Heading Home: Potholes State Park, Ellensburg, Iron Horse Brewery and Traffic

We got up around 7:30 and made breakfast, sausage, eggs and cereal.  Cleaned up, signed us in for the CITO and a Snack (GC6JYXB), saw they had doughnuts, juice and bananas.  Our event director, Jen, approached me about my “toilet” picture from yesterday’s events on Instagram.  She thought it was awesome and hilarious.  I was glad that I could amuse and entertain people.  Haha!

Ben and I cleaned up our campsite area and started packing and putting it back into the Escape and his car.  We did one last sweep, used the restroom and came up with an afternoon plan on the way home.  Ben had talked to a few fishermen who were coming in on their boat and mentioned that we visit Potholes.  I haven’t been there in years.  I did remember seeing the sign every time I drove past Othello on the way to school.  It’s about time I visited this area again.

We stopped and got gas at a shell station and used their air for a dollar.  I brought quarters with me for the state park shower and just happened to need them here as well.  I bought ice while ben filled up our inner tubes with air.

We headed up Hwy 395 towards the Hwy 17 junction.  I saw we were close to Mesa and I needed a cache in that small town for the Towns and Cities Challenge.  I am more than halfway done at this point.  We stopped and grabbed Raven and Crow in Poe (GC6K2PJ) inside of a small park off the main road.  It was pretty hot outside and I went and retrieved it and ben stayed behind looking at his phone.  He told me to be careful for rattlesnakes.  I told him I would be.  I found the cache quickly, signed our names, put it back and made our way back to the cars. 

We stayed on Hwy 17, up to Hwy 26 and on the east side of Othello towards Moses Lake.  We got off at the junction and went west to Potholes State Park on the 262.  I made sure to bring my passport just in case we drove past one we didn’t have yet.  This would probably be our last state park cache since we were now approved for the house that we applied for.  We would have to cut back on day and weekend trips so we could save some money or at least until I found a full time job.  We drove over the O’Sullivan  Dam and I couldn’t believe how vast this lake was.  It took up most of the area as far as the eye could see.  We wrapped back around and drove past a small resort, store and gas station.  I pulled into the gas station and Ben followed.  His car did not have the discover pass but mine did so we were going to leave his at the store and drive mine into the park.  We got his inner tube, sunscreen and everything else he wanted to bring and shoved it into the Escape.  We drove the short distance to the park entrance and went over towards the day use area. 

I changed into my swimming suit, we got our inner tubes and we went over to the boat launch.  We sat on our inner tubes and floated out away from the boat launch.  The weather was awesome and it was just nice to float and not worry about anything for an hour or so.

It was approaching time to go and we got out of our wet clothes and into some dry ones.  We almost left the park without getting the geocache!  We turned around and parked as close as we could.  I remembered that Potholes was another one of Mr. Gadget’s cool bird house caches.  I followed the trail and it led me to the bird house with Signal on it.  I fiddled with it for a while until Ben showed up and then he started fiddling with it.  We figured out how it came apart put we couldn’t turn the piece that dropped the bottom out of it.  I had to go get a tool from the Escape to be able to turn it.  You just couldn’t turn it with your fingers but it easily turned with the pliers.  We tried really hard not to break any piece of it.  After 15 minutes of tinkering with it the bottom finally fell out and we had the cache in hand.  We signed the log book, stamped our passport and put the bird house back together for the next cacher. 

We got back into the Escape and went back to the store to drop Ben off at his car.  We went inside and got smoothies from the ice cream portion of the store.  We took the same road to Frenchman Hills Road, then onto Dodson Road, then onto Hwy 26 where we got on I-90 at Vantage. 

