May 28, 2013
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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!
Comments (5)
Yikes -- I've completely forgotten what the tri-cities are -- and where Vantage is! Must be on the Columbia R, though your spot on the Snake looks lovely. That's a whole lot of caches for a 3-day weekend, especially when the freeway bridge is out -- does that affect you on a daily level? The PNW is quickly finding its way up my bucket list, but the polar bears come first!
Oh -- so much in this post! Where are the stallions? And Golden Pond looks beautiful -- I love that the goose kept calling until his family showed up! Are the wind farms really just single rows of mills? Here they are numbered in the hundreds, and set out in a grid over large patches of field.
@slmret - The Tri-Cities are Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, at the southeast corner of the state (although only about a third of the way across the state to the east). The Snake River dumps into the Columbia at that point. Vantage is to the north of there along the Columbia, and the wild horses monument is on the east side, across the river from Vantage.The windmill seemed to have no rhyme or reason in their placements, there were hundreds of them but there would be a cluster here, a long string of them there, none over that way. There was probably some grand design but I have no idea from driving around among them.The bridge that's out on I-5 is about 25 miles north of where I live (and some 200 miles from where I spent the weekend). I don't go that way very often. Brewman65 lives to the north of the bridge and had to get south to meet me before our trip, so he left early and took an out of the way route to get here and had no trouble. There are 3 detours possible to avoid I-5 and I know them all, so I would just have to determine ahead of time which to take, the slow, or the far away ones.After you see the polar bears, you'll be welcome to come see me and the PNW!!
Thanks for the complete answers! It's been a long time since I've been in the PNW, and even longer since I've been there but outside of Seattle! Interesting about the windmills -- maybe only where they could get rights to use the land? It sounds as if you'll get a bridge pretty quickly -- amazing wht they can do these days. I'm glad you don't have to use that bridge often -- it must be difficult for N-S commuters!
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