I had spoken to Steve a few weeks ago about getting his walkie back to him after the Tri Cities Geocoin challenge a month ago. He said that GEOregon was having a picnic in July if we wanted to go down and attend. I told Bev about it and she told Bob. He just wants the caches. He agreed to go and set our time for 7:15 Saturday morning.
The night before I slept hard and when my alarm went off I did not want to get out of bed. I did anyway. I had everything laid out the night before. All I had do to was use the bathroom and put clothes on. I saw they were out in the drive way so I grabbed my stuff and once out the door I was obnoxiously greeted by RAIN!! Ugh! I ran back inside and grabbed pants and different shoes...just in case. I hopped in the car and we were off towards Tenino. We had breakfast at Scotty B's, a place Bob and Bev love to go often. We were on our way south to Oregon. A little less than half way down we stopped at the Toutle Lake rest area to use the bathroom.
We continued down I-5. I'm not sure when I closed my eyes but I was out for a good half hour or so. I woke up as we passed Hazel Dell and we were less than a mile from our exit to 205. We got onto 205 and headed to where we mapped out our query. We started in the Clakamas area and worked our way down. We got frustrated because a few of them weren't there! I hate wasting time on those ones. We grabbed about 7 before we headed over to the event, which was 3 miles from where we were caching.
We got to Mary S. Young Park and it was huge! It hugged the edge of the Willamette River and Oregon Hwy 43. We drove in and parked near the picnic area. We took our stuff out of the car and headed to the sign in table. We got a free gift!
We grabbed our stuff and found a table to park ourselves at. We saw Steve, he was cooking burgers, and Melanie was helping him. Tammy couldn't come because she was with her mom in the hospital. I guess she was doing pretty bad but perked up and is almost ready to come home. We chatted with Steve for a bit and gave him his walkie back. We got in line for the food. There was tons of food.
Lots and lots of desserts. You could get diabetes just by looking at it. We sat down in the sun and enjoyed our food. It got a little toasty and people started peeling off their coats, sweaters and sweatshirts. We moved into the shade. I went and discovered trackables for a bit and then came back over to the table to chat with Brian and Steve about caches. We hung out for a while and Bob was itching to go grab the ones in the park.
We headed off. The walk was about 3 miles, we did eight caches, all were ammo cans. We met some new people along the way. Katsurian, (James) walked around with us. He was a new cacher, within four months, and he worked in Portland at Franz, the people who make bread. He loved to read and was somewhat of a nerd. My feet were tired when we headed back to the car. I had figured with the ones we found this morning and the ones in the park, I needed 10 more to hit 3500. We had a plan.
We drove out of the park and turned right and headed north. We found a few near the McDonald's, called McYummy, I laughed. We drove east towards the Willamette River and found a trail that followed it. Caches were easy to grab, however the parking spots were hard to find. We grabbed 8 of them really quickly.
We found a park, George Rogers City Park and it had a really cool earthcache in it. It was called Oswego Iron and it was about the production of Oregon's iron production. We had to answer a bunch of questions about iron, etc. There was a free medieval play going on right in front of the pillars. We went over there anyway and took our pictures.
We walked back into the car and desperately tried to find 2 more. It took us about a half hour but we managed. YAY! 3500!
We stopped by Round Table Pizza, the same place we went to back in the February GEOregon event. We ordered salad, which was a big mistake, it came out as soon as it went in, and we had a triple pepperoni pizza. We headed out as soon as everyone was done with whatever they were doing. We got back on the 205 and headed north on I-5 to home. We got home around 9 p.m. It was a fun eventful day.
Next outing: The Festering Head of M
y Last Victim (Dupont, Wa) on Friday.
