Relay For Life

I did not plan to stay there the entire time.  Ugh.  24 hours of being awake is hard.

The day before I helped mom set up our tent so we didn’t have to do it the morning before.  Literally no one from the office helped her and she was basically on her own.  They knew about the date a year in advance and everyone conveniently made plans to be gone so they didn’t have to help or be a part of it.  Luckily this year Ben, Trish and I were available to help her or she would have been on her own.  Grandma also came to hang out.

Mom got there around 8 to finish setting up and Trish got there as soon as she could to set up her tent since it took two people to put it up.  I got there after 10 because I went to mom and dad’s to get the step stool and her sewing table.  I unloaded them at our spot, settled in and waited for the event to start at noon.

I waited for Ben to get there because he left a few hours after I did.  I had him bring a surge protector and a few blankets and pillows since the weather was not going to be the greatest and no one likes to be cold.  He got there around 1:30.

Opening ceremonies was pretty emotional for some of the participants; the survivors did a lap around the track to I am a Survivor by blah blah.  They ended up playing that song a few times before the event was over.   Once they crossed the finish line everyone started putting laps in.  I worked on the luminary bags and walked laps in between.  I had just started another lap and I had someone tap me on the shoulder…I was expecting Ben, who was jogging around the track, but I was surprised to see it was Celeste.  I knew she was coming but didn’t know when I would see her.  We walked around the track together for a few miles.  She explained she was here with her friend who had battled leukemia and survived.  I thought that was very cool of her.

I walked a few more laps with Ben and Trish and some with grandma. 

I got all of the luninara bags done and Trish filled them with sand and a candle and set them aside for the ceremony at 10:30 that evening.  We did a few more laps because I wanted an even number before we left for Alex and Megan’s wedding at 6.  I wanted to leave around 4:30 so we had enough time to get there and get ready.  My mom saw the photographer that was taking the team photos so she got his attention telling him that our team was ready and he came over and got a few of us.  I told mom we would be back before 9.

We drove separate vehicles because I thought maybe Ben would have liked to stay and visit for a bit while I went back to help out at the relay.  We stopped at 1-3 to change our clothes into something more presentable to go to the wedding in.  I wore my red top and my nice khakis and some black flip flops, Ben wore a nice button down, khaki shorts and some casual shoes.  Honestly I expected a lot of people at this wedding to be wearing jeans and redneck attire since it was in the Independence area out past Rochester.  We took both vehicles again and I followed Ben and he ended up taking the wrong road, he realized it after he saw where the wedding was down below.  He said that’s where his GPS took him.  Excuses, excuses.

We finally arrived, parked and walked across the hay field into this enchanting wooded area with lots of twinkle lights.  They did a good job of decorating.  The pig Alex picked out was still roasting.  Ben made his rounds talking with the various firefighters for a few minutes.  Then it was time to sit down for the ceremony.  The ceremony lasted about 10 minutes with some technical difficulties with the speaker system.  They shrugged it off and continued on.  They kissed each other and we all went into the reception area to eat pig, potato salad, beans, bread, beer and watermelon.  It was the perfect food.  The beer was made by one of Alex’s friends.

We stood in line, got our food and found a place to sit.  We ended up sitting and talking with Megan’s great aunt and uncle from Georgia the entire time.  They were very nice people.  We finished our food and wandered around talking to other firefighters.  We congratulated Alex and Megan before I had to leave around 8.  I told my mom I would be back to the school before 9.  Ben walked me to my car and told me he would see me in a bit.  I wasn’t sure how much longer he would stay.

I got there just before 9 and Ben had texted me a few times saying that he left shortly after I did.  He got bored and wanted to come back as well.  I thought he would stay longer than that.  I changed out of my nice clothes and back into my walking clothes.  Mom and Trish had ordered pizza from Varsity Pizza out in McKenna.  I was still full from our pig dinner.  Ben showed up a few minutes after I did and he also took some time to change his clothes.  I did a bunch more laps with Celeste, Ben and his mom and we helped spread some more of the luminary bags around the track to fill in the gaps before the ceremony at 10:30.

