No find log by travisl for I Believe in Angles (Unknown (Mystery) Cache)

Log by travisl for I Believe in Angles (Unknown (Mystery) Cache):

travisl couldn't find I Believe in Angles (Unknown (Mystery) Cache)

I had to pick Dragonfli and Geogrrrl up at the airport today, and with lots of time to spare, decided to hit this cache. As I got close, the hiding spot was obvious: obviously somewhere my allergic self didn't want to go. I chalked it up as a DBL, decided I'd take another frownie, and headed back to the car.

I drove to the airport, scoped out the area I'd need to pick them up, and wondered what I'd do with the next 45 minutes. Soon, I found myself back at the cache area, on my hands and knees, searching. 60 seconds, no luck. I went back to the car to get a flashlight, and as I approached the cache location again, I was surprised that I'd managed to not step in, kneel in, or set my geopack on the dozens of dog logs scattered around the area. I set my pack down carefully, searched for another two minutes or so, itched and scratched, looked a few seconds more, picked up my left contact lens that had popped out and fallen on the ground, then gave up, went to a nearby water source to wash up, and went back to the car and itched for the next 40 minutes while I listened to some right wing wacko radio talk show host talk about the president's leadership skills. I hate that stuff. The foliage stuff, that is.

The cache is probably still there. I just didn't spend a lot of time looking for it.

Found log by TravisL for Project Amnesia / Forgotten Quarry by The Gold-Diggers

TravisL found Project Amnesia / Forgotten Quarry Yabba dabba dooooo!

Cachers
Meet the cachers
They're the modern geek camraderie

Near the
Town of Adna
We continued down to the quarry

Someday
Maybe Fred is back on site
Then he
Can blast rocks with dynamite

When you're
With the cachers
You'll have a yabba dabba doo time
A Scooby Dooish time
You'll have a gay, old, tiiime.

(Not that there's anything wrong with that.) ;)

Log by travisl for Geocahe Potluck (Event cache)

Log by travisl for Geocahe Potluck (Event Cache):

travisl found Geocahe Potluck

A slightly smaller crowd than I expected, but all nice folks. I had a good time commisserating about baggies in floating logs, hanging on cliff faces on frayed ropes, and the uncanny ability of spouses to point out the cache after we've searched for 90 minutes.

New cache page by TravisL: Tri-Cities Cache Machine

I've just written up the cache page for the Tri-Cities Cache Machine (in south central Washington), which should be approved and posted this weekend. The discussion thread is started, and I've posted the first draft of the route (a 1.2M .pdf). The event is on September 25, starting in Kennewick.

Found log by travisl for Dipping in the Wynoochee (Traditional Cache)

Found log for Dipping in the Wynoochee

I'd read in the forums that this was a nice cache, so when I asked Geocaching.com ''well, froggy girl, what caches are closest to our annual summer campout site this year?'', I was very happy to see this one come up as number 2. I met with Ironman on Thursday, and he gave me some tips on getting this one, so on Friday afternoon (August 20), after a very l-o-n-g drawn out game of Battlemist, five of us (Dragonfli, Smokey55, myself, and two neo-cachers) decided to go for it.

Finding the parking spot was a piece o' cake, what with the photo and everything. I let neo-cacher Phil drive little yellow to the pool, and he correctly directed us to the top of the falls. Dragonfli read the hint and spotted the item mentioned. Neo-cacher Roy was the first across the log. I followed, then Phil, Smokey55, and Dragonfli. We all balanced; none of us fell in, yet.

I found the ''trail'' up, Phil found a good direct path once we were up there, and I found the cache container. So much moss and greenery, I joked to Phil, in my absolute worst Irish accent, ''Please be careful, laddy, notta step on the little people.''

I signed the log for the five of us, and we retraced our steps back. Phil, Smokey55, and I took a side trail to look at the falls and held ourselves against a good sized alder for balance, so that we wouldn't plummet into the pool. Soon, we all walked across the log, and none of us fell in, although I had a nervous moment on the large step down next to the MGD can.

We explored the top of the falls, and realized that we were fortunate that Wyle E. Coyote wasn't a member of our search team. You know how in the Road Runner cartoon, the coyote will stand at the edge of a deeply undercut cliff, and the entire end of the cliff will fall out underneath him? When we were looking down at the pool resting against the tree, we were in a similar spot. So that's why the ground was so soft!

The other four decided to go down the falls billy-goat style, while I, being older (not really) and wiser (not really) went down the way we'd come. We all reached the bottom at the same time, no injuries.

It's a very cool spot. Thanks for taking us here.

Found log by travisl for Ring of Fire (Traditional Cache)

Log by travisl for Ring of Fire:

travisl found Ring of Fire

Eep... it's a two-logger... I'd had plans to camp at Coho Campground for about six months now, and when I saw this cache go disabled, I fired off an e-mail to Ironman to see if I could get special permission to hunt this one. The geocaching gods were smiling on me, as it turned out that he was working and temporarily living less than half a mile from my campsite. I like it when that happens.

