Sweet Marie and myself had been talking about doing this trip for some time. A third cacher who normally travels with us Rumrunner1 decided that he would pass on this trip and go sailing for 2 days.
We left mid morning on September 20th and headed for Kennewick Washington where we do some caching before retiring for the night.
We start with Peakly Bridge and as luck would have it it would be a DNF. Off to do some of the McBee Road series before dark. We managed to do 28 caches before dark.
We then checked into the motel and got cleaned up and headed for dinner at Applebee’s.Ā
The morning of September 21 we headed for Boise but not before grabbing 121 caches before leaving Kennewick for Boise and grabbing 2 along the way bringing today to 123 caches..
We did some caches along Highway 397 to the east.This is a highway where the speed limit is 60 mph and most of the caches are on Guard rails. I suggest caution. While the road isn’t that busy the vehicles do sneak up on you.
We then headed onto South 9 Canyon Road which is paved for the first bit and then changes to gravel. You pass along a wind farm here and thus it was very windy.
some of the many electrical generating windmills
some of the many electrical generating windmills
Once we finished we pointed the Subaru east and headed for Boise but no before grabbing a cache at the Viewpoint on Highway 82 in Oregon. The cache has been on my bucket list for some time and last time I was past here the viewpoint was closed. The cache is called A View for You.
A View from you. Click on photo to see larger version
We arrived into Boise around 6:00 PM and checked into the Inn America near the Airport. We have stayed at this hotel before and it has been redone in the last few years. The staff are great the rooms are good WiFi can be a bit slow at times (free) and they serve breakfast. It was even cheaper than the Motel 6 next door.
There are many dinning choices with a few miles of hotel.
This evening we talked about what the plan for tomorrow was to head south of Mountain Home and do the challenge cache series then onto keyboard series.
I will say this the challenge caches are not a problem mostly on gravel roads. Now the keyboard series is a very dusty road about 4-6 inches deep. Don`t even try this if there is any sign of rain or it has rained.
Challenge cache road and view from it.
I manged to be able to log 94 of the 135 or so caches we did today because I have not met the challenge yet on some of them. I am sure sweet marie managed to log many more than I did.
We arrived back at the hotel and got cleaned up and headed to Outback for dinner where we had a great meal.
We discussed tomorrow and the plan is to head back down to Mountain Home and then cache up towards the Oregon Trail series.
Today is Monday September 23rd and back down to Mountain Home as I said and start with Canal Power and work our way north.
The following photo was taken along this road near this cache Turn me Over and shows the road condition.
This next 2 photos is taken next to Zippity do dah and shows the burned out area from the fires back in early September.
We dropped a new cache here as there was no sign of the cache.
Great road along here.
steel fence posts are about the only thing left.
The surprise cam as we rounded the corner and came to a grass area and some barns. The cache here was Canyon Creek Station that was a stop along the Oregon Trail.
Canyon Creek Station
sweet marie looking for a nano. After I took the photo I came to help and found the cache. PS there is a nano somewhere there š oh and if it helps Marie is not near it.
Now we are driving down the road in the burn area and I can say this we have seen so many different types of containers today. We have seen Lays Chip containers, contact lens holder, candy cans, film canisters, rusty cans, and spent shot gun shells. With these we say well over 30-40 of these. I have one question what happens to the logs in these when it rains? It is great when one replaces caches that were burned up but in this case it only causes them to have to be replaced at a later date.
Then one is driving along and comes to this cache and sees this cache, what the heck is this?
Street sign in the middle of no where and no where…. can you guess where the cache is?
From here we proceeded along till we came to the cache called Because I wanted to where we stopped for lunch.
Now we would normally drop a replacement cache in this type of condition but there was one major problem the wind was blowing hard and there was nothing and I do mean nothing to hide this with. If we dropped it I am sure it would have been down wind by the end of lunch. We logged a DNF on this one with a note to the next cacher. The interesting part is a group of cachers does this trail a few days later and one of the group logs this cache and the others don’t?
Okay where to hide it?
we then get to this cache called if Walls could talk and see this lone tree that appears to have survived the fire.
lone tree
here we have Oregon Trail Markers along the road.
The next stop which we liked was a cache called Big Rocks.
Marie looking for the cache. Yes she found this one.
sweet marie and Philatsea
Today we cached for almost 8 hours and only managed 225 caches. This was a hard day because of all the ash and wind and coordinates did not match.
Tonight we ate at Applebes again up the road. Tomorrow the weather may be iffy so not sure what the plan is other than we will try and do all these puzzle caches and Virtuals in the Boise Nampa area.
Today is Tuesday September 24th and we head to breakfast where we soon see the rain starting to fall.
Today won’t be a high yield day but a quality day with Puzzles and Virtuals.
We head out and soon have our first cache between rain showers.
The first Virtual is part of the Boise History Series which took us to the old Idaho Penitentiary.
Idaho Penitentiary.
Anne Frank Virtual
The above is the walk to the Anne Frank Virtual.
the Anne Frank Virtual
This Virtual is called Rings through Time.
