Road Trips ... and caches!

 

I've always loved road trips.  Load a cooler, map out a route and grab the camera.  Thankfully, since we didn't really do the road trip thing till the girls were almost all grown, the youngest two were all for it!  We did so many.  Looking for small no-wake lakes when we got our canoe.  Going back to one of my childhood homes and sharing those memories.  I loved it.  Imagine my glee when I discovered geocaching and realized I could combine the two!  Now, before we pack the cooler and load the car, I search for any caches that might be grabbed along the way.  And there always are some!  We all know they are EVERYWHERE, right?

 Have you read my previous post about the "Seven magic Mountains"?  Perfect road trip!  Even with my muggle husband, I can always find a few caches.  We've taken day trips, where we just get in the car when we wake up and go.  We've taken weekend trips where we actually make a plan ahead of time.  I want to see it all, do it all and now of course....find them all!  This picture was taken on one of our day trips.  I thin, I found about 5 caches that day.  But it's not always about the caches either.  I mean, they are pretty important, but so is the actual road trip.  Seeing new places and things, and sometimes seeing things you've seen before as well.  You should see all of my travel journals.  I keep track of everything we do and see. Oooooo, I see a blog post about that coming soon, ya think?  Anyways......

Like the "Elephant" in this picture.  We look for them and count them every time we drive along the Columbia River.  But this one, she's my favorite. This photo is from this past September when Squinch:) and I drove to North Bonneville to complete the "Bigfoot GeoTour" (that blog post coming soon, so watch for it).   I can always find her.  My  Mother in Law told us about them when we were planning an Oregon vacation, and the girls and I were so excited to actually see them!  They've turned into a kind of tradition. I couldn't wait to show them to my Grandkids when we took a family trip.  I got pictures of this same girl last summer when my daughter and her kids went to the coast without me.  I know right?  How unfair.

This past summer, Squinch:) and I decided to finally drive to Sprague, Washington and complete the Washington Star. We are road trip fanatics, I tell ya.  We loaded up the car, grabbed her Geo-Pup (I have my own now and you can read about him in a previous post), and headed out.  We ended up grabbing over 100 caches that day, completing the Washington Star and also the Historic Hwy 10 series.  A lot of stop and go, a lot of sagebrush and scab rock and a lot of log signing!  But we found them all!  It was just a funfilled  

day.  I have a couple of more road trips planned for Squinch:) and I that are sitting in the to-do part of my brain.  One is a post that I saw on facebook, a place in Oregon that has a big BIG ammo can and a big BIG rock painted like a green frog.  I mean, who doesn't want to go find that?  The other is in Colorado, a sweet little girl and her daddy are building a free little library gadget cache and I MUST go there, just to be a part of it.  Since I'm in Washington State, that's gonna be a FUN road trip for sure!  That one, we may have to let my muggle tag along.  We just might need a driver because it's hard to drive and cache without one LoL.  He may be a muggle, but he is always up for a road trip adventure, even if it involves caching.  Speaking of Squinch:), my geo-buddy is on her own road trip, visiting her mom in Kansas.  So we are caching apart this month, hoping to reach the peak of Denali by the deadline.  I'm kinda missing her, and I don't think it's quite fair that she is in sunshine to complete this task, while I am in 30 degree windy cold snowy stuff.  I mean, c'mon.  I want some warmth and sunshine as well.  Makes caching much more enjoyable if you ask me. Seriously tho, I hope she is having a blast with her family.   One last photo I'm gonna add to this post, only because I love it so much.  It's a virtual cache along the Columbia river, in Carson Washington. We found this cache while on the  Bigfoot Geotour road trip. It's called "We love Highway 14:It's a what? I don't see it!"  The description, kinda like my elephants, is the legend about the mountain that a family told their boy every time they drove by.  He didn't see it till he was 10! I saw it right away.  Do you see it?

 *taken fron the actual cache description:  . Local lore says this is the profile of a Native American man looking towards the heavens in the Southern skies. A jutting brow and large nose are the most prominent features. Depending on the angle of the sun, however, the face is sometimes easier to distinguish than others. This spot was pointed out to me (Dan) by my parents and grandparents on every trip past Wind Mountain, but until I was about 10 years old, my response was always the same: "I don't see it!"

 

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!