Ida UhOh!

After a couple more days in Spokane with my brother and his family, it was time to see if I could finish off all the remaining counties in Idaho. With the exception of one that was so weathered that it was difficult to read, all the historic markers in Idaho were large and clear. The best part was that many had a geocache nearby.

Some signs were easy to read, but after I stopped, I wasn't sure what the other sign was supposed to say.

This one, and several others like it, were easy enough to read. Not sure why the geocache was ALWAYS past the sign...

Some signs seemed to be primarily targets. How long has Bell Telephone Company been gone?

I enjoyed some beautiful gravel roads up and over massive hills. They'd had a bit of rain in the recent past, so in most cases, the gravel roads were nearly dust free.

My favorite boondock of the whole trip was here, alongside another minimally travelled gravel road east of Emmett. The sunset was beautiful, but it was the hour+ long conversation with the landowner that made it special. His family had been on the land for four generations and it was clear that he loved the land.

Cleaning up counties in Idaho isn't easy because all the valleys and rivers run north to south so I'd drive up one valley to a pass, and then down the next one, slowly working my way east.

Every now and then I'd stop just because the old buildings spoke to me. I wonder about the stories to be told about settling this land.

Most of the geocaches were non-descript, but someone put a lot of effort into this waypoint for a cemetery multi-cache.

It was about this time that the Silver Subie started showing signs of ill health. Clutch travel was slowly, but noticeably, changing. I got as far as a series of challenge caches outside of Atomic City when I decided I couldn't ignore it any longer.

After a consultation with the Subaru dealer in Pocatello when the Service Center opened - a consultation that primarly consisted of "we can't look at it until early next week" - I pointed the car towards home. The plan was to see how far I could get before I needed to put it on a trailer.

Utah wasn't in the route plan this year, but it was the shortest and fastest way home!

It was a 981 mile day, but I got home that evening without needing to trailer the Subie. I parked it in a corner and put the dunce cap on it. It will get some attention one of these days soon.

Unfortunately, it means that I have three counties orphaned in eastern Idaho. Obviously, I'm going to have to go back - maybe next summer.

Clean Up on Aisle 5

About 18 months ago, I stated playing with a trip plan, hoping to intentionally visit some counties that I'd never visited with my GPS in hand, and even more important, attend a couple major events in Seattle and Abbotsford, BC. Of course, we all know how that went. 

For the past couple years, I've picked away at California counties, including a bunch in Eastern California from my quick trip last summer and a small handful more just last month. Most of what is left is up the central corridor, the area that's typically our third choice for travel. That white area is enough to bug me into trying to clean them up.

In normal years, Oregon gets visited, but you can see the spots that have been ignored, primarily in the corners. There would have been another blank in the SE if it hadn't been for last year's quick trip.

As a Washington native with family ties to the state, I was a bit surprised to see how many counties I was still missing. I'm especially looking forward to getting some caches in San Juan county since I haven't been to the islands for years. Thanks to some other very interesting caches, I'm going to end up with a very circuitous route.

By the time I get finished cleaning up these three states, I should head directly home, but I have two more states where I've found caches in more than half the counties. There's certainly no straight route to getting the remaining 24 counties in Idaho, but I'll get to see lots of backroads and beautiful country in the process.

On last summer's trip I visited all the counties on the west side in Colorado. This summer, I'm hoping to finish up with the east side counties that I'm missing. With BJ's blessing, I'll take a couple extra days to visit the Colby, Kansas area as well, to drop some ink on the world's oldest existing geocache.

Eighteen months of planning and dreaming. There are nearly 1400 caches loaded in the GPS. The route totals about 8500 miles and I expect it to take 36 days. It will certainly be a great test of the Silver Subie's boondocking capabilities. I won't find all the caches I've loaded, but I expect to clean up the white spots in all five states.

Wheels should be rolling June 1st.

One Step at a Time

Since there aren't any direct Boise - Phoenix flights with the right color paint, I was all lined up in time to check in for the first flight to Portland. SEA-PHX flights looked clobbered for several days, but Portland looked reasonable. I was early enough that I beat the crew to work so the bag and I cooled our heels for a bit.

Apparently there's sometime special about the carpet in the Portland airport so I took a picture to prove I got that far. I'd been watching the one PDX>PHX flight go downhill all morning for reasons I didn't understand.

By the time the doors closed, I was still 6 down on the standby list. Turns out, someone in Seattle reservations was running in a race in Phoenix and a bunch of their co-workers were headed to Phoenix to cheer them on. Doesn't happen too often, but now I had some time to kill.

Found a nearby hotel with space, dropped my carry-on bag and headed for the train, wishing I'd put another layer into my carry on bag.

Wandered around some portion of downtown, including a visit to the world's smallest park. The sign was bigger than the park! They're doing a good job of keeping Portland weird!