Ben and I went home to put the chickens and ducks away and to grab the fire pit and some wood.  When we got back we unloaded it and set it aside until after the ceremony.

We walked some more laps and then they turned the lights off for the ceremony.  We listened to their speech, a girl sang a song about hope and we walked a lap to honor those who have survived, is currently fighting and ones who lost the battle with cancer behind a bagpipe player.  It was very emotional for some and a memorable moment for others.

We got back to our tent and ate some pizza while we got warm.  The temperature had dropped and the wind was blowing.  I had to put my sweat pants on. 

Then we continued to walk more laps around the track.  Mom told us to light the fire.  We had someone from the leadership team walk over and told us we could not have it where we had it.  We told her that someone told us we could have it here since we could not have it on the lawn.  She told us sorry so we dumped water on it.  Mom came back from the bank and asked around about the fire pit.  We ended up being able to have it on the concrete slab near our tent next to the fence.  It felt nice once we got the fire started again.  Then we had a bunch of kids hang out with us for a while.

I got up again and started walking laps.  I wanted to walk more than I did two years ago…which was 7 miles.  I can totally walk more than that this year.  A few times I went out with Trish, Ben and my mom and we walked a few. 

Then we chilled inside our tent area wrapped up in blankets.  At some point around 3:30-4:00 I got comfortable and closed my eyes.  I was asleep until about 7:30 because it started lightly sprinkling on my face.  Ben and Trish had gotten up earlier and had put some laps behind them.  Ben told me that he got some coffee and wondered if I wanted any hot chocolate or a muffin.  He brought me both.  I walked the rest of my remaining miles with Trish who was after 24.  I just wanted to finish 12 because that was five miles more than I did two years ago. 

At 10:00 was the Seahawk lap.  Ben wore his West Thurston pullover, I wore my 12^th man jersey and Trish wrapped herself in a Seahawk blanket.  It was fun.

It was almost time to go and I had no idea where mom was.  They did the closing ceremonies and then we started breaking down our tent area.  About 45 minutes later I found out she was in one of the motor homes with the event leadership counting the money so they could take it to the bank.

I put stuff into the Escape and put the rest of it into mom’s car.  Lastly, we grabbed the ice cream out of the freezer, we decided to sell ice cream but the weather was so poor no one hardly bought any, told Trish thank you for coming and safe travels back home and we headed to mom and dad’s house to drop off the stuff.

Dad was home so he helped me take the fire pit to the back of the house and drop it off along with the firewood we didn’t use, the bucket, the Plinko board and our cardboard cutout of Chewie.  I could tell Ben wanted to go home really bad.  We were tired, sore and my toe was killing me.  I wanted some real food and my bed.  We drove the half hour to home, unloaded our stuff into the house, ate a sandwich, took showers and went to bed for a couple of hours.

I got up around 6ish and started doing laundry and cooking dinner.  We put some of our boxes away from moving and then it was time for actual bed.  I passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Next Adventure:  Wild Waves and Enchanted Village

Poker Run and Family BBQ

Brenda and Ray had talked about doing a poker run at some point this summer at the TriCities Geocoin Challenge.  I was really interested because the TriCities did one before the meet and greet on Friday night and I was curious on how they planned it.  I didn’t even know one was going on until they announced it over the microphone. 

A few weeks later Brenda mentioned that they set the date and to look for it near Centralia and I was stoked!  I got the notification for the WSGA SW Chapter Poker Run & BBQ (GC6MHVK) event and saw that it was going to be at Shafer Park outside of Centralia.  I haven’t been there for several years since picking up a few inside the park that are since archived.  I told Ben we were going to do a poker run at the end of July.  He said sure, sounds like fun.  I added my name to the will attend log on the cache page.