The Escape struggles up hills especially long ones.  Ben passed me with ease and got a few miles ahead of me.  We got off at what I call “The Strip” of Ellensburg and followed the road down to the Iron Horse Pub Brewery, a place we finally made it to before it closed for the day.  We always showed up when it was closed.  It was a small place, the waitress took our drink orders, I ordered the Heff and Ben ordered the Irish Death, straight from the source.  It was definitely more zippy out of the tap rather than the bottles we drink from often.  We also decided to get some food since we had about three more hours until home.  Ben ordered the sandwich and I got the bratwurst.  They were both tasty but really could tone down on the saltiness of it.  The bitter beer didn’t help the situation either.  We finished our food, paid and I grabbed some free popcorn for the road.  We tried to get a geocache down the road but it was in the entry way of a building that you could only access during business hours.  Poo.  We got back in our vehicles and drove to the fairgrounds to pick up another heritage cache, WSHS 125 – Kittitas County Fairgrounds (GC6JE8F).  I led us to the wrong parking lot and could not access it.  Ben showed me where to go since he apparently has been here and didn’t tell me.  When he was doing wildland firefighting, a large group stayed here at the fairgrounds inside the smaller buildings.  He shared some of the stories with me while we were here.

We made it ground zero near the covered wagon and started searching for it.  It was a large so we were bound to find it quickly.  I spotted it first and pulled it out so we could sign the log book and get our passports stamped.  This was our third one of this particular geotour.  We got a few pictures before we put it back.  We walked back to the cars and took a picture of Ben riding one of the statues.  In similar fashion to the one he took the last time he was here. 

We got onto I-90 and didn’t expect horrible traffic.  We thought it was late enough for some smooth sailing over the Cascades.  We were wrong.  Just after Thorpe, it was stop and go and we moved a few feet here and there.  I was getting frustrated!  Ben was a few cars ahead of me and it was really hard to get a hold of him.  For some reason my phone wouldn’t work in that specific area.  Somehow I did finally get a hold of him and told him to get off at the next exit because we were going to go I-82 to Yakima and over White Pass.  At that point I would rather back track then sit in stop and go traffic…at least we were moving.  Again, the Escape struggled up the hill so I got way behind Ben who flew up the hills.  I haven’t been this way to or from Yakima since at least 2013 with my mom. 

We arrived in Selah and I was only a couple miles behind Ben.  I told him we should get some gas before going over the pass.  He agreed and I told him there were a couple of gas stations in Naches.  After getting gas and sharing some snacks, we were on our way towards the pass.  At this point my GPS said we would be getting home around 11.  I had no idea how long we would have been in traffic if we decided to stay on I-90, but like I said, at least we were moving and probably would have gotten home around the same time or later if we would have stayed. 

There really wasn’t any traffic so we breezed right through.  We had to be cautious around Packwood because there are always giant elk standing in the middle of the road.  We turned onto Hwy 7 in Morton so we could say good night to each other since we weren’t going to the same place yet.  I would go the back way to Rainier and he would continue on Hwy 12 to I-5.  We visited for about 10 minutes and we were on the road again.  Just as the GPS said, I got home around 11 and Ben got home at about 10:45.  I pulled some stuff out of the Escape that wouldn’t survive the night, showered really quickly, got my stuff ready for work the next day and passed out hard.  4:30 a.m. comes awfully fast.

Next Adventure: 4th of July on the 3rd

TriCities Geocoin Challenge: West Richland, Richland, Kennewick and Pasco

I was so comfortable and we went to bed so late I really didn’t want to get up but we had to, especially if we wanted to get everything done before it was time to start the challenge.  We finally got up around 7:30 and I got everything out of the car that involved breakfast making.  I set up our burner, got the sausage cut up and just waited for Ben to get out of the tent dressed. 

While we cooked food, Bob, Bev, Brenda and Ray all came over to see how we were doing and what the plan was.  We ate our eggs, sausage and cereal and went over the plan.  Basically, Ben, Ray, Brenda and I were in a car, Bob, Bev, Gabe and Jones were in the other car.  We had walkie talkies to communicate and I would be the navigator.  We would start in West Richland and work our way towards Pasco to get our coin at the end.