During my wandering, I ran across a place with shepard's pie on their menu. MUCH better than my version.

I'm a light rail fan. I don't get to use them very often, but it sure makes it easy to get around, especially for a visitor to town. Seniors could ride all day for about the price of one regular round-trip ticket.

All in all, not a bad trip home - just 24 hours later than I expected.

Left Turn On The Way Home

Continuing standby roulette, I got to watch the sun rise about half way between Anchorage & Seattle. Had I waited for a later flight, I don't know how many days I would have waited. This way, I had some options. The option I selected was a left turn out of Seattle, headed towards Idaho.

With Alaska ticking the box for my ninth state on a couple challenge caches, I wanted to spend a day doing some geocaches in Idaho in hopes I could make it my tenth qualifying state.

The little town of Grand View, Idaho caught my attention because of a long series of challenge caches on both sides of the Snake River. In addition, there were several earth caches in the general area.

I ignored the train geoart located south of town. There are over 1000 caches to make up this art form. The last person to complete it said it took them 7 1/2 days. I didn't have the time or the energy to even think about it.

I started out working on the four earth caches I needed to finish qualifying for the 5 earth caches in 10 states challenge. This one sounded interesting but didn't look like much.

The ladder leads down into a lava tube. The tube extends a fair distance in both directions, making for some interesting exploration. From the graffiti on the walls, it's clear that some artists have visited.

I'd tried to rent a compact pickup, specifically for ground clearance, but ended up with an Impala which had the ground clearance of a roller skate. The end result was I did more hiking than I expected.

The features and impacts of the volcanic impacts on the area were both obvious and interesting. There were whole areas of rocks that looked like petrified watermelons.

The views of the Snake river were beautiful, both from the cliffs and from water level.

In a few areas, I had to watch out for the trucks hauling sugar beets. It was pretty obvious where they'd gone around a corner a bit too fast for their load, leaving some huge sugar beets in the road.

Most of the challenge caches were easy to find, which was what I was hoping since I needed to find 81 caches to finish qualifications for the one of the other challenges I'd been working on.

The hint for many of them was 'urp' which I took to mean unusual rock pile.

Some seemed to be missing the rocks, but did have the log to sign.

Occasionally, one would be found in a very unlikely place. This one was spot on the coordinates, which put it out in the open, inches from the tire track. I signed it and put it back where I found it.

This one had an URP hint. There were several dried piles, but I didn't think they were unusual. Apparently, it only takes one rock to make a pile.

Not all rock piles had a cache. This pile was spot on the coords, but the cache was found 15 feet away, leaning against a fence post.

I didn't find everything I looked for, but I did get the earth caches I needed and found 84 caches during a VERY busy day, finalizing my qualifications for that challenge cache that has been tantalizing me for nearly a year - 10 states with over 100 finds in each.

Geocaching Northwet

All week (and for weeks previous) the forecast was calling for rain. The Spokane River was running high and fast. The Earth Cache at this point was observable, but ground zero was about 60 feet out from shore.

I'd never visited Post Falls before - just driven through. The Spokane river temporarily splits here, rushing through some narrow slots that have been leveraged for power production for decades.

This time I wanted to spend a bit of time since there were some quality caches in the area. There was an excellent earth cache at the falls,

A challenge cache, some letterbox caches, and more earth caches rounded out the few hours I had available on my last day in Spokane.

First thing the next morning, I jumped on a flight to Seattle where there was no question about the weather. With rental car in hand, I headed to Tacoma where I would work a few chosen caches and then start my way north.

I haven't visited downtown Tacoma for forty years. They've done a great job of redevelopment. With the paper mills gone, the obnoxious smell is gone as well. Now the University of Washington has a notable presence.

One of the newer additions to the area is the Glass Bridge which features three different collections of Chihuly glass.

As is typical of Chihuly, the glass includes wonderful colors, swirls, and shapes. Unfortunately, in my quest to concentrate on some virtuals, earth caches, and key challenges, I totally missed that there was a nearby webcam cache that I should have visited.

The near constant rain let up a bit as I approached a couple of caches in Point Defiance Park, where the trees sport thick coats of moss.

A visit to a peat bog was appropriately accompanied by rain.

As I worked to the north, I made a decision to not pay $20 for game day parking near Safeco field (or Pike Street market.)

The nice thing about stopping under I-5's Ship Canal Bridge was easy parking. The not so nice thing was that moss grows on picnic table benches, too.

The thing I like about geocaching is that it takes me to places I wouldn't have visited otherwise. Kerry Park is such an example. It's a little pocket park up on the side of Queen Anne hill that sports a very interesting view of Seattle. It would be really special on a clear day!

I just touched the surface, not even scratching it. I need to spend more time wandering around the area!