Driving Range and Top Rung Brewery

This week Ben only had Friday off so we planned it accordingly.  I got up and took dad to his dentist appointment.  Since he was going to be there awhile I arranged it to where mom took him home after she was done, since she only works half days on Friday.  I went home and took a short nap before Ben came over.  We got cleaned up, ate some lunch, did the chicken and duck chores and we were on our way towards Lacey.

He said we were going to go to the driving range and hit a few golf balls.  I have never done this before so it should be interesting.  Throughout the years I was always told by people they would take me to the range with them.  It never happened.  We found out Indian Summer was members only...I didn't know that so we went to Capitol City.  I had totally forgot this was here.  We got out and we bought ourselves each 100 balls to hit.  We got the balls from the dispenser and then took a stop at his car to get his clubs.  He used to go golfing with his dad.

We found our pads and he showed me how to hold the club and how my swing should look.  I've been told that once a baseball player you will have a hard time swinging a club.  I knew it too.  It was really hard for me to keep my left arm straight through my swing.  I would slice them to the right and almost hit a few guys who were involved in the tournament.  A few times it felt like I was doing it right.  My average distance was about 125 yards.  I feel like I did an alright job for my first time at the range.  I even hit a few off the ground, off the tee and even Happy Gilmore style, just to see if I could do it.

We worked on our chipping with the pitcher club.  I did alright for the first time.  We moved onto the putting and I didn't do that bad.  In fact, I putted a ball I would say maybe 30 yards and made it in the hole.  I was so excited I threw my club down like I was spiking a football and then demanded a high five from Ben because that was the most awesome thing ever!  I told him he owed me a beer, lol!

We thought we should finally go try Top Rung Brewery, a local brewery in Hawks Prairie brewed by firemen.  I knew Ben wanted to go and I did and our schedules finally worked out to where we could go.  They don't serve food but often there is a food truck or cart that served food.  Luckily when we arrived there was a guy making paella, a Valencian dish, which consisted of rice, sausage, shrimp and green beans.  It is served hot and has minimal spices.  We ordered a bowl of it after getting our beer.  I had the Prying Irons IPA, Ben had the Lacey Dark Lager and the 360 Red.  All were very tasty.  I ran into someone I went to high school with, Kasey Ortiz, and we had a nice half hour chat.

We decided to go and get some ice cream from Baskin and Robbins before we went and got Ben's hair cut.  The ice cream was a great choice after being cooked out on the golf course.  After Ben's haircut we drove over to the Safeway to pick up a watermelon for mom.  We went home, cut it, we watched Beerfest and had chips, salsa and chocolate milk before Ben had to go back to the station for his shift the next day.   Good times had by all!

Next Adventure:  Engine House No. 9, Mini Golf and Bowling

Lake Lawrence and a T5 Cache

I got up to help dad with breakfast, his morning readings and his walk before Bev texted me on what I was up to today.  I told her getting dad ready for his day and then probably chores and whatnot.  She wanted to know if I had some time to go with her to the lake to get Lake Lawrence Lollygagging (GC4RDKC), our T5 cache.  I said sure, give me about an hour to get everything done and I can meet her at her house.

In the meantime, I made dad some lunch, we walked and took his afternoon readings and Bev washed out the boat I was going to use.  I brought my food with me and headed down to Bev's.  She was next door at John and Judy's house talking with some relatives.  I said hi to Janet as she was leaving.  I walked in and said hi to everyone then Bev and I said our goodbyes and walked out the door.

We put the boat and oars inside the Escape and drove out to the lake.  It was a nice day, roughly around 80ish degrees.  We got to the public boat launch, walked the boat down to the water, made sure we had everything, phone, walkie talkie, plastic bag to put everything in, an extra cache just in case this one was missing...again, and the GPS.

Bev stayed on shore while I paddled the 0.15 to the cache.  It was hard paddling there because of the breeze and the two jet skis that flew past me.  I got closer to the shore and pinpointed the tree that I suspected the cache to be attached to.

Because of our dry summer, the shoreline was a lot lower than when it was hidden.  Thus, I had to get out of the boat to retrieve it.  Unfortunately, I had a hard time paddling myself to shore because of the thick Horsetail Rush plants along the shoreline.  I had to set the oars aside and pull myself to shore with my hands in the lake.   Once onto shore, I noticed this giant bees nest that someone had lopped the top off of it, rendering it abandoned, thank goodness...no one has time for bees. I found the cache tied to the end of a Douglas Fir branch.  I radioed Bev telling her I found it and I will be on my way back in a few minutes.

It took less time getting back to the boat launch because I was going with the current the wind was making on the surface.  She grabbed the boat as I made it to shore and I definitely got wet on my way back.  I had to wipe off the items that got sand all over them.  We dumped out the boat, which had roughly a cup of water inside, shook it off a bit and stuffed it back into the Escape.  We drove back to her house, I dropped her off, put my raft into the Escape and drove home.  All I need now is my earthcache/CITO and my puzzle cache and my geocaching road trip will come to an end.

Next Adventure:  Driving Range and Top Rung Brewery

Spray Falls Trail, Waterfall and the Trip Home

I woke up a few times throughout the night.  One was for the really really bright moon that illuminated our tent, our neighbor shuffling around in their sleeping bag most of the night and I woke up with a severe cramp in my leg that surprisingly went away after a few minutes.  I've noticed after working my body hard on a hike I just can't get comfortable and fall asleep without waking up a few times.   The last time I got up I panicked because I could not find my phone to check what time it was.  For some reason I thought I lost it.  Dumb I know.

