Just as I pass the 18 year mark at Epic, we’re ready for the first part of my 15-year sabbatical. Mackenzie and Ellie are coming with us for the first time. Amber has had this idea for years that we should ride across Canada on a train, so we’re finally gonna do it! And maybe all that time on the train will give us a better chance of actually writing about the entire trip rather than getting two and a half days in, falling behind, and then never finishing. Think positive!
The first couple of days of this trip we spent escaping Seattle; today, we spent exploring it.
For the first time since we landed, we were able to sleep in a little and take our morning at our own pace. The first item on our agenda for the day didn’t start until 10, so the girls finally got to watch a little TV while we rotated through morning showers and cereal for breakfast. By 9:30, we had our backpack loaded up and were headed out the door. This time, we hopped in the car and headed just a couple of miles north to Groundspeak, also known as Geocaching Headquarters (HQ).
Our tour of the facility really only included a sneak peek of their lobby. Although I was hoping for more, it did not disappoint. In that small space, they had various trackables to log, a photo booth, a phone booth cache, a trackable that has been to the ISS, and other good stuff. The coolest part of this tour was that it completed our Geocaching Trifecta (APE, Original Stash Tribute, and HQ).
From there, we spent the rest of the morning and into the afternoon roaming around that neighborhood completing the HQ GeoTour (GT29) and a few other caches. At the point when the girls were getting pretty fed up with caching, we called it a day and headed over to the Woodland Park Zoo.
…And that’s where the post ends because we didn’t finish it last year.
Today was all about caching. Our goal was to find the second stage of our trifecta: GCGV0P – Original Stash Tribute Plaque.
First a little history lession for those who don’t know. The Global Positioning System (GPS) was originally used primarily for US military applications. Civilian GPS recievers did exist, but the signals they received where intentionally degraded using a feature called Selective Availability. The relatively low accuracy would have made a game like Geocaching virtually impossible, not to mention turn-by-turn navigation and many other location-based features of today’s smartphones that we take for granted. But pressure started to mount to turn off selective availablity, and the proverbial switch was flipped off on May 1, 2000.
The GPS Stash Hunt began almost immediately after; the first ever stash was hidden just outside Portland, Oregon on May 3, 2000. Several other stashes started popping up across the US and the world. It wasn’t long before participants realized the game needed a better name, so it soon became known as Geocaching. And while that original cache didn’t last that long, some geocachers recognized the importance of honoring where our game began. So they worked together to place a plaque at the location of that first stash, and it’s become a very popular place for cachers to visit.
Now the original stash is more than a three hour drive from our accommodations in Seattle, so we knew it was going to be a full day adventure. To break things up, I spent time last night and this morning planning out a route that would allow us to get some highly favorited caches to find without going very far off our route. I eventually picked out 10 targets to find along the way and expected we would get several more in the area of our destination.
The trip started with one of our longest drives of the day before we stopped outside a Cabella’s for GC961WA – Go Fish! A well-crafted gadget cache that required fishing for numbers to open a combination lock. With that cache completed, we decided to stop into the store to go to the restroom and wound up doing some shopping, too. So much for our schedule…
A few caches later, we hit another highlight of the day: GC57ZJR – Johnny Islands Throne Room. The cache owner requests people not to include photos in their logs, so we didn’t really know what to expect. But with nearly 1,000 favorite points at an 85% clip, we knew it was going to be something good. The cache is actually inside the fence for a pet/garden center, and it soon became obvious why. We rounded the corner of the building to see a full size port-a-potty with a padlock on the door. Getting inside and getting to the log was an adventure that is difficult to describe. There’s a monitor inside that starts playing a video about trying to launch a port-a-potty into the air with rockets! All to give a vehicle for conveying more numbers to open a second locked space – the waste compartment – which contains the log. Who comes up with this stuff?
On the outskirts of Vancouver, we came to GC5RCB5 – Pinball Wizard. It wasn’t much to look at it, but it was fun taking turns using a pinball plunger to launch the small container out of a PVC pipe. We also did a few well-designed multi caches in this area before we finally crossed over into Oregon.
After a few more caches in Portland (they were fine, but not great), we were onto the final approach. As the roads got slower and more winding, Amber and the girls opted to close their eyes to avoid any potential for feeling sick, so I sort of had the last few minutes of the drive to myself. We arrived on the scene about 5:30pm, which was a few hours later than we’d originally hoped, but not so late it was a problem. There was a pair of cachers just leaving the area who gave us tips about where to find the ammo can for the original stash as well as Un-Original Stash (GC92) placed after the original original stash was destroyed. A few other people arrived while we were still onsite, including an older couple from Iowa and a pair of Aussies. It’s amazing how this game can bring so many people from all over the world to one random location on earth!
