Retrieving "Herbie"

                                                                  We had a mission.  

Cave entrance

Becky, Ken and myself.  Drive almost 4 hours to a geocache, grab my trackable out of it, and then turn around and come back home.    Ok, let me back up.  I got a notification that one of my trackables was in a geocache called "Black Angus: A Cool Cow Caching Cave", just below Leavenworth.  Seriously? A CAVE! Why not under a bridge?  Or hanging from a tree?  To be clear, a trackable  is  an item that is registered to you that hops from cache to cache.  More about that later, just know that I wanted this one back! He's traveled over 50,400 miles.  Since he is this close, I have to nab him.  So, yesterday we head out at about 10:30 am.  We are in good spirits and excited about this adventure.  In my head, I was still thinking about the cave issue.  But, I figured I had a good 3 hours before I had to deal with the whole under ground thing.  We didn't cache on the way over, which was kinda hard for me.  Because you know we passed a ton of them. We did however take a couple side adventures.  We found a small lake and RV park to maybe camp at next summer.  And we had lunch at a really cute little park in Waterville.  We also got to pop in and tour the Liberty Orchards Applets and Cotlets Factory in Cashmere.  So THAT was pretty cool.  Ok, so we get to the cache site at about 4:30.  Collect all of our gear (headlamps, gloves, rope... because it is a cave after all), and find the trail.  I have to say that it was a good thing Becky and Ken were with me, because in my head, it was over on my OTHER right!   Thanks to the cache description and logs, we had a few clues about this cache.  OK, one, yeah it's in a cave.  Two, the first waypoint is a granite wall, called the Roto Wall.  A popular rock climbing wall that on any given day will have a dozen or so climbers.  Not on this day.  It was bare.  Beautiful, but bare.  Three, there will be a crack in the granite wall, called a window.  From inside, you can see out?  Ok, that might be kinda cool.  And fourth, when you find the opening you have to drop down in.  OH!  And you have about 18 inches of space to shimmy in, and you have to go in about 50 feet. The only tool that will do you any good is a flashlight.  Even the best GPS won't read under solid granite (so the cache owner says).   Feel free to enter the wide eyed emoji here!😳  I mean, I've seen The Descent!  And The Descent2! Things live under the ground!  Scary things.  As we follow the path along the perimeter of the roto wall (I still think we are going the wrong way), I hear "There's the Window!"  Now I'm excited!  Because there was always the chance we wouldn't find the cave, and I wouldn't even have to "drop down in".  I'm gonna add right here that this place is Beautiful!  Maple leaves that are bigger than my head!   So pretty with all the fall colors and the grey of the granite.  A little farther on and Ken says he thinks he found the opening.  Yep.  He sure did!  Now I'm committed.  And determined to get this trackable.  SO, nothing to do but drop down in.  Oh, did I forget to mention that the cache description also said that if you have any of the obvious phobias,  this probably isn't the cache for you.  Let's see.  Arachnophobia.  Claustrophobia.  Seismophobia.  Nyctophobia.   And one I had to look up ... Musophobia or Murophobia.  What's that one you ask?  Rats!  Fear of RATS!  Deep breath, as I drop down in.  We have to shimmy sideways because of the whole 18 inch factor.  As we all form a line and start to make our way in, we pass the window and yes, you can actually see out.  There!  I see the cache.  At this point it wouldn't matter if I saw 2 rats!  I pass the container to Ken, because when I dropped down in, I hit record on my phone.  If I died, I wanted my family to know I died doing what I loved.  I do need practice tho, because I recorded alot of granite cave wall lol.  But I see a youtube production in my future because our dialog is awesome!  As Ken opens the container, I'm still hoping my guy is in there.  I mean anyone could have already came and grabbed all 4 trackables and just not logged there visit.  But, nope!  He's in there with his 3 travel buddies.  Now we are all high fiving, laughing and yelling, because, well, mission complete!  We sign the log, and start our shimmy out.  When we get to the window, I stop and have Becky head on out so I can see her out the window.  So now it's just me talking to myself into the camera.  Once she is outside, it's pretty clear just how deep we are, because that crack in the granite is thicker than I thought.  OK, it's time for me to head out as well, but this is where I forget about the 18 inch thing.  I just turn sideways to walk out.  My only panic moment of this whole ordeal is right now, when I am wedged in because apparently my hips are wider than 18 inches!!  I can tell you that a little adrenaline will unstuck a person pretty quickly !It took me no time to shimmy out at that point. I'm out!  I only saw 1 spider and zero rats.  We take some more photos and pick up some of those huge leaves  to document that we were actually there, and decide a celebratory beer is called for.  As we make our way down, we hear it. A group of people making there way along the bottom of the roto wall.  Are they looking for the cache?  Maybe.  Would they have found it and taken my guy?  Maybe.  Would he have ended up closer to me?  Maybe.  Or would he have vanished like many other trackables?  Maybe.  Our timing was perfect!  On to Leavenworth for that beer and some dinner.  And then the long drive home. I think I got home at about 12:10 am.  This is why I geocache.  The places it takes me.  The things I get to do.  And today I got to see how big my brave was.  Never did I ever think that, at 62,  I would drop down into a crack in the earth and shimmy back in 50 feet to grab a silly donkey toy, while hoping I didn't see a rat!

about 40 feet in... Eyes!  I told you things live underground!!!

We killed it!!

"Herbie"

Today, my brave was pretty damn big, and I feel empowered. And blessed to have friends that will just stop what they are doing and say hell yeah, let's go!  I truly am a lucky girl......