Month: May 2013

  • camping and caching, again

    This time my friend Brewman65 and I went camping in the Tri Cities area of Washington to do some epic caching. There are power trails out that way and we were anxious to see just how many caches we could find in one day. We’ve been planning this weekend for months and once it finally arrived it was almost hard to believe.

    The day before we left, a oversized truck on I-5 knocked out several support beams on a bridge over the Skagit River, causing a portion of the bridge to collapse into the river. 3 vehicles fell in, but any injuries were minor. It caused quite an uproar, though, and detours were creating all kinds of backups. Thankfully it didn’t delay our trip and I was able to get the kids to school and friend’s house so we could hit the road early and avoid holiday traffic. I suspect about half of the people on the wet side head over to the dry side for the weekend so traffic can be kinda crazy, even if we don’t have to detour for a busted bridge.

    Actually, traffic wasn’t bad and we had time to cache along the way, picking them up here and there and stretching our legs. We picked up a fair number without trying very hard. We got to the campsite in plenty of time to set up our tents and cook up a dinner. Funny how sitting in a car can make you tired, and we hit our beds early so we could hit the road early the next morning.

    I believe “early” came at about 5:30am for me. It was such a gorgeous day, the showers at the campground ran hot, and neither one of us could be bothered with breakfast so we were out of the campsite just a bit after 6, eventually eating breakfast snackage in the car between dashes for caches. Most of the caching we did was near windmill farms. The blades on these things are 129′ long. Yeah, that’s 129 feet. Since there’s nothing else out there, if you turned off the car and stood still you could hear the whoosh, whoosh of them.

     

        

        

    Other things of interest was this old building with….um…a railroad trestle above it. Go figure. There’s a cache up there, but we bypassed it.

    I haven’t gotten my caches logged and there were too many to count by hand, but I think our total for the day was 271. Not a record to a lot of people, but it certainly broke ours for most in one day.

    The following day we did well in the numbers department, but it didn’t really compare to the day before. We found a lot in town instead of out in the hills, stopped for a sit-down lunch, went back to camp to rest, went back out, took some long walks. That night, the sunset was rather pretty so I walked across the way from our site and hung out on the shore of the Snake River to get some photos of it. All well and good till a gaggle of women came to my secluded little spot and talked and talked and talked and hung out till I finally left. Till then, I got these shots.

        

        

    The goose swam up and down the river, calling.

         

    Up and down, up and down the goose swam back and forth into the golden path made by the setting sun.

           

        

    And, finally, the goose found what he’d been calling for and the whole tribe made their way to the nests somewhere down the river. There were more goslings and adults, but such a long string of them I couldn’t capture them all at once.

    The next day, Monday, we headed home. Not quite as early a start as previous days, but we were kinda excited to check out the wild stallions near Vantage. We got pictures of them from down below, but since there was a cache up there, we made the trek.

    Once to the top, I’m going to say the view was breathtaking. As in, my being out of breath didn’t have anything to do with the steep climb. Not at all. It was the view. Yup.

    Once among the stallions, we branded one with our new caching stamp. It’s designed for micro logbooks so the brand is far too small to work well on a real horse (let alone be seen in a photo of a steel one) but it was fun for this one.

    Here’s one of the horses about to jump off the cliff and land on the bridge.

      There’s a killer view! 

    After picking off the caches in Vantage, we headed to the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park, stopping first at a gem shop for a couple caches and pictures of some petrified wood.

       

    And dinosaurs.

    We went into the State Park, expecting to see some really cool examples of trees that had been petrified in their natural habitat. Instead we saw more hills with more sage and the occasional caged hunk of petrified wood chunks. We’d seen plenty of hills and far more than plenty sage and the specimens outside the gem shop were far more interesting and better preserved than at the park. This is what we got to see in the park while walking for about a half an hour.

     

     

    Yippie.

    A freakishly large amount of sage. 

    And, surprisingly, a pretty flower.

    The rain started about then, and we cached half-heartedly for a while then gave up (but with close to 400 found caches for the weekend!) and headed home in earnest. Traffic was so congested it took us hours to get anywhere, creeping along on I-90 with thousands of others. Eventually the road cleared and we made good time the second half of the trip, getting home in plenty of time to pick up my kids on time. Always a good thing!

