Wandering the Northwest

After a good night's sleep at a boondock north of Brookings, I continued to pick off my missing Oregon counties with a drive up Highway 101. I had most of the counties, but that wasn't going to stop me from enjoying the view.

There's a little arch in the rock down at water level that I never would have noticed except for the virtual cache that mentioned it.

I took advantage of some state forestry land east of Eddyville for another good night's sleep. As all good boondock spots, it was far enough from the highway to mask the noise and had good connectivity so that I could get my caches logged. 

The next morning I started with a visit to the University in Corvallis so I could get my picture taken - twice. There are two surviving webcam caches here!

I snagged a whole batch of well maintained challenge caches near Talent, Oregon and spent a couple hours with a very good friend in Newberg before heading to Scappose. The plan was to work a challenge trail there, but after getting "enough" to claim the county I left since they appeared to be very poorly maintained. Home for the night was another boondock near Cathlamet, Washington.

With my typical early start, I headed up the Columbia, first on the Washington side, and then switching to the Oregon side.

That afternoon found me working a challenge trail in the high hills west of Milton-Freewater, Oregon. I took advantage of one of the several snow parks along Highway 204 for my home for the night. Once again, I picked a spot with no one around, no noise, and decent connectivity.

The next morning I finished up the last of my Oregon counties and started on the ones that I'd ignored in SE Washington. The caches weren't memorable, but I loved my time in Pomeroy. There was a large collection of classic signs and antique vehicles that deserved more time than I gave it!

The Subie started sqawking at me a bit, so I changed up plans and headed to Spokane, making sure to pick off my last two SE Washington counties along the way.

After a couple layover days with my brother and sister-in-law in Spokane, and a quick, easy fix that was much easier in their garage than at my planned boondock, it was time to head north and west. For some reason, in spite of visiting both several times, we'd never logged caches in Ferry or Okanagan counties, so I fixed that oversight.

As I was wandering across the northern expanse of the state, I realized that I was approaching a milestone. Facing a series of challenge caches, I shuffled the sequence because I thought the name of this one pretty well summed it up!

With the milestone out of the way, and rain coming down, I had my pick of campsites at South Grandy Lake along the road to Baker Lake. At least I know how they keep things green and mossy!

I had one more county to complete my Washington counties, and it involved ferries. Parking at the ferry terminal cost nearly double what my walk-on ticket to Friday Harbor cost. I found all of the caches I looked for within reasonable walking distance, and then wandered around town, amazed at the changes since I'd last visited.

After a morning meet & greet with several folks from Geocaching HQ, another reviewer, and some other cachers, I chased around visiting some of the high favorite caches in the greater Seattle area and ended that day with a very nice boondock overlooking a full (seems like the stumps are showing usually) Lake Keechelus in preparation for a priority.

I started through the tunnel at 5:30 a.m. and had the whole hike (both ways) all to myself. The goal was a very rare geocache. BJ and I had visited several years ago but the cache was missing at that time, so it was nice to come back and log one of the two remaining Project APE caches. After the APE cache, I visited the challenge caches in the area and then headed back to Spokane.

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.

Oregon Outback

We were thankful that we didn't have to buy gas as we cut the corner of California on our way from BorderTown to Oregon!

We elected to drive a section of highway that we'd not traveled before. The Oregon Outback Scenic Byway lived up to its name.

A couple places along the way we noted building that had outlived their usefulness, but were still photogenic.

We stopped in Lakeview, Oregon to observe their geyser. It wasn't the most tourist friendly stop, but it was interesting to observe.

We overnighted at a rest area in Summer Lake. This one was wonderful - just small enough that semis didn't have enough room to maneuver. There was another family there when we pulled in but they continued on down the road and we had the whole place to ourselves that night.

BJ noted there was a cache nearby so we had to check it out. Unfortunately, there had been a brush fire and the container had melted enough that it couldn't be unscrewed. I tried to contact the cache owner to see if he wanted me to place a temporary log but never got a response.

The next morning, we added an old personalized plate to the collection of license plates at another cache location.

We found a spot on BLM land near Redmond that we claimed for a couple days while doing a couple separate series of caches (including the NAFTA Challenge Cache that I mentioned in a previous post,) and visiting one of BJ's hiking friends.

This is the first place I've ever found a ammo can geocache in a tree. I've often found other containers, but never an ammo can in a tree. Clearly, we've left the desert behind.