We grabbed a few more caches in this area before starting the long drive back to Seattle. We got back about 11pm. Our final stats for the day:
After a long day of travel and a late bedtime last night, today started way too early. The girls were up at 4:30. “But Mom! It’s 6:30 our time!” “I don’t really care. Go back to bed.” Hmm, imagine that, they both fell back to sleep. By 7:30, we were all showered and out the door to the market around the corner for a few breakfast and sandwich items for the apartment.
By 9:30 we were out the door again for our first excursion. We picked up our mountain bikes from Evo Snoqualmie Pass and headed to the parking lot across the street for some practice with hand breaks and gear shifting. Although originally apprehensive, Ellie picked up it up really quick. Then, off we went.
The first 3 miles were county highway-esque riding with some really fun down hills for the second half. At the bottom we paused for a bathroom break, to put on our jackets, and turn on all of our bike lights. Then, we proceeded into the tunnel.
It was a pretty busy morning; quite a bit of foot and bike traffic. A former train tunnel, the Snoqualmie Tunnel is approx 2.7 miles of cold, damp, darkness. And imagine that, there is a cache in the 13th alcove from the parking lot (GCJMDK – Bloody Fingers, Dirty Diapers…). An easy find and our first encounter with other cachers. With the log signed and Pathtags exchanged we hopped back on the bikes and kept going.
Once out the other end, we paused at some tables for a picnic lunch of PB&J, Pringles, and Chips Ahoy. We just happened to sit down across from a group of cachers from Denmark and more Pathtag exchanges ensued. Finally, on to our ultimate goal for the day, APE (GC1169 – Mission 9: Tunnel of Light)!
One downside to caching in this area right now is the number of other cachers in town because of GeoWoodstock that was in Abbottsford two days ago and the 20th Anniversary of Caching Party this next weekend. It is fun to meet other cachers, but makes finding some caches a little anticlimactic. That is a long way of saying there were cachers at the APE cache when we got there and more showed up as we were signing the log and exchanging swag and even more showed up as we were trying to leave. So, we took the obligatory family photo at this location, then hopped back on the bikes and kept heading down the trail.
About a mile later, we arrived at the trailhead for our next adventure. We dropped the bikes against a tree and started down the trail. What an absolutely beautiful hike! The trees out here are so massive. There’s very little undergrowth, so you can see quite a ways through the dense forest. This trail is well kept; as Ellie put it, this is a ‘red carpet trail’ and makes for a nice, easy, down hill hike.
About 30 minutes later we arrived at our goal (GC2FHZ7 – The Rocket Cache). I hung out on the path while Carson, Mackenzie, and Ellie ventured across downed trees, over rocks and boulders, through unknown brush to find the largest cache we have ever seen, stashed inside a pile of large rocks. With the log signed, we made our way back up the trail to our bikes, mounted up and started our trek back to where we started.
On the way back, we stopped at a few more caches: two easy to find just off the path, revisit at the APE cache for photo do-overs, and a short hike up to GC79 – Iron Horse.
With caches done for the time being, we put our jackets back on, turned on all of our lights again, and headed back through the tunnel. Once out the other end, we realized it was 430 and we had to have the bikes back to Evo by 5. Oops… With jackets stashed back into the bags, we started the slog up hill. You remember at the start of the day, how we had a nice ride down hill? Well, what goes down, must come up. After riding and hiking for over 6 hours, we were all pretty pooped! Let’s just say we made it a couple minutes before we gave up and started to walk. About the time we started contemplating hitch hiking, we came to a large parking lot and pulled off for a break and to call the bike place to ask for a ride, or at the very least let them know we would be late. As expected, no-ride-for-you but, hey, we don’t close until 6, so there’s that… back to walking… About halfway back to the shop, the grade leveled out and we hopped back on our bikes. At this point, I don’t recall why, Mackenzie was frustrated about something and took off. (You go girl! Use that energy to finish this ride!) Carson took off in hot pursuit. Meanwhile, I hung back with Ellie, cheering her on with motivational quotes (some garnered replies of tears and sobs of exhaustion).
Alas! Is it a mirage? Is it a ghost? No! It’s the bike shop! We did it! We made it! We survived! Or did we? Noooo! The shop is at the top of a long 30° inclined driveway… We got this; one last charge before we completely collapse. Finally… we made it… we is done with this…
With bikes returned, we climbed in the car and headed back toward Seattle. Since it was on the way, we stopped at Snoqualmie Falls to take in the waterfall and learn about volcanic bombs (didn’t finish the earth cache, though). Afterwards, we grabbed a quick dinner at Rhodie’s Smokin’ BBQ. Ribs, brisket, chicken. We’ll have to warn the grandpas that the girls like ribs.
