A Furlough Day: Cache Maintenance, a Cemetery Visit and Go Fish

I hate furlough days.  This was our last one of the year and they are down right terrible.  This one was suppose to be at the end of the month but it was changed because the shared work program was about to end. I hated being on unemployment, which is not user friendly, and the furlough days created a ton of work for us to do on the next work day.  I deemed them double Mondays or double Tuesdays.  Man, I dreaded those days.  At least we had some nice weather during the summertime furlough days.  I would have probably planned something with Mom if it was on a Friday but this time it was moved to Monday, a day in which no one has off, so I had to figure out what to do with my day.

I decided it would be a good day to check up on my caches since it's been about six months since I last checked on them.  I was only going to check on the ones that have been reported missing or needs maintenance. The night before I made a list of those caches and an efficient route to go along with it.

I got up around 10ish, it is always nice to sleep in on my days off, grabbed some food and headed out.  I made sure I had my geocaching back pack full of maintenance supplies.  I decided to drive out to Spanaway first and make my way towards Tenino and then into Tumwater and finally home.  A giant circle if you will.

My first stop was in Yelm at Bypass to Nowhere (GC2HFCM) since I really needed to change the container anyway.  The last time I was here I didn't have the proper containers, baggies or logbook so I threw down a temporary one until I could get a proper one for this spot.  I parked, got everything together and the place I wanted to put it wasn't magnetic so I had to scrap that idea.  I went with a basic micro cache and stuck it near the stop sign.

I continued my way towards Spanaway.  As I approached the town of Roy, I decided to stop to fix the The 507 Series: Roy, Wash (GC3AMVP) cache instead of following a large truck so I pulled into the convenience store parking lot.  About a week to two weeks ago I got a message on the app stating that the Roy cache was missing and the rock it was hidden underneath was also missing.  I told them that I would go check it out the next time I was out that way.  Well, that was today.  I walked over to the original location and the rock was indeed gone from the spot.  It looks like they moved the rock to the corner of the fence away from the sidewalk.  I picked the rock closest to the store and hid a new container and took new coords.  I also had to be patient because the owner of the car lot was out walking around and I really didn't want to talk to him.  I did manage to get it all done and walked back to the Escape.

I drove the rest of the way to the end of where Hwy 507 meets up with Hwy 7.  I pulled into the Park N Ride and it was pretty empty for it being a Monday.  It was good for me because I could replace the cache in peace and not have to be stealthy.  The cache itself, The 507 Series:  Spanaway, Wash (GC3V7QF), was indeed missing as the logs stated.  I was hoping it wasn't true because I really hate coming out here just because to check on it.  I got my replacement out, found a baggie and a logbook and made sure to put the code on it to where people could see it.

I got back onto Hwy 507 and drove back into Yelm.  I had a cache, Curious George (GC8YF5Z), that I had to check on along the trail.  I had just placed this one back in August and it's already having problems.  I parked at the nearby neighborhood and walked to the cache with replacement in hand...just in case.  Yep, it was missing.  This time I put it behind the tree so it was hidden away from being able to see it from the trail.  I walked back to the Escape.

I took the back way towards home near 133rd and Solberg and had to replace Triangle (GC2EYYM).  The original cache has disappeared into the brush since it's grown up since I've placed it...many years ago.  I had a container with a handle on it so I decided to find a good tree to hang it off of out of sight from the road.  I took coordinates and walked back to the Escape.

I drove into Rainier via Koeppen Road and parked behind the Rainier Market.  I needed some food so I ate my tuna and crackers for lunch while I contemplated what I was going to do for the two caches I needed to check up on.  As I looked at the areas, I knew I was going to have to replace both of them.  The City of Rainier had done a lot landscaping and maintenance over the past few weeks and the cache locations were compromised.  Ugh.

I walked out to The 507 Series:  Rainier, Wash (GC3AMVX) first, since it was the furthest from the Escape.  I saw the city got rid of a lot of the Scotch Broom in the area along with the various brush and tree limbs.  There weren't a lot of places left to hide it.  Last time I stuck it near a tree with some rocks next to it since it was a fake rock but I can't put it back there.  I found some large rocks off to the side roughly 75 feet from the original coords.  I took some new ones and made sure the container had everything and the code. 