So in the end we were pretty wet and needed to eat. Since out last cache of the day was near where we planned to eat at Tucanos Brazilian Grill we went there to dry out and warm up. This place has become a favourite of ours when in Boise. For $22.00 per person all you can eat Brazilian Food served to you on a skewer is amazing. You won’t leave hungry from this place.
We finished with 32 caches in the rain today.
We returned to Inn America and planned for tomorrow and the weather gods appear to be against us. We are headed home with a stop in Kennewick Washington.
This morning Wednesday September 25 2013 we wake up and are sitting at breakfast looking out the window. Marie says is that rain I see starting?
The plan is discussed lets try and get more puzzles done and the rest of the Virtuals in the Nampa area done then head up to The Quiet Rock Run and do that.
Well things go as planned for the first part of the day as we left right at 9:00 am as planned (first day this has happened) and could be a sign of things to come.
The first stop was Rango’sLetterbox cache that would mark my 7000th cache.
MY 7000th cache
We head out and it is light rain so far and we slog along moving west and get many of the caches we had planned done. The rain starts to fall harder and we make the decision that if we head northwest we might get out of the rain and be able to do the Quiet Rock Run. Well this alone took some figuring to get into. Once there though we found the gate and went for it.
Now once we passed the gate I looked at the road and noticed it is a dirt road and it has been raining here. This road is slick as ice, and there are many hills. This would soon turn out to be a problem. We continued on as best we could as we needed to complete 25 so we could log a challenge we signed the log for on day 1.
We got to #14 and and went to leave for #15 and the car goes sideways down the hill. I looked at Marie and she looked at me and we both said that is enough for today. You see with all the Boar holes beside the road and last years experience of getting the Jeep stuck in one we did not want to repeat that.
I turned the Geo Subaru around and slid our way back to the main road as the rain started to fall again. We did some caches on paved roads in the area and then pointed the Subaru west.
We manged a few caches along the way to Kennewick. We arrived shortly after 4:00 and thought hmm we could make the drive home as we have done what we wanted to do in Kennewick.
We headed towards Ellensburg Washington and about 10 miles out we saw a reader board on the highway saying Snoqualmie Pass pass closed due rock blasting tune your radio to AM 530. Marie tuned that radio station in and it says closed from 6:00 pm for teen hours. It made no sense what do you mean teen hours? We listed to it over and over again and it sounded like thirteen hours. I said it sounded like two hours but even that I knew that it would be a long time getting through. The time now was 5:55 pm so the closure would soon start.
Now what is the plan I said? Well we could go north to Leavenworth and onto Highway 2 it was suggested. That soon became the plan andĀ we headed north. The road was clear for the most part with the occasional semi on it that I managed to pass. We then entered the mountain pass and all hell broke loose with Thunder and Lightening and hail.Ā It looked like a winter wonderland out there.
Was this a good plan after all?
We pass through Leavenworth and head west on Highway 2 till we get to about 20 miles out of town. Construction signs appear saying single lane traffic ahead due to paving.
This construction thing is going to do us in yet it is said.
We had to wait about 20 minutes before it was our turn.Ā Now the problem was once through we were a convoy of vehicles to the I-5 in Everett.
I did manage to pass almost most of them over time before reaching the I-5.
The next problem we encountered was the bridge was closed over the Skagit River because they are still making repairs to it after it was replaced when the truck took out one span of it.
There was a stop for gas when we pulled off and then the detour to get back on the I-5 then north to home.
The end was insight so we thought. We are getting just south of Bellingham and Marie makes the comment why is there so many cars with BC Plates on the highway?
We took a guess at what the boader wait time might be and I said 10-15 minutesĀ and Marie said 20 -25 minutes. Around the ext corner came the reader board and what the heck is this 60+ minutes at 10:00 pm on a Wednesday night?
I said no problem we are going to go to the truck crossing and go to the Duty Free store that should save us 30+ minutes.
One should understand that the line-up starts well back of the border and there is a lane for Buses and Duty Free customers that zips past the end of the line and if you use the right duty free store it allows you to enter near the front of the line.
That is what I did.
Once across the border we managed one more cache in nearby White Rock so Marie could claim 4 states in a Day Challenge which I had done last year.
This finished up the day with 45 caches in Idaho, Oregon, Washington and BC.
In all I managed to log 547 caches this trip and we be able to log many more when I complete the Challenge caches I signed in coming months. Marie logged many more than I did because she can complete more Challenge caches than I can.
I got back to Marie’s at about 11:30 pm.
So much 4 hours from home from Kennewick. Marie and I have agreed to each other that the other one gets to do what ever is needed to stay the night in a hotel and not drive all the way home from Boise to Vancouver in one long go. That 4 hours turned into 7.5 hours.
It was another great caching trip with Marie and while we didn’t get all the caches we wanted to get it was still a success.
I have to say the 225 we did on the Oregon trail were some of the hardest caches I have ever done in a day. On a normal power trail you would be able to knock these off in a third of the time it took us.
The plan is back to Idaho in May 2014 to do some more caching