Virtual Extremes

We recently enjoyed a short vacation in Texas and Oklahoma. Our main goals were to visit and hike the LBJ Grasslands and Wichita Mountains. We enjoyed both. We were also able to add another virtual extreme to our cache finds when we visited the world's littlest skyscraper in Wichita Falls.

Whoa, that's four floors shooting upward toward the clouds!

The Newman-McMahon Building was built in 1919 after cash was raised from investors to build a 146m tall building or so the investors believed. What they really invested in was the 14.6m tall building shown above. Yes, it was a scam created by a local oilman. At 146m, the building would have been 40% of the height of the Empire State Building. In the low skyline of Wichita Falls this four story building would still give a great view of the town, but it appears to be used for retail.

This wasn't our first virtual at a little place with big plans. We also enjoyed visiting the world's smallest park in Portland.

Mills End Park was another fun stop on our too brief visit to Portland in 2011.

I am happy to see virtuals have returned for at least one encore. Like all of caching, they were a mixed bag of good and uninspired, but many like the two above give us a reason to visit fun, quirky places we haven't seen and wouldn't see except by sheer luck. We have been lucky to be awarded one of the new ones to locate. Our biggest issue so far has been deciding which of the out of the way places we want to share with only one winner possible.

The Triad

We were all hyped that the chance had finally come to do the Triad. The opportunity to visit the Lily Pad, the location of the original hide, and find the APE cache was exciting. The thought we could tie a few vacation days together with a business trip was great too. Although I am a regular visitor to Washington, Ali hadn't been there in years. Neither of us had ever been to Oregon.

We started our journey in Seattle. A couple of days in a town like this never seems to scratch the surface. I've always heard about the rain there and was blown away by the mostly amazing weather we had. We spent the morning doing some caching around Seattle and had an afternoon visit planned to Groundspeak. Our visit was awesome. We have spent so long as reviewers that we forgot a lot of the things we were going to do (take lots of photos, trade items, leave some trackables, visit the photo booth). Instead we just spent time with people who have come to be our friends.

The "cache"

We had to be in Portland, Oregon by the evening but got to visit the area around the Lily Pad before our journey continued. We county hopped our way to Oregon with a nice detour to walk around Tacoma.

Our second Triad stop was Thursday at the Original Stash location. For both of us, this was a bit of a yawn. The words cache and dash best describe it. The road to the cache is filled with park and grabs too. Historically its cool, but the weakest of the three stops.

We were both also distracted at the thought of grabbing Oregon's two oldest caches. Since we chase old caches these were the perfect fit for us. It also helped that they were hiking caches in the woods and two months we need for the Jasmer Challenge. The caches are on National Forest service lands, but are accessed through private roads. We had not anticipated the sign at the gate near the start of the private road which read, Closed to Public Entry May 2, 2011. We called the number to see if the restriction had been lifted but the recording said no car access yet. We hadn't planned for the 18-mile version of this cache hunt. Sadly, we turned away and moved on.

We regrouped at enjoyed a super afternoon at Salmon River. Mount Hood and the river were gorgeous.

By the time Saturday rolled in we were both eager to head for Snoqualmie to hunt the A.P.E. cache and the last stage of the Triad. This trail, the A.P.E. cache and all the surrounding caches were all we expected and then some. It was in the 40's and raining with lots of snow still on the ground and raging streams from the snow melt. It was an awesome day on the trail.

miatabug at the APE Cache.

Since it has been muggled, I guess the spoiler won't matter.

It is strange to think we were one of the last finders of the Triad... maybe the last. It's too bad someone saw fit to steal so many caches from this area. We had a great time. The area is stunning. Hopefully, we will be able to return and claim a find on the replacement cache as well as making it to Lake Annette.

New State

We added Oregon to our state totals two weeks ago. We were able to find a cache, find a benchmark, visit a waymark, and post a new waymark. It was a fun trip. We did the original stash, but really enjoyed our time along Salmon Creek in view of Mount Hood. Portland was a fun town to Waymark. Our lone benchmark was cheap. It was the dome of the Pioneer Courthouse and a lousy photo as well. I was too tired to plan for benchmark hunting or we would have visited some nice marks.

This brings us to 25 states with caches found; 13 states with benchmarks; posted waymarks in 24 states; and visited waymarks in 26 states. Its time to add a few license plates to our profile page.

Along Salmon Creek with good caches and a super view of Mount Hood

Pioneer Courthouse Dome... it really was a cheap benchmark find. The building is beautiful, but not very accessible to visitors. :-(

Portland art sculpture PoD visited as a Smithsonian Art Inventory category item

The bike tenders at Powell's Books in downtown Portland. The book spine bike tenders were creative and used. Any bookstore with over 1 1/2 million titles in stock is a mecca to book junkies like us.