed.  I made a query of the Manson area and off we went.

We started off at Don's Sandy Shore (G5QYHT) and it was impossible to park so we had to go to the other lot really quickly.  We were only there for the cache.  And...no cache.  It disappeared sometime during Memorial Day Weekend and was not checked up on or replaced since.  We were disappointed.  Oh well, we got a great view of the beach area looking at the lake.  It was going to be another hot day.

We got onto the Manson Highway and made our way west towards the city center.  We passed many wineries and really expensive houses.  Welcome to Manson (GC5QRA5) was indeed at the Welcome to Manson sign.  It was a fake rock hidden below the sign.  It too had a great view of the lake.

We went further down to one at a winery called, Where It All Began (GC1V207) and we totally misjudged where it was and instead of it being on the corner where the lamp post was, it was actually inside the winery at an old wagon cart with wine barrels on it.  The container was hidden underneath the wheel.  Ben watched me from the car.

The next closest one took us to Old Mill Park and a boat launch.  Wing Attach Plan R (GCEFCB) is one of the older ones 3/30/2003, that are still around.  When we both saw where it was we knew it was going to be hidden under the only tree in the area.  We were disappointed when we found out it was an old Gatorade bottle with some stuff shoved inside.  Someone at one point stole the ammo can and another person replaced it with garbage from their car.  Lame.  On a positive note, we sat inside the park for a bit trying to get the wild baby ducks to trust us.  We got them within a foot of us.

Is Than an Apple or a Pear (GC4EX7D) took us to a very cool art piece in the middle of downtown Manson.  I was hoping the cache would be hidden amongst the art but alas it wasn't.  We checked the next obvious spot and we found it.  It's been a while since I found a bolt cache.

It wouldn't be geocaching without stopping by the local fire station with my firefighter.  Fire and Water (GC5B6H5) was difficult to navigate to.  I thought it was behind the station which in fact it was inside the rock wall to the side of the building, we drove right up to it and I had Ben find it and sign the log while I looked for another cache to go to.

We tried getting to a cache but a huge truck was in the way of the only road through so we had to go around.  I put in U-Find (GC3EEC5) and it took us to a blueberry, strawberry and grape orchard.  There was a old metal piece of farm equipment near the road and entrance to the place and the arrow was pointing us to it.  When we looked we found two caches, the real one and a throw down.  We signed the real one and left both of them just in case the cache owner wanted to dispose of it.

We were running out of time but we found a road that took us to the back side of Manson, out by Wapato and Rose Lake.  We tried looking for one but gave up because the hint was really misleading and it looked like it was in the brush...we weren't prepared for brush swimming.  We looked to the next one, Lake Tour Series #1 Roses Lake (GCXQWV) and it was on the way to the boat launch.  We thought it might have been a elevation thing but it turns out we chose wisely.  It was on the guardrail instead of down below at the boat launch.  He dropped me off and drove away.  I was like, what is he doing?  Then he stuck his hand out the window signaling that he was going to turn the car around and I thought he was flipping me off.  Haha!

We left Chelan and headed down to Wenatchee to meet up at Ohme Gardens for the rehearsal. We got there a half hour early so Ben and I explored the area.  It was definitely a pretty place.  It over looks the city of Wenatchee, the Columbia River and the hills.   We found tiny waterfalls, small pools with fish in them and a copious array of flowers, shrubs and trees.

Everyone started to arrive and we met everyone, who belonged to who, the wedding party, the parents etc.  I sat and watched them go through the walk through a few times.  Sam wanted everything to go smoothly because we all know weddings do no go perfectly.  From there we drove to downtown Wenatchee for the rehearsal dinner, the RiverTop Bar and Grill, was on the top floor of the Coast Wenatchee Center Hotel with a great view of the valley.

I ordered the cheapest thing off the menu, fish and chips.  Ben ordered some fancy pasta and we both had a pint of ShockTop.  We chatted with everyone and the servers even got into it with some laughs.  It was a good time.  We said good bye to everyone and tried to find out if anyone wanted to meet up later at Josh and Sam's suite.  Some wanted to and some just wanted to go relax before tomorrow.

We drove back to Chelan and grabbed one more cache because we could.  "Tsillan" (GCJVXR) was on the guard rail (Ben saw it from the car) near the Lake Chelan sign along US97.  We went back to our hotel until we heard from Josh.