I think Ellie was asleep before we made it out of the parking lot and Mackenzie wasn’t far behind. It was a long, tiring, adventure filled start to our vacation. (Editor’s Note: The A.P.E. cache is the first stop in completing our geocaching trifecta!)
Two years late, but we are finally doing it: Seattle. We were supposed to make this trip in Aug 2020, but then 2020 happened. And then 2021 happened, too. So, today, August 13, 2022, we are finally getting on a plane and heading to Seattle for the 20th (22nd!) anniversary of geocaching.
And in what is becoming an all too common occurrence, we kicked the trip off with a bang. We planned for months, prepped for weeks, and packed for days. Then, while doing the last minute steps of emptying the kitchen trash and loading the car, the mud room door got left open and Alley disappeared. Cue urgent search of every stupid hidy hole in the house and around outside. No damn cat! Unfortunately, our flight was set to depart in less than 2 hours; we gotta go! So I messaged our cat sitter to let her know what’s up and we headed out.
We made it to the airport on time and got our bags checked in. Getting through security went pretty well until they got to Carson. To his credit, he went through every pouch in every pocket of his carry-on before we left home to make sure he took out anything remotely questionable. However, it was his geocaching hiking pack and it has a lot of weird stuff in it! So, of course, TSA took his bag aside and started digging through it. Ultimately, the culprit item: a matchbox car 🙂 I mean, yep, it looks really weird on the X-ray machine!
Anyhow, we made it through to our gate with plenty of time before our flight. Carson spent part of this time messaging one of our neighbors about the cat, in case they might be able to see her on any of their video cameras.
The first flight was uneventful. We made the short hop over to Chicago in what felt like record time. Now we wait. And wait.. And wait… our connecting flight isn’t for another 4 hours.
To pass the time, we attempted a leisurely lunch at an O’hare restaurant. Yum…? Then we made our way to the next gate and got comfy. Card games, puzzle books, and dot to dots can only last so long. So, after a couple of hours, Carson and the girls took our new friend (ie: the really nice lady sitting next to us chatting in the terminal) to the popcorn place down the concourse. About the time they returned, the airline had started organizing for boarding.
Once on the plane, I sat in the back with Mackenzie and Carson sat with Ellie across the aisle and a few rows up. I’m not sure about Ellie, but Mackenzie was over the moon when she realized she got to pick out her own shows and/or movies, and the airline was giving her a headset! OMG! Such a happy kid at that moment!
Also, as I was about to turn my phone to airplane mode, I received a message from our cat sitter, the missing cat had been located. Apparently, in all the chaos of us getting out of the house, she had snuck downstairs and was likely hiding amongst the storage/construction mess. Such a relief to hear she will not be living outside for the next week.
4 hours later, we landed at SeaTac. Ellie is the only one who slept at all on the plane, and that was only the last 10 minutes of the flight. So by now, we are all absolutely exhausted and starting to hit the tired mood swings. Everything from uncontrollable tears to uncontrollable giggles.
Picking up the rental car was fast and easy. Then a quick dinner in the car on the way to our accommodations.
For this trip we opted for a little more space than a regular hotel room. We ended up with a one bedroom apartment a few block south of Seattle Center with a full kitchen, in-unit washer/drier, and pool access. We met our host’s representative by the back door and he showed us where to park and how to get into the apartment.
Less then an hour later, the girls were passed out on the futons in the living room and Carson & I were unpacked and headed to bed ourselves.
A friend I recently met through Geocaching grew up in Switzerland and was very helpful answering questions as we planned parts of our trip. Based on something she described in one of her emails, the plan for our last full day was to head south. South to the Italian-speaking region. South to the hottest part of the country…
It was kind of a whirlwind tour. We checked out of our hotel in Lucerne around 9am, then caught a pair of trains to take us through the Gotthard tunnel under the alps to Lugano. From there we dropped our luggage in a locker at the station and caught a different train over to Melide to visit Swissminiatur.
Mom, you would love this place! It’s full of over 100 scale models of famous sites around all of Switzerland. There were many we didn’t recognize, but about a half a dozen were for places we did visit during the trip. We tried to look long enough to appreciate the effort of creating it all, but we also didn’t linger since most of the sites weren’t significant to us, and because the temps were already in the mid to upper 90s with heat index closer to 110.