We slept until about 8.  We could hear our tent neighbors getting ready for their next hike or destination.  When we finally got out of the tent we could see a lot of the vacant tent spots.  The people who arrived late last night started taking those spots as we slowly took our camp apart.

To maximize our time, I took the tent apart while Ben made breakfast.  We took a few trips to the Escape to get our food and cooking supplies, we figured it was just easier to store them in the vehicle instead of trying to share the food storage bin with 25 other campers.  I got the sleeping bags and sleeping pads all rolled up by the time our oatmeal and eggs were done.  Ben had burned himself on the hot metal container which ultimately burned the bottom of the oatmeal.  We thought with the addition of the brown sugar and the raisins it might mask the burn taste...it didn't.  We ate as much as we could before we had to dump it.  We cleaned out our dishes and began making the eggs.  The eggs turned out well.  We cleaned up and I took the fly and tent down.  He helped me attach the restraints on each of the pieces.  We made three trips to the Escape and I tetris'd everything to make it fit nice inside.  We made sandwiches, filled up our water, grabbed the cameras and made sure we had everything for our last hike of the weekend.

Spray Park Trail, is a 6 mile round-trip hike through a blended transition of forest, meadows and dry waterfall beds.  Because of our seasonally dry weather, those dry river and waterfall beds should have had water flowing through them.  We entered on the southeast side of the Mowich campgrounds and immediately walked down a steep series of steps and then took a left off the Wonderland Trail to the trail we were going to spend some time on.

For about a mile we stopped and took a few pictures among the flat, even part of the trail, this is where the walking was nice.  Then we got to the horrible, horrible switch back stair case of doom.  It just kept going and going.  I didn't think it was going to end.

We finally reached the top and about a quarter of a mile we reached Eagle Cliff Viewpoint.  Mount Rainier was IN YOUR FACE!  The view was amazing from here.

We spent about 15 minutes at this spot along with some other people roughly around our age.  We had a couple moments of small talk and then we were on our way.  Ben said it was a little over a quarter of a mile to go until the waterfall.  I was excited and sweaty.  We passed the Eagles Roost campsite and off to the Spray Falls spur.  We walked along this very craggy, rooty, uneven pathway to the falls.  We rounded the corner and there it was!

We hiked up the side of it to find a nice place to sit and eat our lunch.  The sandwiches, chips and fruit chewies hit the spot.  We admired the falls as we ate.  Then we did some exploring.  We hiked all the way up to the falls to take some video and some more pictures.  We got soaked but it felt good after being in the high 80's that afternoon.  After we got our shots we headed back down towards the trail to head back.  We were getting tired.

As soon as we entered the trail for the return trip, all we did was hike and stop a few times for water, we basically busted this thing out.  We ended up passing three groups of people on our hike back to Mowich.  When we got to the final quarter mile our feet felt like bricks and we just wanted to be done and there was one last hill with stairs to conquer.  We walked up them together like a boss.  We dropped our stuff off at the Escape and grabbed some towels, we were going to go soak in the lake for a bit. 

We found a place and set our stuff next to a big rock.  There was a family sitting there by the large rock on a bench.  Ben and I had already gotten in the water.  The grandma took a 2 year old girl near our stuff, helped her pull down her pants and had her pee right there!  I was appalled! Ben said if they peed on your stuff I am yelling at them.  We got to shore and I went over and grabbed our stuff before they crapped on it.  No pee thank goodness.  I really didn't want to have to yell at this family for being savages.

We dried off and walked back up the trail to the car.  We threw the towels in the car and got the GPS out and the Nuvi and plugged in the coords to On the Way to Mowich #2 (GC5F24M).  The GPS ran out of batteries so I guessed where the cache was and I was right.  It was hidden inside the crotch of two trees just off the dirt road.  Ben joined me in signing it, took a picture and then put it back and ran back to the car before we got dusted.

Not even a half mile down the road was another, the ones we really came up here for besides the camping and hiking, Rainier100:  Road to Mowich Lake (GC5WAEK).  I changed the batteries in the GPS and handed it to Ben to lead us to the cache.  Because of the trees we walked past it twice.  It was hidden inside of a rotted log.  Some muggles had pulled over while we signed the log.  We put it back and jumped back inside the Escape for the next one.

We drove all the way back down the long dirt road.  There were several cars, trucks and SUV's behind us.  I was glad we were in the lead only because we didn't have dust kicking up in front of us the entire way.  We got to the pavement and back onto Hwy 165 towards Carbonado, a small historic mining town.  There was one at the intersection inside the Welcome to Carbonado (GC5J9N7) sign.  Ben stayed in the car while I hopped out to grab it.

The next town, Wilkenson, had our last cache of the day and one of the important ones, Rainier100:  Wilkenson Coke Ovens (GC5WADF).  Bob and I had been here years ago collecting all the caches in the area, which there weren't that many to begin with in these smaller communities.  I gave Ben the GPS and had him lead the way.  We should have read the clue because we had to walk more than we needed to.  We also found out there was a trail behind the sticker bushes.  Our feet were tired so we really didn't want to walk up the hill but we did anyway.  We reached the cache, signed our names and hurried back down to the Escape so we could just be done with the day.  Our next stop was his mom's house just down the road.

We unloaded our really gross hiking clothes to wash, some of our bags and our shower stuff.  His mom made us hamburgers, we got showered and went to the store for some ice cream and a movie.  We relaxed, ate ice cream and watched the newest X-Men movie.  Then passed out hard.

Next Adventure:  Lake Lawrence and  T5 Cache