At around 11 p.m. we heard from Josh.  He said to go ahead and come over.  We brought our assortment of booze over to his suite.  Sam was tired so she didn't last very long.  She actually fell asleep in the chair while we watched Naked and Afraid.  After the TV went out, Ben, Josh and I grabbed our drinks and headed out to the balcony to stare at the lake, enjoy the nice night and to talk about his last days as a bachelor.

We went back to our hotel room after one and decided to go to bed because tomorrow will be a pretty long day.

Next Adventure:  Josh and Sam's Wedding

Trip to Chelan

The past couple months we planned for Josh and Sam's upcoming wedding.  Ben and the boys had a bachelor party up in Chelan during Memorial Day and there he looked for a place to stay while we were in town for the wedding.  He ended up finding a cheap place in town.  Now we just had to pack our stuff and head on over the Wednesday before.  I found some stuff to do while we drove over.  We took his car.

That morning I packed up all my stuff and headed to the fire station in Rochester, all before 10:00.  I got there and got him motivated to get his stuff into his car and off to Olympia we went.  We stopped by the mall to get a black short-sleeved shirt for the wedding.  He was the best man so we had to make him look good.  We found one right away, he tried it on and found a register to pay.  Off to the freeway we go!

Neither of us ate anything so we talked about where we wanted to stop for food.  I told him let's get some miles behind us and stop in CleElum somewhere.  He said sounds good.  We got off I-5 onto Hwy 18 and traffic wasn't that bad, in fact we made up some time.  We merged onto I-90 and when we got closer to North Bend I thought to myself, I should have put Olallie State Park onto my query so we could get this stamp.  I decided, eh...we could get it in August when we come up for the Ape event.  He continued on the road and I asked where we were going.  He said to Ben's Disneyland.  Oh, we're going to the Washington State Fire Training Academy.  I've driven past the signs hundreds of times and have always wondered where it was and what it looked like.

We couldn't really get that close because there were people training and we didn't want to interrupt.  So he pointed out what everything was and told me a few stories when he was training here.  The tallest building has coating on it to prevent it from burning down.  It was cool visiting finally.  We headed back down the hill to I-90.

We made some good time when we arrived in CleElum for food.  Ben wanted breakfast and I wanted lunch.  We stopped by the Cottage Cafe.  Ben and Josh stopped at a few months back.  I ordered a burger and fries and Ben ordered pancakes, eggs, bacon, hashbrowns, etc.  It was a lot of food and he finished all of it but a few bites of pancake.  We went back out to the car and it started getting hotter.  The night before I had made a small query of caches to get along the way since we really weren't in a hurry and we have daylight until about 9 p.m.

We got onto the 970 and stopped for one called, Teanaway Ghost Stop (GC4TVW0), which used to be a very frequented rest stop.  I remember stopping here back in 2011 on our way to the Methow Valley Cache Machine for the cache that used to be here, now there is a new one.  The Jackalope is still there except it has a red nose.  Ben found the cache after the GPS led us astray.  We signed the log and hid the bison tube back where we found it.

We stopped for one more before heading up the Blewett Pass grade, Weary Traveler Cache-Intersection (GCWYKT) was an easy guard rail cache near the turn off to Ellensburg.  We parked along side the road and grabbed it before a lot of traffic came rumbling through there.  It got windy.  We watched the wind blow the tall grass like waves.  We got back into the car and took on the pass.  We stopped at A Holey Place (GC2AF8D) hoping to find the cache that I couldn't find back in 2011.  The coords are bad so we gave up and took some picture with the cave.

There really wasn't that much traffic going north, which was nice for us, when we got up and over, Ben was doing 70 mph and as our luck would have it, we got stopped by a cop.  Second time since Ben had the car.  We pulled over, turned the radio down and waited to hear what the cop had to say.  He said we would be getting another warning as he took down Ben's information off his license.  He said since we were also doing a steady 70 and didn't slam on our breaks he really wasn't too concerned.  He just asked us to go 60 from now on since it is a highway.  We said okay and thanks.

Our next stop was Only One Thing More Beautiful (GCRQXE) along the river.   We parked and walked to the spot.  I remember stopping here for another cache that used to be here about four years ago.  We looked for it and couldn't find it.  We would try again after playing in the river for a bit.  It was getting hot and the cool crisp river felt really nice.