I took the fake rock and had to find a new home for Rainier Trail Cache (GC8MCG5) since the city got rid of all the railroad ties and rocks from the location I had it hiding in.  I ended up moving it about 100 feet near some large rocks on the south side of the trail.  I made sure there was an appropriate amount of feet between the two caches so they could be reactivated.  

I walked back to the Escape and drove towards Tenino.  I had to stop at Asphalt Adventures #1 (GC31DCY) because it was actually missing.  I parked in the driveway nearby and made the new container switch.  I got back onto 507 and drove back into Rainier.  I called dad and he was on his way to the bank and somehow got behind him but I stopped to check up on Nifty Gifty (GC2N0E9) and it was good to go.

My next stop was in Tumwater so I took the back way down Waldrick Road to Old Hwy 99.  I stopped at the store first to pick up a few things and then went to the cemetery to visit with Grammie.  I told her the stuff we've been doing and how we're tired of Covid.  

I stopped at the bank to drop off some checks I've been holding on to and then I stopped at Pioneer Park to find a cache.

I've been driving past Go Fish! (GC89H30) for months and wanted to stop and grab it but never actually did so I thought today would be a perfect day to get it since there weren't that many people in the park.  I walked down the trail to where the coords took me.  I wasn't sure what to expect but had an idea so I brought my magnet.  I found the sign and the pipe on the backside of it.  I tried using the magnet to side the cache up to the top.  The tricky part was there was a bracket that made you take the magnet off the pipe so the cache fell to the bottom again.  Hmmm.

I walked back to the Escape for some supplies.  I was going to have to make my own fishing pole.  Luckily, I had my caching back pack with me full of odds and ends.  I walked back to the sign, made a very sad looking fishing pole and it took me two times to finally get the container out of the pipe.  I signed the log, got a few pics and put it back for the next cacher.  

On the way back to the Escape for a second time, a PT Cruiser slowed down and rolled down their window (I thought it was going to be someone who needed directions or something) and I had no idea who it was until I heard them say, Val!  Haha, it was Celeste and she was here to do some Pokemon Go.  We chatted for about 15 minutes or so.

I got home, unloaded groceries, started the lasagna, watched Monday Night Football (Cardinals at Cowboys, Cards won 38-10), logged my caches, worked on my blog and talked to Mom and Trish for a bit.  I got cleaned up and Ben and I got ready for bed.  It was a nice day off but I'd rather be working instead just because I hate double work days.

Next Adventure:  Meet and Greet in Astoria

Mom's 60th Birthday Party

Mom has finally reached the big 6-0.  My parents just don't seem that old to me but chronologically they are.  It's weird how fast time goes by.  One minute you are 13 and your parents are in their late 30's and then you're in your mid 30's and they are approaching or already 60.  It is just amazing.  I hate that time is just flying by.  Covid has been making that seem faster.  What I mean by that is, yeah Covid is keeping us from doing all the fun stuff we typically do every year so it seems like we're doing nothing and time is slow but we are hoping it goes by so we can get back to normal which eats up a lot of our time we could be living our life.  It's so lame.

Anyway, I asked Mom what she wanted for food for her birthday party and she said chicken teriyaki.  I'm sure most of us haven't had teriyaki in a while since ordering food and going out is rather annoying due to the Covid rules.   I told everyone we were going to do it on Friday instead of the weekend so we didn't have to do anything this weekend and everyone can be free to do what they wanted.

I had been gathering presents over the past few months when I see them so I didn't have to get anything at the last minute which is what everyone is prone to doing.  I found Mom a sloth door stop (basically a stuffed animal that was weighted down) at Fred Meyer over the summer and thought to myself, I will probably never see this again.  Erika found a really cool sloth onesie from the Goodwill.  You just never know what sort of treasures you'll find when you go to places like that.  It's a never ending yard sale of awesome.

On Thursday I went to Hobby Lobby after work to get the sloth decorations I saw the last time I was with Mom at Hobby Lobby.  I had no idea they had these kind of decorations especially sloths.  I picked up a pack of sloth decorations and then headed over to the Dollar Store to see if they had anything else that I could use.  I did find some sloth cut outs so I could decorate the table with.  