The day of we got up around 9 and had a quick breakfast.  We left around 11 and headed to Centralia via Rainier Road to Rich Road to Old Hwy 99 into Tenino and then followed 507 through Bucoda to the park.  I saw Bev’s car and Brenda and Ray’s red hamster car.  We parked next to theirs and walked out to the picnic area they had reserved.  We said our hi’s, how are yous, signed the logbook and received a raffle ticket.  We visited for a little bit longer until the caches published at noon. 

Brenda gathered everyone around the sandwich board and went over the rules and handed out our event sheets.  Then they set us loose.  Bev, Ben, Don, Wayne and I rode together is Wayne’s car.  We decided to get the ones outside of the park first. We all piled into the car and put the coords in for Oakview Grange (PR#4) (GC6NVMG) and headed out.  We parked at the grange and walked the 100 feet to the tree with the large cavity in it.  Bev pulled it out of its hiding spot.  We passed around the log book and picked out our designated colored card packets (I wondered how they would prevent cheating) and put the cache back where we found it.

Jitterz (PR#5) (GC6NVMY) was just down the street near the Nervous Ned’s coffee stand.  We pulled into the parking lot and wondered if the owner would come out and ask what we were doing.  She did and said, “oh you must be those geocacher people.”  We told her yes we were.  She told us it was by the sandwich board.  As soon as we walked over there, a green hamster car drove up really fast, pulled over and a girl got out waving her hands and trying to take her jacket off as quickly as she could.  She told us not to be alarmed but she said there was a bee in her jacket.  Bev saw a bee fly out of there.  The girl was a little embarrassed and we joked about strangers taking their clothes off.  She told us to have a good day and she left.  We put the cache back for the other cachers to find.

We drove back to the park for the other three caches.

We walked over to the west part of the park for Shaefer Park (PR#1) (GC6NVNB) and found the small geotrail.  There were nettles mixed in with the tall grass so we had to be careful what we brushed up against.  The cache was stashed up against some trees and Ben reached down and grabbed the ammo can.  We all shared the log book and we each blindly picked out our card to add to our collection.

We walked over the bridge and there were some kids swimming down below in the Skookumchuck River.  It wasn’t warm enough for swimming.  We followed the trail to the right and as we got closer we could see the tree that was hiding Shaefer Park (PR#2) (GC6NVNF).  It was tucked away in a lower tree cavity.  I thought it was a great hiding spot.  We grabbed our card packet, took turns signing the log book and put it back better than we found it.

The last one, Shaefer Park (PR#3) (GCNVHN) was clear in the back of the park at the edge of the property.  The trails zig zagged all over the place and we weren’t certain which one looped back around.  Wayne, Ben and I took a chance at some of the trail and found the main gravel one that took us to a smaller trail.  We knew we were going in the right direction because we saw a lady standing next to a tree with an ammo can.  We joked about muggles and rehiding the cache.  She knew we were cachers…even though there were some strange people walking the trails today.  We got our last envelope with our card in it.

We headed back to our picnic area and Ray was still annoyed at the people who took over the main covered area for a one-year-olds birthday party at a first come first served basis.   Not that it really mattered because it was a nice day; it was just the principle of the thing.  They showed up at 6 a.m. to set up, basically sat there all day and the party still hadn’t started when we left.  Why would you need to waste an entire day for a one-year-old’s birthday party when you could have it anywhere else?  Whatever I guess.

We took our packets of cards to Brenda and she scored the cards we picked.  Bev, Ben, Wayne and Don basically had nothing and I had a pair of 8’s.  I was in the lead for a while until everyone else finished and brought their cards.  A guy won the whole thing with a pair of kings.  We ate hotdogs and chips, had a cookie and drinks while we visited with everyone.  It was a nice little event.  We did the raffle soon after.  I actually got picked!  It’s been a while since I won a prize from a raffle.  I picked a geotag.  Bev and Ben also won an item.

