The Trifecta, part trois

We did it! We drove 10 miles from Sandy to the Original Stash Cache this morning and it was a nice easy find. The NZ cacher we met yesterday at Groundspeak HQ drove up while we were logging the cache. He's also going to Vancouver, but he's not a statistician.

The plaque.


We decided to find a final cache in Portland instead of heading to GC12, one of the oldest caches still in existence. It was totally worth it. I can't say anything about it here, but we were laughing and talking about it all the way to Vancouver.

Then we hightailed it to Vancouver, making it to dinner with friends right on time. We checked into our hotel and look who was waiting for us!

The Trifecta, part deux

The Best Western Inn in Sandy, OR, has very comfortable beds.

After completing the first leg of the trifecta, we drove to Seattle and made it to the coordinates with a half hour to spare. This was good, because we (well, ok, just the grown-ups) were stiff from the morning's hike and it was nice to not have to hurry.

Rich at the entrance way.


I wonder where we are going?


The boys in front of the treasure chest of travel bugs!


That was the last picture I took inside. We had a 2pm appointment. When we got there, there must have been about 5 or 6 different caching groups there already! Lots of people, all talking the same language. Ok, both literally (English) and figuratively (caching). We met a cacher from NZ (he had his All Blacks shirt on, it was pretty obvious where he was from) who made the HQ cache his #1000. He told us there were a pair of Aussie women there, and we met them later on. They are Aussies living in Britain, we are Aussies living in Texas, so we had a good chat about dual citizenship and how the US doesn't quite get it. Luckily for us, Australia does. We got the number of the big travel bug in the shot above.

Earlier in the week, Eric from Groundspeak had written asking if we would do a Lost and Found story on our search for the trifecta. I had told him they were welcome to tag along, that we'd be finding all three legs on Friday. He found someone else to follow to the APE cache, but filmed us at HQ and interviewed Richard for the story. Rich did a bang-up job. And then we got a Lackey geocoin! This is a coin which is only given to a select few, and can't be bought. Yay! It was a terrific cap to a terrific visit.

We bought travel bug tags and a couple of small Signal (their mascot) "dolls" (don't tell the boys I called them that!) for the boys. Connor says he doesn't like geocaching, but he does like Signal.

Our seats on the plane were one in row 18 and three in row 29. Andrew got the one by himself. The people next to him told him about the "sky needle" so he was especially excited when we went right by it, intentionally, on the way back to I-5. I have a vague memory of eating dinner in a revolving restaurant at the top of the Space Needle. I hope it's real.

You wonder what part of Seattle you're in now.


Austin traffic is worse than Seattle traffic, but Austin is smaller, so Austin traffic is better than Seattle traffic. We crawled along the I-5 towards Portland, through Tacoma and Olympia. We stopped at an IHOP for supper because we realized we never had lunch and maybe that was the reason we were all getting grouchy. It didn't help the traffic any, and we are sorely hoping it won't be that bad going back north to Vancouver.

We were too tired to get the final leg last night, so we stopped at a nice motel, but we'll find it today, and we'll have found the three legs within a 24 hour period, and that's all good too.

The Trifecta

First of all, we haven't finished it yet.

Secondly, those mountains we saw from the plane yesterday were Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier.

We started out this morning to find the A.P.E. cache. The parking lot had one car in it when we got there. We went up the Annette Lake trail at Snoqualmie Pass.


We didn't bring our llamas.


Pretty mountain stream. I bet the water was cold.


Gorgeous trail, but it was steep for a mile. Walking a mile or two in the Texas noontime heat is much easier. We budgeted for this, though, and rested a lot, and made it out just about on time.


Stunning views on the way to the cache made it easier.


We made it!


Ok, I'm tired. More tomorrow.

Travelling to Seattle

We're in Seattle! It's almost midnight Austin time! The sun's still up!

Here's the view from the airplane window right before we landed. We saw this big mountain from the ground, too. I think we're going around it tomorrow or Saturday. I think Mt. Rainier is in the foreground and Mt. Hood is in the background. These used to be volcanoes.

Summer Trip

This summer, JSM is held in Vancouver, BC. Naturally, we'll get some caching in. Here's our itinerary:

July 29 - fly to Seattle
July 30 - find APE cache, visit Groundspeak headquarters, find original stash plaque cache. In geocaching circles, this is called "the trifecta" and we're going to try to do it all in one day.
July 31 - drive to Vancouver and have dinner with stat friends
Aug 1-5 - JSM. The boys will go to the aquarium and explore the area. I'll be happily stuck in technical sessions, committee meetings, and evening mixers with people who speak my language.
Aug 6-9 - explore BC and Alaska. There is a road which goes to Alaska, into a town, then immediately back into Canada. There is one cache in that town. We're going to find it.
Aug 9-14 - vacation rental house in Golden, BC. This house is about an hour from Lake Louise, 2 hours from Banff, 3 hours from Jasper. 5 days in the Canadian Rockies - could be worse.
Aug 14 - drive to Seattle
Aug 15 - fly back to Austin

Here it is, 3619 miles, according to Google.