Ben and I cleaned up our campsite, did the dishes and put everything we used back in the Escape.  We didn’t want to attract animals even though there were squirrels dropping from trees.  So far that morning we saw two just fall from the trees and land on the ground unhurt.  It’s like they were cats and they also had nine lives.  It was pretty weird to watch.  I gathered everything we might need during the day and set it aside to take to Ray and Brenda’s red hamster car while we listened to Jen’s rules on the event in the background.  We followed everyone over to the event shortly after.  We signed the logbook, which was a wine barrel (so appropriate for the region we were in), looked at the various booths including Cache Advance and WSGA, we talked to a few people we knew and hadn’t see in a while.  It was going to be a good day.  The weather was warm but not as hot as it was last year (111°) but around 85° or so.

We all walked over to the other side of the boat launch with everyone and situated ourselves while we waited for the guy who brought the drone to get it ready to take our picture.  We took a few of them looking into the sun.  If we did it the other way we all would have been shadowy. 

We got our passports which were also our maps and headed back towards the event area.  They had a GPS station all set up but none of us wanted to stand in the huge line.  Ray talked to Mike and he said we could do it faster because he had all of them on a bookmark that wasn’t available to everyone else yet.

When the caches published, all 32 of them, we went to Mike and attempted to “technology hump” them to everyone who had an Oregon Garmin.  It wasn’t working too well so we just put them on one GPS and went from there.  It took us a while but oh well.  We got into our designated cars (I rode with Brenda, Ray and Ben in the lead car and Jones, Gabe rode with Bob and Bev in the follow car.)
At 10:30, we set off to West Richland to start there and work our way towards Pasco.  We went off the map because in the years past it was a great visual to see where the caches were so we did less backtracking.  This year there were some hiccups.  The caches were miss numbered and it confused us in Richland and Kennewick.  We used walkie-talkies to communicate and it was still hard to hear Bev on the other end.  We had to tell her to press the button then talk rather than doing both at the same time.  We always heard the tail end of what she was saying.  We had a couple of epic fails and some snort laughing during the trip and even a few times where Ben fell asleep in the back seat.

After five years of doing this coin challenge it was hard to come up with some new places to hide caches.  We went to some of the same places as we did in the past years.  A bunch of parks, parking lots, the trail along the Columbia River, the WSU TriCities campus, view points, wineries, a humane society, a few businesses (one with an inappropriate hotdog sign, which was awesome) and a few exact locations we’ve been to before.  TC 2016 K07 - Spirits That Stay (GC67FWW) was at the winery, TC 2016 K08 - Halloween Shootout (GC6FN3D) was at the Benton County Humane Society and apparently I petted the dog too hard and made him sick.

When we got to the Richland portion we stopped at Leslie Grove Park and had lunch after we found the cache.  TC 2016 R02 - Radioactive Heron (GC6BKVP) was a stump that they carved the inside out of and put a hinge on it for a door.  It looked like a toilet so I sat on it like one.

We ate sandwiches, had chips, drinks, fruit and Brenda and Ray made a pasta salad that was really tasty.  We were there for about 45 minutes, used the restroom and headed to get the rest of Richland so we could move onto Kennewick. 

According to the map it would be beneficial to get the lone cache in west Pasco before we started Kennewick so we didn’t have to horribly back track.  We jumped across the bridge, grabbed it really quickly and then headed back over the bridge to get Kennewick done as quickly as we could.

We ran into a few people here and there but when we got into Pasco, we ran into Ben and Jayme and got to see their little one Lucy, who was asleep in the back of the car.  We found the cache and then spend a few minutes talking to them for a while.  Brenda and Ray gave them one of their coins.  A security officer stopped by to see what we were doing, since we were so close to the airport, Ben talked to him for about ten minutes.  Bob and Bev’s car headed out to the next one, we assumed, and we followed them shortly after.  We did not see them at the next cache.  Where were they?  The next few were very close to each other and you would have seen them.  They were not in sight.  Could they have gotten these that quickly?  We went on without them and hoped that we ran into them at the state park to get our coins.