We helped Brenda and Ray pick up everthing and put it in their car.  We had to trade out the ammo cans for some lock n’ locks so they didn’t get stolen.  They were some nice ammo cans. Ben and I walked across the bridge to those two caches and replaced them.  We saw some weird people along the way but it didn’t surprise me…it’s Lewis County.  They were going to make this poker run a yearly thing but move it around to the different counties in southwest Washington.  We said our goodbyes and told them that we needed to come visit them soon.  They said they might come up here to do my asphalt adventure caches.

Ben and I headed to downtown Centralia to grab our fourth cache of the heritage series, WSHS 125 – Centralia Depot (GC6JBZ).  We turned down the road and there was a small SUV parked right next to the cache in the street.  We swerved and found a place to park about 100 feet away.  They decided to go somewhere else so they drove away.  Where they geocachers?  We walked out and sure enough they were parked right next to it.  I reached into the spot and they got out of their vehicle and asked me to sign it for them.  They were cachers!  They introduced themselves as hidenfind.  I’ve found a lot of their caches.  I told them who I was and they’ve found a bunch of mine as well.  We stood there for a while talking to them.  They were unaware of the event that we just came from but were very excited for some new caches to find.  They had an appointment so they had to go but they were glad they ran into us.  We put the cache back and on our way back to the Escape, we passed a 20-something year old black guy wearing red boxing gloves.  He mumbled something as we passed and Ben said excuse me?  Ben was ready to rumble.  Clearly the kid was out of his mind or high and just mumbling to himself.  He really wasn’t any threat to anyone.

We get back onto the main road and we were near the Olympic Club when we both saw a cop talking to a woman outside of a bar.  At first we didn’t see what was going on until we had passed and I looked out my side mirror and saw buttcheeks!  The woman was not wearing any pants!!  The cop was trying to get her to put her clothes back on and was probably waiting for some back up.  Lewis County had set a new low today.

I got a text message from my mom asking me to stop at the store for some miracle whip for our BBQ tonight.  She was making potato salad.  The closest store was Dave’s in Tenino and the stuff there was expensive.  We get into Tenino and I get the stuff really quick.  When we got to the house, I found out my grandparents were also coming to dinner.  We also came over to help mom with her Plinko board for the relay for life event this weekend.   Mom fixed dinner, Ben worked on the board and I helped dad do a few things in the yard.

Everyone came over about 6 and we had hamburgers, potato salad, chips and fruit.  It was delicious.

We visited for a bit and explained what we were going to use the Plinko board for.  Everyone went home including us.  We got home around 8:30, got cleaned up and ready for our work week.  It was a busy but fun day.

Next Adventure:  Relay For Life

#spottheape2016 and Floating Mayfield Lake

It was going to be hot this week and it would continue to through Friday so earlier that week I took our inner tubes and had them filled at grandma’s house with her air compressor, it would save us a lot of time and energy if we would have had to do them without it.  I wasn’t sure which lake to go float in but I assumed something local.  WSGA, since the end of June, have been putting out 100 ape tags for the upcoming Going Ape event in August.  Groups of about 2-6 were placed by various volunteers all over Washington State.  Once it began they stayed pretty much in the Spokane, TriCities, Yakima, Vancouver, Seattle and north of Seattle areas.  I checked every day to see if any of them came closer to the Olympia area.  Almost the end of July some of them started appearing in Lewis County near Chehalis and south near Hwy 12.  I saw they were “published” on the WSGA Facebook site late Monday and decided to go get them on Wednesday if no one had gone for them.  

After work I had this itch to go get those ape tags down in Lewis county since no one had claimed them yet.  Ben was on his day off and he knew we were going to go enjoy a lake somewhere.  I got home and told him we were going to the Mayfield Lake area to float and to get the two ape tags along the way.  He said okay.  I got our tubes and towels ready and whatever else we needed and headed out around 1ish. 

