Kamloops Cachers at GeoWoodstock

Kamloops Cachers Trip to GeoWoodstock Mega Event July 3 – 5, 2010.

(contributed by ProCrasTin8)

Friday:

The Kpneiders, CGQ, Jazzpurrr and Pro & Cras Tin8 started their  trip with a meeting at Starbucks at 8:00 am.( we were all on time )  We set out as a convoy to the border and all arrived at Sumas around the same time.  We than stopped to explore and cache the  Sumas and Lynden area.

We stopped for lunch/supper in Lynden and continued on to arrive at the  Lake Sammamish State Park to take in the final hour of the Friday Night Meet & Greet Laua.

We got to sign the log book which was a giant surfboard.  There were lots of displays, cachers  and travel bugs to discover.  We  checked into our hotel after 8 pm ; Marriott Residence Inn Redmond ; spending just enough time in our room to drop our suitcases and load our gps.  We than walked the downtown area of Redmond looking for a cache around a dog – having other cachers and an officer on a segway to help us. Later we walked through some lovely trails caching, using Pro’s flashlight for the last cache.    We arrived back in our hotel well after dark and very tired.

Saturday:

We were up by 8:00 and off to Carnation once all our gps’s finally got loaded.  We cached the lovely Carnation area and than off to GeoWoodstock held at Remlinger Farms.  Parking was about a km from the event but we discovered many car travel bugs along the way and saw many different license plates from all over the US.

As we arrived we all got our pictures taken in front of the GeoWoodstock sign and the largest ammo box we have ever seen.  Keith got interviewed for some groundspeak video that they were making on GeoWoodstock.

We spent the next few hours visiting the different booths, talking to fellow cachers, doing an accuracy gps activity and getting a BC cachers picture taken.  We also got to meet Mountainman and some of us even got pictures with him and Signal.

After GeoWoodstock we cached in the area along an old railway bed and the trails with many other cachers.  We then cached around the community of  Carnation while CGQ and Jazzpurrr went for refreshments we decided to do a simple multi.  This simple multi for us was not simple and involved climbing fences with the help of  Keith.  We than cached our way back to our hotel by ll:30 just in time to attend the end of the Midnight Geocoin Madness II.  We saw many beautiful and unique geocoin collections, some being as large as 500 coins.  It was finally time for some refreshments and off to bed around 1:30.

Sunday:

We set out to travel to the Original Cache placed in 2000. We started to cache along the way but soon realized it would take 2 days to get there at this rate so we headed straight to the cache. It was quite a trip we left at l0:00 in the morning and arrived at the Original around 5:00 to have our pictures taken. This worked out to be CGQ’s 1000th find so it is a very memorable occasion for Craig. We  continued to cache in the area for the next couple of hours.

One that will stick out in our minds other than the Original cache is called Holy Macro

It consisted of a huge red barrel about 4 feet tall that held 3,500 film canister one with the logbook in it. On arriving we could hear all this snapping and popping when we investigated 3 lady cachers were already hard at work searching for the canister with the log. We joined in without hesitation for what seemed to be forever  and finally  Jazzpurrr found the log after about 2500 empties.

We continued to cache until dark approached and we realized we had a 5 hour drive back to Redmond. Later we decided it was time for supper so at l:30 in the morning we filled the cars and  our bellies and drove on arriving back at our hotel at 3:30 after a long but fun day.

Monday:

We were off to do the Misson 9: Tunnel of Light  (APE cache).   But of course before we got there we had to pick a few caches along the way.  Saw some really great old trains and nice little parks.  We stopped and did an earth cache at Snoqualmin Falls.  We arrived at the  Snoqualmin Forest Trails  and started up the mountain for the APE  cache.  It was a nice climb up to the cache and the scenery was beautiful.

This was Jazzpurrr’s l,000th cache. Congrats.  We had to do one more cache and down the mountain.  It was time for farewells as CGQ, Jazzpurrr and Kpneider’s were heading home after a great weekend.

When we first planned to attend Pro noticed that Kpneiders had completed the Peace Series on a previous trip.   It soon became our goal to solve the 42 Puzzle caches before we left and we succeeded the night before we departed.  This is a great series of puzzle caches they are all different and fun to solve.   Since we did not have time during the weekend we decided to stay in Seattle for a couple of days to complete the Peace series.  This was an interesting 2 days of intense caching as you had to find all of them to get the coordinates to the final cache. They are split between the two sides of Lake Washington.

If you want more information on the Peace Series it is located on Lake Washington and you can see the great Peace Sign.

- ProCrasTin8