We got the last cache and were relieved that it was over.  We were so tired.  It wasn’t really hot like last year but it was still hot out.  I was really excited to take a shower.  When we got to the park I was really stoked to see the coin in person.  I thought they did a great job on the design last year but this year they definitely went above and beyond.  The design of this year’s coin if you orient it correctly will show you where the bonus cache was.  They had a spot marked with a cone where you stood and looked through the holes in the individual coins.  It defeated the purpose at the event because you knew where the cache was because there were a bunch of people swarming the cache site.

We went over to the booth and had the volunteers check our passports.  We each received five pieces, the base and the four coins that fit into the base.  We sat at the nearby picnic table and assembled them.  Some of the pieces fit perfectly and the others were quite snug.

We stood at the marked off spot and used our coins as a compass to triangulate where it was, trying to ignore the flock of people in the foreground.  Ben, Ray, Brenda and I walked over to the cache.  It was one of Mr. Gadget’s puzzles…tricky, yet simple.  We signed our names and put it back before the next group of people made their way over.

Bob, Bev and their passengers made it to the park.  We asked where they went and they said they went and got gas.  I did not hear them say they went to get gas.  They received their coins and headed over to do the bonus.  We told them we were going to head to Cousin’s to get a table and if they would meet us there when they were done.  They said okay and looked forward to dinner.  We drove the nine miles to the main part of Pasco.  Last year we were shown this place by Jen and we enjoyed it so much we came back this year.

We sat at the same table and decided what we wanted to have.  Our waitress was an airhead, we ordered drinks, I had a Drop Top and Ben had an Irish Death, both Brenda and Ray had some sort of a drink.  We waited a while and the waitress came back and took our orders, Bob and Bev were on their way to the restaurant.  I was so hungry.  Once everyone arrived, they ordered and our food came.  Ben and I got water and ice all over the table and threw some at each other…we made a mess.  We talked about the day and some of the caches we did.  We even talked about what we were going to do on Sunday.  Our plans were still up in the air.  All I know is that it involved some sort of floating in a body of water.

We paid, then afterwards we grabbed the cache that was outside underneath a lamp skirt (Kissin’ Cousins, GC1M7DY) and then we said goodbye to everyone.   Ben and I headed back to the state park to shower and get ready for bed.  We watched Pixels until the computer died.  We were so tired we just passed out afterwards.  I had planned on being up and going before 8ish.

Next Adventure:  Heading Home:  Potholes State Park, Ellensburg, Iron Horse Brewery and Traffic

The Drive to the TriCities, Caching and the Meet and Greet

I set my alarm for 9:30 because I wanted to get an early start to my day so I could get to Sacajawea at a decent time and get my camping spot.  I got ready, started packing my stuff up and took it to the Escape.  I helped them clean the house for a while and visited some more before it was time to go.

I knew they had to get ready to go to Spokane so I left around 11ish.  I thanked them for letting me stay with them and to visit.  This time it has been too long.  I think the last time I came over was last June when I went to coin challenge.  I would have come in October but he had knee surgery and we weren’t able to do the Pirate Plunder this past fall.  We hugged it out and I headed down the hill to top off with gas and to get some more ice for the cooler.

I got onto I-82 and drove east towards the TriCities.  I ate my “breakfast” of a pizza lunchable and got some all over the front of me and my seat belt.  Luckily I had wipies within arm’s reach to clean myself off.  Along the way I talked to Grammie and she told me that grandma’s house was broken into on Wednesday while she was doing her errands.  They kicked the door open and looked for drugs.  Grandma doesn’t have drugs except for her diabetes medications and the standard over the counter aspirin and cold medicines.  They looked through her bathroom, the kitchen, stole some jewelry that wasn’t worth anything except for the personal attachments, they took a check out of her checkbook but left the computer, laptop, the TV’s and the quilting stuff.  Clearly it was about drugs and not goods.  We suspected it to be a teenager, a relative or a female because they tried stealing one of her locked boxes with personal information on it but it got too heavy so they left it on the floor in the living room.  They freaked grandma’s cat, Whiskers, out to where she was weird for a while afterwards.  Now came the annoying part, calling the bank, the credit report, social security and the police report.  I asked her why no one called me.  She said that no one wanted to worry me.  I told her about my trip so far and that I was getting close to my destination.  She told me to be safe and to have fun.