As soon as I was done with work on that Friday I immediately cleaned up the house, set up the tables in the dining room, decorated and around 5, I called the teriyaki place and had Ben go pick it up.  I then had him go over to Safeway to pick up those giant chocolate chunk cookies for dessert.  I wanted to do something other than cake or cupcakes since we just had that at Dad's party about two weekends ago.

Everyone arrived just before 6.  They commented on my decorations and Ben arrived with the food.  I told everyone just to make sure we have enough food for everyone to spoon it out on a plate and eat it.  Once everyone has food that you can go for seconds and thirds.  I miscounted how many people were coming so we ended up with leftovers which was okay.  We ate cookies and watched Mom open her presents.  

We laughed at some phone apps and talked about funny things.  Everyone went home around 7:30-8:00ish.  I spent some of my night putting stuff away, washing dishes and cleaning up the dining room with Ben's help.

I spent the rest of the night watching the rest of a college football game, working on my blog a little bit and then got cleaned up and ready for bed.  Today was busy.

Happy Birthday Momma!

Next Adventure:  A Furlough Day:  Cache Maintenance, a Cemetery Visit and Go Fish

A Quick Caching Jaunt to Deschutes Falls Park - International Earthcache Day

Since every geocaching event this year was canceled due to stupid Covid I asked Bev if they were going to go out for International Earthcache Day.  I saw there was a new earthcache inside of Deschutes Falls Park, which was not that far away from us.  Most of the earthcaches were miles and miles away so we were pretty thankful there was one local.  I told her that we were going to go grab all the caches in that area since there were a few new ones.  OhJoy had published a couple of her Brought to You From's, a virtual cache that I helped 13Survivors with and there was a traditional off of Piessner Road, where I spent two summers at Camp Cascades as a prep cook.  She asked if I could pick her and Bob up as we headed out that way.  I said sure, we can all go.  I am going to make Mom and Ben go with us too.  We set a time and it was a date!  

The night before I made sure I had the two puzzles solved and loaded onto my caching app.  I also made a list of the caches we were going to get.

That morning, Ben and I got up around 10ish, made pancakes, bacon and eggs and kinda watched college football on TV.  Most of the good college football games were postponed or their season was pushed back like the Pac-12.  We weren't suppose to start until after the first weekend in November.  I highly doubt that all those games will be played.  We will be lucky if we get four games in before post season...if there is one.   

We got dressed and got the recycle ready since we were going into Rainier.  I called Mom to make sure she would be ready to go once we got there and she said sure.  We got into Rainier and dropped off our recycle and I saw some people I knew.  Jaime Evans, a lady who was a teacher at Rainier a while ago who I got to know and Raj, a guy who I know who works at L&I.  It is a very unlikely couple but they are crazy about each other and make it work.  I am happy for them.  We chatted for a bit and then Ben and I made it over to grab Mom.  We took her Expedition over to Bob and Bev's so all of us could fit in the vehicle comfortably.

We arrived that afternoon and picked them up.  They were ready to go.  We drove out to the falls, which was roughly a 20 minute drive from Bob and Bev's house.  When we got there we noticed a bunch of other cacher's cars in the parking lot.  One lady was leaving and one was just getting there.  We made sure we had our Discovery Pass, grabbed the things we would need and set out down the hill.  Bob couldn't find his GPS so that sucked.  He said he probably left it on the table when he went to grab his other things.  I sure hope the caches were saved on my phone since there isn't cell phone service out here.  I checked and all of them were there but unfortunately we couldn't open the earthcache questions.  At least the weather was nice for us...for now.

We walked to the virtual first, Deschutes Falls ~ In Memoriam Jay Nelson (GC88ZXT).  It basically wanted us to learn that staying behind the fence and warning signs were very important when enjoying the falls.  I ran into 13Survivors a few springs ago while getting one of his caches in the park.  