Campione d’Italia is an exclave of Italy completely surrounded by the Ticino canton of Switzerland. It’s just over one square mile in area, so why bother to go there? Two reasons, really. First, to be able to say we did it and that we actually returned to a foreign country for the first time. Second and most importantly, to make up for the fact that we knew about geocaching when we went to Italy in 2010, but completely forgot to make it a part of the trip.
Yes, there is one geocache inside that square mile, and that was our destination. The next bus after the one we’d missed wasn’t for another hour, so we decided to walk about 20 minutes to get there instead. This was the hottest walk of the entire trip, but we were able to find the cache and get to an appropriate stop for a bus to get us back to Melide.
That’s where we are now as I write this. The train is mildly air conditioned which would probably make me miserable on any other day, but it feels pretty good right about now. I’m sure we smell pretty ripe, so hopefully no one to sit next to us. We’ll be to Zürich in just over an hour for our last night in Switzerland.
Edit: We ate at our hotel in Zurich tonight and both had Raclette for the first time. We both agreed it was far better than the fondue we tried a few days ago. Also, our room was air conditioned and had a nice mural and a balcony cow!
To escape the heat wave from Africa that has overtaken Europe, we decided today would be a good day to visit a mountain top. We started by sleeping in until 7:30 (but when your room is 25° C (75° F) there’s not a whole lot of sleeping happening.) After breakfast, we caught a bus that took us to the gondola that took us to the cable car that took us to the top of Pilatus where the view was hazy and the sun was… hot.
Once at the top we didn’t know where to go. So in an attempt to follow the signs to the bathrooms we ended up walking through a dark, cool cave with window cutouts. At the end of the tunnel the trail continued up along the side of the cliff. Not knowing exactly where we were, we just continued forward until we reached the top! From the top the views were beautiful; in one direction snow capped mountains in the distance, in another direction Lake Luzern and its surrounding cities, and in a different direction green rolling hills. Despite the hazy skies the views were fantastic.
Also from up top, we were able to get a sense of how to navigate around the top of Pilatus and see where all of the various trails went. So, we picked another peak, Esel, and started our walk over. On the way, we were treated to an alphorn performance.
After listening to a couple songs we continued up to our second peak of the morning, Esel. Lots of steps and a cache later, Carson learns that there is another cache (with a high difficulty rating) at the far end to the long and winding trail that leads to the top of the third peak. We are both hot, wearing tennis shoes, and the trail is along a steep and rocky cliff, what could go wrong!
A mile later we finally make it to ground zero and begin the hunt. After twenty/thirty minutes, we concede the find and continue up the switchback trail to the top of this peak. Once again, the view up here was impressive, but could have been better if the haze wasn’t quite so bad. From here, we hike back the mile and head straight to the cave trail we previously walked to cool down a bit.
Our first stop was the Chapel Bridge where we found the answers to a letterbox cache that we would attempt later. From here, we walked through town to the Lion Monument for another, wait for it… you guessed right! Another cache!! (Insert Amber eye roll here…) now it was time to find the final for the letterbox from before.
We were out of the hotel before 8:30 this morning to catch a…you guessed it…train. Only for the first time on the trip, this train took us to a boat! That boat took us to the small town of Bauen so we could hike from there to Seelisberg along the eastern portion of Lake Lucerne known as Unersee.
This was probably our last significant hike of the trip with a duration of a few hours and a climb of about 1400 feet. The weather has turned very warm in the last day or two with highs in the mid-90s, so we tried to start a bit earlier to avoid the hottest part of the day. Most of the climb came in the first third of our route, so that part was pretty challenging. Things leveled off somewhat after that and even started descending as we got closer to Seelisberg. It was 80° when we started our climb around 10am and temps topped out in the mid-80s before we were done. The elevation and the fact that much of the trail was in the shade both helped us stay relatively comfortable despite the weather.
We had our choice of transportation back to Lucerne once we reached Seelisberg. We could either take a bus and a train to get back faster, or a funicular and a boat which would take longer but would undoubtedly be cooler. Which do you think we chose?
We bought funicular tickets shortly after we got to the station and boarded almost immediately to head down to Treib. There we had a late lunch at one of the busiest restaurants of the whole trip. I had something basic, but Amber tried a really interesting deconstructed salad that included a variety of different items including sausage. most parts had some kind of vinegar finish, but she really liked it.
Our waitress was running herself ragged in the heat (did I mention all the tables were outside?), but she seemed to enjoy coming to our table (in fact she told us so) because we weren’t dissatisfied with the speed of her service like everyone else. So after we split a giant ice cream dessert (hey, we already hiked four miles), I made sure to leave her a nice tip. All I had was US dollars at that point, but she seemed thrilled anyway. Tipping is not expected here like it is in the US, so we’ve only done it when the service was really good and this certainly qualified despite the attitude of her other patrons.