We agreed to meet at 5:30 on the 12th. At 6:08 on the 12th, with my brain already on island time, my brother showed up at the site and asked ''So, how'd your 5:30 meeting go?'' I was out of there like a shot, but at 6:15, with Ironman nowhere to be found, I knew I'd stood him up. I hate it when that happens.

About an hour later, though, a strange guy shows up at the campsite, and my ears perk up when I hear him mention my name to one of my 21 camping buddies. We talked for a good 45 minutes about caches, he explained why it was temporarily disabled, and gave me the option of trying to find it anyway. Ironman, you rock. I like it when that happens.

I hit ''Dipping in the Wynoochee'' on the 13th, and decided to go after this one on the 14th. My dad (who's found a few caches with me before), and the two neo-cachers who went with me to ''Dipping'' (Roy and Phil) came along. It took us three wrong turns before we found the right road, and after navigating past an obstacle that was easily bypassed, we parked less than 300 horizontal feet from the cache. Thanks, CCC, for the parking coordinates. I like it when that happens.

A few minutes later, we find the rope, and begin our decent. My dad decides to stay up top, I guess in case he needed to go get rescue helicopters or something, if we were to decide to let go of the rope and land on our heads in the river 140 feet below. I hate it when that happens.

The decent is mildly challenging, although pretty much uneventful, except for the point where I almost swing too far over the edge, where I'd be swaying gently in the breeze like a big flailing piñata. I hate it when that happens.

Fortunately, I found my footing and continued my decent to the train car. Roy arrived shortly after I did, and Phil perched himself just above us, looking out for who-knows-what. Rabid flying wombats, perhaps. Roy and I searched for about 15 minutes, I stood on the very back of the train car and experienced a sense of vertigo like I haven't had in months (I love it when that happens), and after a bit more searching, Roy found it. His first find! There's a bunch of really neat themed items in the cache, but I TNLN and signed the log for the three of us. I like it when that happens.

We then explored the riverbank for a few minutes, and my thoughts turned back to a true story that my late grandfather told me about this very trestle… back in the 40's, he and his buddies were out drinking and hunting and drinking and drinking some more. The sun was beginning to get low in the sky, and it was time to start thinking about heading home.

This canyon is pretty long, and pretty deep, and there's not a lot of ways across. Their car was on one side, and the trip home was a good couple hours drive or more. If they could just get the car to across, it'd save them a bunch of time.

''We could drive across the trestle,'' joked his buddy. They all laughed, and decided that it was a stupid idea. It'd only work if they drank a bit more. So they did, and the sun got lower, and a train went by, and they drank some more, and suddenly the idea didn't seem so stupid. So two guys got behind the car, two got along side, and slowly, they pushed the car bit by bit across the trestle, stopping every now and then to take another drink, listen for the train, or take another drink. They finally made it across, got it to the road, and heard the train go by again shortly thereafter. It's a wonder my dad was ever born :-)

For my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary, my parents gave them a beautiful drawing of a lumber train barreling across the trestle. It was very cool.

And so was this cache. Thanks for bringing me to this neat spot, to my first 5-star terrain cache, and to a piece of family history I'd never seen.

I love it when that happens.

Archived My Cache log by travisl for Ol' Doc Lilly (Traditional Cache)

Archive log by travisl for Ol' Doc Lilly (Traditional Cache):

travisl archived Ol' Doc Lilly (Traditional Cache)

Gone it is. Missing it is. Muggled, it has been. Replaced, it will not be.

Five cache containers have lived in this park. Only one remains. Go find ''Acorn for Kids'' GCJ11F instead. It's in the same park, other side.

No-find log by travisl for CWB (Traditional Cache)

No-find log by travisl for CWB (Traditional Cache):

travisl couldn't find CWB (Traditional Cache)

My company's envelope vendor takes us on a lake or harbor cruise every SeaFair, and this year's was today, leaving from a dock just east of this cache. I had about half an hour to look before the boat left, so decided to hunt this one.

The boats are really neat, including some of them undergoing some extensive work. I had trouble finding the Sharpie, but talked to the cute girl behind the counter, who showed me where it had moved to.

Neat area. Thanks a bunch for getting me out here.

Finding the cache, on the other hand, was something I decided not to put a lot of effort into. I glanced around for a few minutes, checked a couple obvious spots, but really Didn't Bother Looking (DBL), because the area was strewn with trash and spider webs, smelled strongly of creosote, and I wasn't really dressed for a dirty hunt.

Thanks for the hunt!

Note by travisl for Phatboyz Not Vine Time but Close (Traditional Cache)

Note by travisl for Phatboyz Not Vine Time but Close (Traditional Cache):

travisl posted a note for Phatboyz Not Vine Time but Close (Traditional Cache)

The park was wall-to-wall people on this sunny Sunday afternoon. Dragonfli, Geogrrrl, and I stopped here to have a picnic, and afterwards I decided to see if I could find the cache again, without actually touching it, since I didn't want to draw attention to it. I found where the letterbox used to be, but I didn't find the cache container itself. It might still be there, though, 'cause I didn't look really hard.