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| 48 Degrees North |
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| by Scott Legal |
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We spent 8 days in Washington visiting my
sister-in-law and brother-in-law. My brother-in-law, VPLaMar, is the person
who introduced me to geocaching and my wife has been mad at him ever since
 . This vacation
was as close to a real geocaching vacation as I am likely to get. Vern
took the week off work and we managed to find 35 caches together while
squeezing in other activities.
The first thing I noticed upon arrival in Washington was that it is mighty
green there. They get lots of rain up there and there is no shortage of
water. Trees are everywhere, along with a carpet of blackberry. We have
blackberry in Thousand Oaks, but it is generally only found near sources
of water. It's everywhere up there and makes cache hunts and hikes a potentially
painful experience because of their abundant thorns. What is conspicuously
absent there is poison oak. What is also absent, according to Vern, is
rattlesnakes. I told him to not be so confident in that assertion for
I am a snake magnet and if there are rattlesnakes in the area I will find
them. I didn't find any.
One very unpleasant thing I quickly discovered in Washington is that it
is very humid. When we arrived in Washington, the area was having a heat
wave. A heat wave in the Seattle area means temperatures in the 80's.
That is no big deal for us, but we're used to a relative humidity of 30%
or less when the temperature is in the 80's. The Seattle area is used
to humidity of 60-80% when the thermometer pushes past 80. So it was quite
uncomfortable. The long-range forecast indicated that the weather would
be like that for the duration of our trip. But by Saturday we got to experience
what Frazier Crane most despised about Seattle... RAIN. It rained off and
on for the duration of our trip.
Our first day in Washington was not too eventful. We flew in at around
noon on Tuesday August 17 and Vern picked us up at the airport. My nieces
Kristie and Sarah joined him. My in-laws live in an unincorporated area
of Snohomish County near Everett and Mill Creek and about a half hour
north of Seattle. We had a late afternoon lunch/early evening dinner at
Round Table Pizza (still big in the northwest, apparently). Vern and I
began sampling the local northwest brews, first at Round Table and then
after bringing more home from the supermarket.
On Wednesday morning Vern and I did a few caches near his home. This was
where I first discovered how beautiful the trails in the area are. I also
picked up my first of many scratches from the very thorny blackberry.
This was Vern's first geocaching outing since December 28, 2003, when
he was with me in Fresno. Later we went a little south to Woodinville
where Vern, Vickie and Kristie had an interview with a prospective private
high school that Kristie may attend. The rest of us picked up a cache
while waiting for them. After the interview we took the kids home and
then the adults headed back to Woodinville, home of the Columbia Winery
and more importantly the Red Hook brewery. Vern and I dropped off our
wives at the winery and we headed for the brewery. My favorite ale was
a nut brown ale that is only bottled in the winter months and is never
available in California. A customer in the bar area said I was nuts for
drinking a dark ale in the Summer. That's one for Trurokr and zero for
Slegal.
Thursday was a pretty lazy day. My wife and sister-in-law went to a Christian
women's conference for several hours in the morning. Vern and I decided
to take the kids to lunch. Thursday turned out to be a pretty hot day.
After our wives returned home in the afternoon, Vern and I headed to the
town of Bothel to do some geocaching. We arrived at one cache that was
completely surrounded by blackberry. I surveyed the area and then read
the logs on the cache, hoping for some hint on safe access and determined
that retrieval of this cache was going to be quite painful. We decided
to move on to the next cache rather than mess with the blackberry. We
slowly worked our way toward Lake Washington. We didn't quite make it
to the lake before running out of time, but we did end up at a pair of
caches along the Sammamish River. The river was beautiful at the park
setting we found our last two caches at. All told, our short afternoon
of caching netted us nine finds.
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| The houseboat featured in the movie
"Sleepless in Seattle" |
Friday was a tourist day. We drove to Seattle and "Rode the Ducks". The
"ducks" are amphibious buses that tour the city before going for a spin
in Lake Union. Lake Union is between Lake Washington and the Puget Sound,
connected to both by a waterway and a series of locks. The lake is notable
for having the houseboat on it from the movie "Sleepless in Seattle".