We walked back up to the guard rail and Ben found it.  The coords were way off.  We signed the log and walked back to the car.  We entered Dryden at the intersection of US 97 and Hwy 2.  The next stop we had on our agenda was Peshastin Pinnacles State Park (GC4B588).  I wanted to get the state park and the earthcache that were there and definitely do some rock climbing.  When we got there we were the only ones there.  It was pretty hot so we made sure we had some water.  We used the restroom and got our shoes and passport together.  A car drove up and dropped some kids off to go hiking.  We went up to the gate and went to the state park cache first.

 When I was in middle school my family had stopped here for lunch along our travels, that was around 1997 when the camper was still in one piece.  I remember stopping to use the restroom and sitting in the camper while mom made us a ham and cheese sandwich.  Shortly after we made our way up to Chelan for the evening to use the jet boat.  I also remember a lightning storm that scared us while we tried to sleep.

We followed the path that lead us directly to the cache.  It was in a small outcrop of rocks and Ben spotted it before I did.

We logged our names, got our stamp and put it back as we found it.  We walked to the climbing pinnacle and found an easy side to boulder since we did not have ropes and harnesses with us.  We kept it as safe as we could.  Ben attempted to climb the west side...it was a little more than we were prepared for so we went over to the east side of the rock.

I went up first and climbed about half way.  I didn't trust my new climbing skills to go beyond that without a rope and harness.

Then Ben took a turn on that side of the rock.  He made it beyond the mark I had stopped at.  Then I saw the bees nest and told him to come down as quick as he could.  He had a plan to climb to the top and come down on the south part of the rock.  I had saved his life seeing that nest.  If he would have gotten stung it would have been a very bad day.  We need to bring his pen with us and not just leave it in the car.  That would have been a long run and back if he would have gotten stung.

We all made it down safe and sound, got our shoes back on and answered the Peshastin Pinnacles (GC1CH2P) earthcache questions before going back to the car.  We needed some more water.  In Cashmere, we stopped at the gas station and bought a gallon jug of water and some ice for our cooler.  That waster was delicious after being in the heat with dust everywhere.

We stopped again inside the small town of Entiat.  Last time we were here, in May, I wanted to stop to get one for the towns and cities challenge but we ran out of time.  This time we had some time to stop and grab one called, Calling All Geocachers (GC1PJTN), indeed it was in a phone booth.  This one was less creative than the last one I found at a phone booth.  I had Ben search for it and he found it quickly.

Earthquake Point, is another place I have stopped at in the past with my family.  At the time there weren't any geocaches or earthcaches.  We found The Night the Mountain Fell (GCJG35) and Ribbon Cliff Landslide (GC1F5PW).  I learned more about the area and the event that took place here back in the late 1800's.  It is quite an interesting read.

Ribbon Cliff Earthquake of 1872.

I had two more caches loaded just before the hill into Chelan but we needed to check in to our hotel before 8 p.m., so we just stopped at one of them.  Frankenstein Rock (GC1B50Z) was the coolest rock formation I had ever seen before.  With the spray paint it really did look like Frankenstein.  Ben found the cache and we took a few pictures just because we could.

We rolled down the hill into Chelan and immediately drove to the hotel.  We were staying in the Riverwalk Inn. We got there just before 8.  He gave us our keys, we parked and unloaded our stuff into our room.  It was literally a bed and a bathroom.  We had a fridge and two end tables.  We had maybe 3-5 feet of room from the bed to the wall.  We hung up our wedding clothes and put our liquids into the fridge.  The cafe attached to our hotel only served breakfast so we had to go find some dinner.  The pizza place across the way was still open, Local Myth Pizza.  We ordered it to go, while we waited Ben ordered a beer, Raging Ditch Dry-Hopped Blonde by Bale Breaker Brewing out of Yakima.

We paid for the pizza and went and ate it in the park while we watched the sun go down.  We brought our own beer with us and enjoyed our dinner next to the lake.  It was so warm outside for June.  We sat there and chatted for a bit before going back to the room.  We weren't sure what tomorrow would bring.