Our ice cream finished, it was time to board the boat back to Lucerne. It took almost two hours, but we were able to stand and then sit outside in the shade where we could feel the cool breeze over the water. It was definitely the right choice for a hot day!
The boat ride ate up the rest of our afternoon, so we went straight back to the hotel to shower and figure out where to have dinner. We settled on an Italian place called La Cucina, and made a reservation with the plan to splurge a bit. We ordered a bottle of wine and each got different veal dishes. Amber’s was better, but mine was still good. For dessert, Amber got mango-passion fruit sorbet and I got Lindt chocolate mousse. Yum!
Today is a travel day, so we spent the first little bit of our morning trying to get all of our stuff back into our bags, grabbing a quick breakfast, and checking out. From the hotel, we went directly to the train station and headed off to Grindelwald for our next adventure.
We made it to Grindelwald around 9:45. Then, dropped our luggage & bags at the station and bought our First (pronounced feerst) Adventure Packages. From here we hiked farther into town and up the hill to the gondola that took us to the top.
After dismounting from the zip line, we moved onto the mountain carts. These carts are basically tricycles for adults that are built for off-roading. However, these do not have any pedals nor an engine and rely on down hill momentum for speed & hand breaks to slow down around the curves. THESE WERE AWESOME! The route for this portion took us about halfway down the mountain. The first two thirds of the route was roughly maintained trails and roads, while the last third was concrete lattice, think old school patio. At the end, we traded our carts for trottibikes.
These scooters are exactly what you are thinking: two wheels, one in front of the other, with a platform in between and handlebar breaks. The route for this activity took us down hill along asphalt trails and country roads. However, the last little bit of your ride took us back into Grindelwald and up hill a bit. Then uphill a lot to return the scooters to the gondola station at the beginning.
Finally, back to the hotel for bed!
Waiting on the weather finally paid off! We had plans to go to at least two mountaintops during our time in Lauterbrunnen, but the forecast has been cloudy at higher elevations for our first three days here. Today the weather finally cooperated with sunny skies pretty much everywhere in the region so we took the opportunity to go up to Jungfraujoch.
But the story actually starts last night when I was trying to purchase the tickets. Our travel passes don’t cover this, though they do get us a discount. I was trying to buy the necessary tickets, and the first credit card I used wanted to send me a text for verification. Ok, I’ve received texts while in Switzerland already, this shouldn’t be a big deal. Except the text never arrived. So I tried a second time with the same result before switching to another card, only to have it declined due to fraud protection. After about 40 minutes and a conversation with two different people at Chase and Visa, I was I finally able to get the purchase to go through. Luckily that meant I had nothing to worry about this morning.
So what is Jungfraujoch? It’s the highest train station in Europe at 3,454 meters (about 11,332 feet). It sits on a saddle between the Mönch and Jungfrau summits. It took us two trains to get there, with the second one traveling mostly through a tunnel in the side of the mountain. Once you get up there, it’s a really over the top experience designed to get tourists to spend more money (as if the tickets weren’t already enough), but it’s also a really awesome experience, too.
We started by going outside on the platform at the observatory. It was pretty chilly up there, but nothing we haven’t experienced at home. Lots of people were milling around taking ridiculous photographs, and we might have been two of them. Next we went back inside to find our highest elevation cache ever. (Every Switzerland cache up to this point had probably broken our previous record from somewhere in Nebraska, but this crushed it.) Next we walked through the ice palace. We originally thought this was all man made, but the further we went the more it looked like the space had actually been carved out of the glacier. Our last cold attraction was the chance to walk up a rather slippery slope to the plateau area which is visible via the weather webcam.
We had a few more things to take care of before catching a train back down. First was a quick cafeteria style lunch (nothing special). Then we intentionally allowed ourselves to be sucked into the tourist trap that is Lindt Chocolate Heaven. I’m not telling how many truffles we bought…
With our chocolate desires taken care of (again), it was time to catch the next train out of there. The altitude wasn’t making either of us too uncomfortable, but we did feel a little off. The halfway point of a our journey back to Lauterbrunnen was the Kleine Scheidegg Station. We stopped here for a little extra time in order to complete the Grand Tour cache highlighting Jungfraujoch. It turned out to be further away than we were expecting, so we got a nice little walk in. I think this is when we both got a light sunburn. We decided to take a different route back from there, so we stopped in Grindelwald to explore a bit. This was mostly uneventful, but we’ll be back tomorrow for some more adventurous stuff.