    I don’t have much planned for June, then the kids and I are planning an Epic Road Trip for the month of July, then in August I’ll be camping and caching again (one of two possible destinations), and then again during Labor Day (the remaining location). Then it’s back to a normal schedule. How dull that part sounds!

     

     

  • Camping, caching and ducklings

    During one half of Spring Break, the kids’ dad had them so I was on my own for a couple of days. What’s my favorite thing to do when I’m childless? Go caching, of course. So I went camping in Wenatchee.

        

    Wenatchee has a lot of really great caches; it was one of the first places I went caching back in 2005. It doens’t rain a while lot in Wenatchee, it being on the Eastern side of Washington, known as the dry-side. I live on the wet side, so I always love visiting the desert. Well, I think at least half a year’s worth of rain came down during my time there, but thankfully it was mostly at night. My new tent was totally dry inside all night even with stuff crammed up against the walls, though, so I was okay with the rain. During the day it was warm and mostly dry with just a few light sprinkles which made the bike rides and hikes very nice.

    There’s a couple Earth Caches, one at Lincoln Rock, which is a rock that looks like….yeah, like Lincoln. Do you agree?

    On the way back to the campground I had to pull off and get a picture of this adorable whistlepig. I’m kinda fond of whistlepigs.

    The last night there, it was such a beautiful night that when I work up at midnight with a full bladder, I actually enjoyed my walk to the restrooms and even took a bit of a scenic route back because it was so nice out. I fell back asleep (after removing both pairs of socks and my hat!) thinking how nice it will be to pack up dry equipment in the morning. An hour later, I was woken up with the sound of hail and rain falling on my tent roof. Oh yeah. It dumped the rest of the night and well into morning. Everything got tossed into the car willy-nilly and breakfast was at Denny’s instead of at the campsite. Both passes were having blizzard conditions so there wasn’t any caching on the way home.

    Still, it was a very fun trip and I’m glad I went.

    At home, the weather slowly went from winter to spring with occasional summery days, and the duck in the nearby pond had 11 babies hatch.

    Doesn’t she look proud?

    Last weekend, since I was nearing a milestone in my caching, we decided to make a special day of it and head to Sequim. That, of course, means a ferry ride, which is pretty much all it takes to call a day special in my book.

    The views were spectacular! 

    The view off the side of the boat.

    The Olympic Peninsula was so bright and clear, it was a joy to stand outside on the water and watch the scenery. It was a little chilly but with shorts and a sweatshirt, with a hat to cover my ears, I was completely comfortable. Except it was really noisy for some reason. The wind seemed to be howling through pipes or something, making a keening whistling sound that was annoying after a while.

    Do days ever look better than this???

    This is where we had our lunch.

    We cached all over Port Townsend and Sequim and had a great day.

    This overlook is at a park. We couldn’t find the cache hidden here, but we found some signs that made us laugh.

    No motorhomes or trailers down this single track trial, unless you think it might fit, then….go for it!

      This one amused us so much I had to walk back to it from a parking spot to take a picture of it. I hope you are just as amused.

    I found my 7,000th cache and celebrated it with friends on a bright and beautiful day, and finished the day off with a milkshake, getting home late, tired and happy.

     

    My next adventure is camping in the Tri-Cities area over Memorial Day weekend. I am counting down the days till then!! We might get as many as 250 caches in one day there! The one after that involves the kids, as we take a 4-week, 12 state Epic Road Trip together.

    Till then, I’m having fun with my kids. My daughter just had her 12th birthday and while picking up a Sally’s Beauty Supply gift card for her friend’s birthday, the kids talked me into dyeing my hair green. They were so thrilled. There’s a lot of silver/gray in my hair so there wasn’t much for the dye to stick onto so it wasn’t very dramatic (whew!) but K’s reaction was to dance around singing, “My dad has a girlfriend, and my mom has green hair!” One can never understand what might cause a 12 year old girl joy. The green hair only lasted a few days before fading out, though, to her great disappointment. I even did it three times but there just isn’t enough pigment in my hair to make it worth it. However, it was fun while it lasted. I have enough dye to do some streaks in the kids hair once school gets out, it will last all summer on them!

    Tomorrow we’re going swimming, which they love. Hoping to get some of their friends to join us because the pool is always quiet on Friday nights. Having the pool to ourselves is fun, but it’s funner to have it full of friends.