Next Adventure:  Manson and the Wedding Rehearsal

Mount Rainier GeoTour Kickoff Event (The Rainier100 Series)

2016 is the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service and we've decided that the celebration should start early.  We (WSGA, Groundspeak and NPS) teamed up with Visit Rainier to place 100 caches in a two year period in 25 cache increments.  Today the first 25 published.  The Centennial Geotour will highlight the rich history, scenic wonders, quaint communities and hidden gems around the Mount Rainier region.  For every 25 you finish you get a Visit Rainier pathtag and if you finish all 100 caches you get a geocoin.

Originally I didn't think I would be able to go to the Kickoff Event (GC5T8CD) because of work and whatnot.  Then I found out work wasn't going to be an issue and I decided to volunteer to own a cache or two but did not make the cut off date so I will own some caches in the second released series.  I talked to Bev to see if they wanted to go but they were busy so I asked Ben and mom if they wanted to go.  They said it sounded fun.  We planned to go.

I made a query of the area of the caches I still haven't gotten yet.  I wanted to leave somewhat early so we could grab a few of them.  Ben made it over here before noon and I had to motivate mom to go and get ready so we could go.  We got some food together, drinks, packed  up the car and made our way towards Ashford.

We decided to drive through Eatonville instead of taking the scenic Hwy 7 route.  I wanted to stop and try to find Tom's Cache (GCMRB6) on the island you can walk to during certain times of the year and today we had some time to do it without being in a hurry.  We parked in the lot and walked down to the really empty Alder Lake.  This year was very dry and we are going to pay for it come summer when wildfires burn down everything.

I followed the GPS to the tree line and we started looking.  The coords jumped around and the cache hadn't been found in quite some time so I struggled with the fact that it could be missing and we were wasting our time.  We looked at the spoiler picture and could not find the tree.  There were tons of sticker bushes and I was getting scraped up pretty bad.  We didn't end up finding it because we had to move on so we will have to come back another day.

I've always wanted to visit the iron sculpture park along Hwy 706.  Today we had time to stop plus I am a sucker for weird stuff to visit along side the road.  I've been to some strange things over the years.  The Recycled Spirits of Iron, is artwork created by Dan Klennert.  He has been creating since he was 8 years old and has many pieces of his art sprinkled around the U.S. and Canada.  Some of his artwork can also be seen on the film America's Heart and Soul (2004).

We parked and immediately started looking for The Iron Works Cache (GC4F72).  The coords were a bit off and the hint confused us because the elephant is no longer there but the train is.  Due to the process of elimination we finally found the spot and looked for a place to take a picture.

Mom wandered around while taking pictures.  She ended up talking to the artist for about a half hour about his work and what made him interested in doing this as a living.  He handed her a brochure and we made a $5 donation to keep his place going and looking nice.

We hopped back in the Escape and made our way to the event.  They listed wrong coordinates on the cache page so we went to the wrong area and had to turn around.  It was at the other ski shop.  I found a parking spot and made our way to the tents.  Ben went into the ski shop for a bit.  We signed the log book and sat and talked to Peach and Pete for a while.

The Visit Rainier lady stood up and explained to us how the geotour was going to work.  Sounded pretty straight forward to me.  All the caches published around 4:00.  Some people stayed and hung out and others dashed out to go get the first to find.  We were hungry so we ordered food from the little cafe.  Then we climbed the small wall next to the ski shop.

We decided to leave the Ashford caches behind for another day while we picked up two of the Rainier100 caches on the way home.  We left Ashford and headed to the first one, Rainier100:  Eatonville (GC5W8TC), that one was near a visotor's center with a rest area for travelers.  It was tucked away inside a fake water meter box.  When we got there, Frisbeer and his grandson were there along with another family.  We all signed it, got my picture and put it back where it came from.  We moved onto Dogwood Park.

I've been to Dogwood Park at least three different times for caches.  Rainier100:  Dogwood Park (GC5V5VQ) made it my 4th time here for a cache.  The same family followed us here so we found the short multi together and mom took some pictures of Mount Rainier from the viewpoint.  Soon after more cachers arrived.  This time I knew them, FenChurch and NepoKarma jumped out of their car looking for the cache.  I talked to them for a few minutes and then we headed home.

Ben and I were going to go to a party up in Renton to meet some of his friends but instead we ended up going to Buffalo Wild Wings with Michael and Eliane and then hitting up Jurassic World.  We got home late.

Tentative Dates for the rest of the Rainier100 GeoTour:

October 2, 2015
April 1, 2016
September 16, 2016

Next Adventure:  Trip to Chelan