He asked us who we were and we chatted for a few minutes.  He asked if I was interested in helping him with the virtual he was rewarded.  I said sure and asked how I could.  He knew that my cousin Jay, died here back in February 2010 and wanted some information about it.  So I emailed him anything that would help him get his cache page ready.  

We got our photos and started off to the earthcache, Upper Deschutes Park - an eroded mountain (GC8CDJ0) at the other end of the park.  Thankfully, Cool Cow Cachers was walking towards us and we were able to get the questions from him.  We chatted for a few minutes and then thanked him for his generosity.  

We got on the wooded trail and walked to the earthcache location.  I thumbed through the list of geology questions and we talked them through together.  We got our pictures at the location, enjoyed our time and then decided which one to walk to next. 

I looked at my phone and pulled up one of the puzzle caches.  I had to decide which one was at this end of the park and I chose correctly! 

Brought to You From Russia (GC8G665) was way the heck out here.  We weren't sure if we were still in the park as we made our way down this terrible unmanicured trail.  We had to climb over downed trees and step over other brush and debris.  Mom and Bev stopped because Bev is not an "off road vehicle" and I was surprised she walked this far while Ben, Bob and I continued on.  

We weren't that far from the cache at this point anyway.  Mom stayed with Bev.  We found the area and saw where it could likely be.  I saw the ammo can and of course they are Russian nesting dolls.  I opened every single on of those containers, wrote our name down and put them back together.

We met back up with Mom and Bev and walked back down the horrible trail.  We got back to the open earthcache location and looked at the phone to see where the last puzzle cache was.  It was along the trail on the way back to the car.  We started back to the main trail when the sky opened up and started to pour down rain on us.  I had wished I brought my other jacket but oh well can't do anything about it now except to stay under the trees where it was less wet.  We walked past a guy who I've never met before but Bob and Bev knew him.  His caching name was JackPenny and he was having a hard time finding Brought to You From Mongolia (GC8ENQR).  So we looked for it together.  It was hard to find.  The hint kinda helped but it really didn't.  I decided to expand our search away from where it was telling us to look.  I finally found it and it was 50 feet off the solved coordinates.  Everyone was happy we finally found it since it was still raining.  

JackPenny thanked us for helping him and he went to the earthcache and we walked back to the parking lot.  We piled back into Mom's Expedition and left the park.  I knew Ben didn't have Brought to You from Australia (GC7YP5N) yet but the rest of us did, so we stopped and let him find and log it.

The last one on all of our lists was a traditional cache, #1 Statistic Padding Cache (GC8RZZQ) and it was on the guardrail of a new bridge that was above a low spot in the road.  Apparently this area receives a lot of rain and typically floods here.  I guess they were tired of it and put a bridge in here.  We found the cache and then I took them just a little bit further up the road to show them where Camp Cascades was.

We dropped Bob and Bev off at their place and they thanked us for a nice afternoon.  I told them we should do this again soon.  They agreed.  We went back to Mom and Dad's house and I asked Dad to help me with the Escape.  The Escape had been making weird noises and Dad said that he would take it to TK during the week to have it looked at.  Dad took Ben and I home and I was going to be carless for a few days which was okay since I work from home.  I really didn't need to go anywhere.

Earlier that day, Jenn messaged me to ask if Ben and I wanted to come over to watch the Ole Miss and Alabama game with them.  We said sure.  We weren't doing anything anyway.  We changed our clothes and put on some more comfortable clothes.  We drove over and they ordered pizza from Dominoes and it was delivered to the house.  We brought drinks with us.  The game ended up being a shoot out but Alabama eventually won.  During the game, their dog Charlie decided to sit on me while we were all on the couch.  He was wearing his new Seahawks sweater.

We thanked them for the invite and the food and headed home.  I worked on my bills, cleaned up the house, did some laundry, dishes, logged my caches from earlier today and we watched TV for a bit.  Ben eventually got onto his video game to play with Josh.  I took a while to work on my blog for a while.  My goal was to get it caught up and I was doing pretty good.

I am not sure the next time we will be able to go out and geocache because we were getting into our wet fall and winter months and it makes it hard to go out.  I hope we have a few weekends where we have some dry mild or dry cold weather.

Next Adventure:  Mom's 60th Birthday Party