Our first stop was Matilda Jackson State Park off of the Jackson Hwy.  We got off at the Napavine/Onalaska exit and followed the road south towards Hwy 12.  Of course we got stuck behind a really slow construction truck.  Ugh!  A part of me was feeling the competitive part and the anxiety…what if someone picked it up today and we’re just going all this way for nothing?  We finally arrived and I looked at the picture one more time, we barely got internet where we were, and told Ben where to look.  We found the opening on the fence and a rock that was pretty obvious and he picked it up and I was stoked!  We logged that we found it on the WSGA Facebook page.

We plugged the next set of hint coordinates into the Nuvi and turned onto Hwy 12 and headed towards Mossyrock.  Our turn off came pretty quickly and we got onto Hwy 122 just outside Mossyrock.  I haven’t been this way in over a year, when Lacey and I came out this way for some exploring, and before that when my mom and I did the state park cache inside of Ike Kinswa summer of 2013.  When we got closer I was really hoping no one had picked this one up today either.  We followed the directions to a parking lot.  I got the Oregon out and we put the coords into that just to give us some reference because I forgot to write down the hint before we went out of cell range.  The coords were off but we checked the sign pretty good before we started searching elsewhere.  After about 10 minutes of searching I went back to the sign and looked at it again.  I saw the tiny chain just barely.  Ben!  It’s right here!  He reached up and grabbed it for me.  We took the necessary pictures and decided to go to the boat launch to do our floating.

Now we each have one!

I drove us a half a mile down the road to the boat launch.  We found a good spot down below, unloaded the tubes, towels and Ben and parked the car in the lot above.  I walked back down and we started getting ready to get in.  I’ve always remembered Mayfield Lake to be really cold since it is fed by the Cowlitz River which comes from tributaries off of the glaciers of Mount Rainier.  Really cold glacier water.  Brrr.  I planned on not getting in all the way.  I just wanted to mostly sit on my inner tube, float and do some relaxing.  Ben would probably get all the way in at some point.

We found a pretty good spot and made our way down the steep hill, trying not to trip and fall on our butts or into the water.  We both made it down safely and got ready to go into the water.  Ben had to be at a union meeting at 7 and wanted to be home by 5:30 to get cleaned up and have some dinner before he went.  It was 3:15ish and we set an alarm for 4:30.  We pushed off the shore and we went where the current and the boat waves took us.  It felt so nice just to do nothing and chill at the lake.  A boat went by and moored over by a rock face.  Then we heard people jumping off of the rock into the water below.  Ben wanted to do that.  I told him when we were done out here we could walk over to the cliff and he could jump off.  We continued floating and it was amazing.  We floated out pretty far and had to paddle our way back.  We were guessing we’ve been out there a while and needed to head ashore.  Once we got back we dried off, grabbed everything and headed back up the dirt hill.  We took everything back to the Escape and Ben got the nerve to walk over to the cliff.

It took him four times to get the courage to jump off.  I recorded all four sessions on the GoPro.  Eventually I gave him an ultimatum and he finally jumped off screaming the entire way down.  I asked him if he was okay as he swam towards the shoreline.  I started my walk back to the beach area with his towel.  It took him over five minutes to get to me so he can dry off and we can head back home.  I had to get him back before his union meeting that started at 7 in Olympia.  We left around 4:30.

Traffic wasn't horrible yet as we drove through Chehalis and Centralia.  We got off at 93rd and went the backway home to avoid all of the traffic going through Tumwater, Olympia and Lacey.  I got him back at 5:30, he showered, ate a quick dinner and left.  I fell asleep on the bed because these late nights and early mornings were killing me.  I sure hope the late nights ended soon with all of the morning and getting stuff done so late.

We probably will keep our tags and not trade them in for the Ape coins.  At this point we are not planning on going to the event since I've been going for four years now.  There was so much to finish at our new place. 

Next Adventure:  Poker Run and Family BBQ