I called grandma soon after and we talked about her break in for about a half hour.  She said she was getting a lock for the gate and deadbolts for her doors.  I got to Sacajawea around 1, checked in and continued talking to grandma until I needed two hands to set up the tent.  I told her I would call her back on Sunday sometime.  After I got the tent set up I called mom and talked to her for about 45 minutes.  I got the bedding all set up and now I just had to wait until the meet and greet later on this evening.  Bob and Bev were already in town doing caches and wanted me to go eat with them but I wasn’t ready to leave the park yet.

Around 2:30 I left the park and cached around the TriCities myself.  It was warm and I had to do it by my phone because I didn’t have enough time to put together a query on the GPS before I left.  I found about 13 caches between Pasco, Kennewick and Richland.  I talked to Ben and he got off work around 3:30, got his stuff ready and headed over White Pass because I-5 north was a mess and I told him to avoid it.  He got a late start anyway and was in Mossyrock/Morton around 6:30 after getting gas and dinner.  He wasn’t going to be here for a while.  Plus, a large chunk of the trip there was no cell phone service.  There was a small window on top of the pass where it worked.

There were a few caches that were park and grabs, one guardrail, a bunch in the industrial part of Pasco and I wrapped it up by finishing my evening up in Kennewick along the Columbia River at the park.  I found one called Kennewick Man (GC15463), Arno Doria (GC5KZNX) which I had to climb up in a tree for and another called Columbia Park Adventure #2 (GC5KZV4) which snaked me around the trees next to the freeway.  I saw a deer wandering around while I signed the log.

I made my way over to Richland and met up with Bob and Bev at the meet and greet site around 5:30.  We got there early so we decided to walk over to A Wicked Manicure (GC1VMJF) in the park next to the building.  I followed Bob since he manned the GPS.  We found it quickly next to a building with a metal box.  It was a face plate cover.

We walked back over to the parks and rec building, walked into the large meeting room, signed in, got our raffle ticket and found a place to sit down until more people arrived.  We got our bingo card and people came to us to fill them out.  We just passed ours around for fun.  I didn’t plan on finishing mine.  Brenda and Ray got there shortly after and sat with us.  They shared their geocoin they minted for their 10,000^th geocache which would be at the event tomorrow morning. 

We ate cookies, popcorn and watermelon while we waited for the actual event to start.  We saw a bunch of people we knew, met some new people and I was sad I forgot my pathtags at home.  I could have handed some of them out.  None of us won anything for the raffle.  We left around 8 and I chatted with Brenda, Ray and Richland lady outside the building for about a half hour.

I went back to the campsite around 9ish, made a sandwich, used my computer for a while and chatted with a few people.  Brad and his kids arrived in the fancy red Camero and came over and visited with me for a while.  We got caught up, he told us about what he’s been up to and my new changes in my life.  We talked about the Cougs, football and geocaching.  It was nice to catch up with him.

Ben got to the state park around 11:30.  I had already gotten ready for bed.  I helped him unpack his car, he got ready for bed and he was just wired up from the late trip over.  I was glad he came.  He hoped that driving all this way was worth it and I told him it was.  He got settled down and we went inside the tent and went to bed.  We knew we had a long, busy day ahead of us tomorrow morning.

Next Adventure:  TriCities Geocoin Challenge:  West Richland, Richland, Kennewick and Pasco