Spokane Cache Machine coming up

I'll be heading to Spokane next weekend for the Spokane Cache Machine event, and I'll probably play some poker there as well. I did well at the local bowling alley at the Wenatchee Cache Machine, so I'm thinking I'll try the bowling alley/casino in Spokane, instead of going to play at the Northern Quest. If I have time, I'll do both, 'cause I'd love to take a look at what they've got -- Spokane's not a poker wasteland, being the home of Bryant King, who placed 21st in the 2005 WSOP ($304,000), second in a 2006 WSOP circuit event ($416,000), and has almost $900K in lifetime winnings.

It's a longer drive than most of the other CM's I've gone to (except maybe Victoria, but that was at the end of an around-the-Olympic-Peninsula vacation), but there's several caches I plan to hit along the way to break up the drive. The one I'm looking forward to the most is I-90, Wild Stallions Ride Again (pictured), which you've probably seen if you've driven I-90 eastbound across the Columbia.

I'll be heading out early Friday. My preliminary route plan shows me leaving at 6:30 a.m. and arriving at 5:00 p.m. (planning for 10 minutes per cache), but that's pretty flexible, particularly since I don't plan on leaving until 8:30 or so.

Saturday will be a sun-up to sun-down mass mob cache hunt. I'm meeting up with a couple cachers and will be their navigator. I've got the official Spokane Cache Machine route ready to print, but I like Microsoft MapPoint a lot more, so I'll be spending time this week copying the waypoints over and re-creating the route.

Sunday will be breakfast in Coeur D'Alene, then a leisurely drive back, hitting caches that I skipped on my eastbound route.

This is the first cache machine event I've attended that I didn't organize. I planned one in Spokane before, back in September 2003, but didn't attend due to a house fire. I'm looking forward to this a lot.