We made some observations at the Crooked River Gorge while we were in the area,

and took advantage of a sign at the airport. I've been carrying a Smokey Bear 75th Birthday trackable to Alaska and then we picked up a second one in a cache in California, so we've been looking for Forest Service signs to document their travel. This one seemed especially appropriate!

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.

Oregon to Utah

Back to our regular programming...

We left Sutherlin early, heading up the North Umpqua River. It's one of those roads that doesn't show on most highway maps, and it's not fast, but it is beautiful. We've seen lots of columnar basalt in our Northwest travels, but this was the first time we've seen the 'ends' exposed. Very different!

We cut across the north side of Crater Lake National Park, looking for a spot to slip our drive from Oregon to the mountains east of Salt Lake into four more or less equal days. We wanted as much elevation as we could get for our first night since the temps were unseasonably warm. We ended up in a great spot less than an mile up FR3715 at the Quartz Mountain SnoPark on Highway 140.

The next morning we visited a cache less than 1/2 mile from our camp and then continued our our way south and east. We passed some folks along the way that I thought were geocaching. We stopped at the Oregon/Nevada border for a cache and they caught up to us. Not every day you run across other geocachers in the wild.

Thanks to geocaching, we tripped into a very interesting memorial park in Winnemucca. They had armament on display representing several major wars, but nothing newer than Viet Nam. Home for the night was the New Frontier RV Park in Winnemucca. Power for the A/C was a priority, and an adjacent restaurant eliminated the need to do dishes.

I'd really  wanted to boondock on the Salt Flats but the temps were too high so we ended up staying at the KOA in West Wendover. They know they're the only option and price it accordingly.

I didn't anticipate the WWII history in Wendover, Utah and West Wendover, Nevada. Apparently, the air base here played a key role in the preparation of the Enola Gay crew.

On the last day of our transit, we spent more than a couple hours crossing the Salt Flats. They say it's interesting at night as you can see the curvature of the earth made notable by watching the oncoming headlights rise out of the horizon.

While most of the flats were dry by early July, some areas were still flooded, making for some interesting reflections but nowhere to pull off to take pictures.

We finally got to where we were headed and found a site at the Lake Canyon Rec Area. With about 9500' elevation we were finally high enough that windows and fans were enough to keep the temps reasonable. It's boondocking but with designated sites and no services.

Small Town, Oregon

We spent a night boondocking in Brownsville's Pioneer Park so we could wander around town. A very casual operation with a field set aside for tent and RV camping. Totally unmarked - just pick whatever spot catches your fancy. If the host isn't around, you just stop by City Hall to pay the $15 fee.

A lot of the little towns work hard to create a connection to the historic Oregon Trail.

Historic houses vary from the well-kept or recently restored, to those that look like there's no possibility for revival.

Lots of brick buildings with masonry effects to highlight their imposing presence. (The quilt shop was just down the street to the left.)

All of the towns highlight their connection to the rivers. The Umpqua was dammed in 1903 - this dam dates to 1916.

It seemed like lots of the little towns were in a contest to see who could get the most color on their main street. I'm not sure if the flowers were picked because of the building color or if it was just luck. The baskets of flowers were impressive!

Roseburg has to get the nod for the most unique 'traffic calming' devices - concrete stumps! Elkton, however, one upped them by using concrete trees at the bridge coming in to town.

Farmer's Markets, both public like this one, and individual farm stores, were ubiquitous. The peaches were wonderful as were the tomatoes and zucchini.

Turk didn't seem to be concerned at all about the eagle attacking the fish. I was really surprised that there wasn't any info to be found about the art or the artist.

We took a day trip out to the ocean in search of fish and chips. We found the town of Elkton on the way, and almost stopped at the Pastry Mill but we'd already had breakfast and had other ideas about lunch.

Monkey Business in Charleston had 5 stars from Yelp for their fish and chips. Unfortunately, the camera wasn't fast enough to get a picture of the product. Suffice it to say, we'd come back!

We spent a week at Timber Valley, an Escapees affiliated park. They had a parade of decorated golf carts to start off the 4th of July.

It appears that they also had golf cart drag races, but that wasn't on the schedule. This is the second Escapees park we've stayed at. They're different from one another but both are highlighted by friendly people.

With the holiday in the rear view mirror, it's time to move on.