After the duck ride we went down to the Sound waterfront for lunch. While
there, we found our one and only cache of the day. Then we headed a few
blocks away to go on the Seattle Underground Tour. Afterward we had dinner
in Seattle.
Saturday started off sunny, but quickly deteriorated. Vern and I had tickets
to go to the Seattle Seahawks pre-season football game against the Denver
Broncos (The Broncos won 19-3). We decided to leave early and find some
caches along the way. As soon as we left it started to rain. We found
five caches on the way to the stadium. After the last cache the rain really
started coming down hard. We arrived at the stadium about two and a half
hours early. So we headed to the parking garage next to the stadium and
walked to the Pyramid Brewery for an early dinner and sampling of their
wares. The unfiltered amber ale was the best. By then the rain was really
dumping. After dinner we walked to the stadium. The rain had stopped and
remained dry throughout the evening. We had great seats on the 40 yard
line about 10 rows back of the field.
After the game we decided to go geocaching. It was about 10:30 PM. We
didn't have any flashlights, so we were at the mercy of the light the
night provided and the very limited light of our pocket PCs. That said,
we had a very successful evening. We searched for ten caches and found
nine of them. Three of the caches were on a hill overlooking Seattle,
with the Space Needle in the foreground. What an awesome view. The next
five finds plus one no find were on the banks of Lake Union. These caches
were quite challenging in the low light of the late night. That made it
that much more gratifying when we found the caches. At about 1:00 AM we
decided it was time to head home. As we approached home, Vern said he
had one more cache he wanted me to find. The cache was located in a golf
cart tunnel at a local country club. I wasn't tall enough to grab the
cache so I had to lift Vern up on my shoulders. I wound up lifting him
three times, once for retrieval, once so he could drop the cache and once
to put it back. Aargh! I'm lucky I could walk after that.
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| An eight inch banana slug. I named
him Gary. |
Sunday was a very wet day for much of the day. Finally the skies cleared
and we went for a soggy hike in a nearby park to find Vern's one and only
hide. The cache was a nicely done multi cache that covered the length
of the park. The park was a beautiful forested area. Because it was so
wet the local rain creatures were out. Whereas we have snails and earthworms
after rain in Thousand Oaks, Washington has a creature called the Banana
Slug. Banana slugs are huge! We saw one that was 8 inches long! After
finding the final cache on Vern's hide we did our part to clean up the
area. Some local teenagers drank several six packs of beer on a nearby
park bench and proceeded to toss their empties everywhere. So we trashed
out everything we could. The park district would do the area a lot of
good if they would provide trash cans. Afterward, it was time to hide
caches. I encouraged Vern to hide another cache and to help him along
I hid one as well. The admin made me delete the part that said this was
a vacation cache and made me add VPLaMar to the name of the hiders, but
approval was otherwise no problem since a local sponsored the cache. Local
cachers have given good feedback on both caches.
Monday was our last full day in Washington. We left our kids at home (my
nephew is 21 and my nieces are 16 and 12) and headed off to Orcas Island
in the San Juan Island chain. We missed a ferry to the island by about
15 minutes and the next ferry was three and a half hours later. So we
drove to Deception Pass which is a tiny sliver of water separating the
mainland from Whidbey Island. What a beautiful place that was. I would
have liked to have spent more time there hiking as they had some really
nice looking hiking trails. We did hike to a cache on a small Island between
the mainland and Whidbey Island, connected by bridges.
Finally we got on the ferry for Orcas Island. We drove straight to a small
town called East Sound. Vern and I went looking for a nearby cache while
our wives shopped. We couldn't access the cache as it was on an island
about 50 yards offshore in the sound. Apparently during extreme low tide
you can walk to the island. It wasn't low tide when we got there. We had
an early dinner in East Sound and then headed to Moran State Park and
Mt. Constitution. We saw loads of black tail deer while there. We found
one cache and a couple benchmarks on top of Mt. Constitution. I also shot
a number of awesome photos. Our drive back to the ferry yielded more deer
than the drive up. The speed limit is no higher than 30 miles per hour
anywhere on the island. After seeing all of the deer, I think I understand
why. It's to keep the deer and people safe. Our last full day in Washington
turned out to be the best day of the trip. Orcas Island was a real treat
and I hope to return and spend more time there.
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