Vancouver WA

This is our last night in Vancouver, WA. We've been at the 99 RV Park since arriving on Sunday, and during the drive down from Canada stopped at several rest stops to pick up caches. Made for some nice breaks from the driving monotony. During the couple of days here, I've picked up all the old caches that I had on my shopping list, filling in 9 squares on my Jasmer grid. Oh... what's a Jasmer grid, you say? Well, glad you asked... there are several well known self "challenges" that are popular among cachers, and one of them (the Jasmer challenge) is to log a find for a cache placed during each month since caching started (May of 2000). Before this trip, I'd logged finds that were placed during 134 of the possible 162 (up to October)

So far on this trip, I've closed the gap by 9. I've mapped out another 9 before our final destination at 29 Palms, as we pass through (and stop at) Grants Pass OR, Sacramento CA and Bakersfield CA. The remaining blank squares will be the oldest, and they'll be the hardest to find. They'll likely be in remote places in Oregon, as that's where caching started. The first "stash" as it was known then was just SE of Portland, and there's a commemorative plaque at its site now. Logging it is part of the "Triad", which consists of the APE Cache Mission 9: Tunnel of Light, Groundspeak Headquarters (both just outside of Seattle) and the Original Stash Cache. I'm hoping to be able to attend the Groundspeak block party mega event next August, and I'll get the Triad then, as well as some of those original caches.

Yesterday I was in the West Hills of Portland and got Portland's oldest continuously active cache, dating to February of 2001. It was a "vector offset" cache, which means you need to go to a given place and then project coordinates given bearing and distance. It was quite fun. Today I got two widely separated finds, one in a wildlife refuge park (an ammo can!), and the other up a 2 mile hike into a forest park. Both were very satisfying finds, especially since the second one's published coordinates were 99 feet off.

For one of the caches, the requirement was that you go to an old arcade (remember them?) at the published coordinates and log a high score on any game. I went when they first opened at noon and grabbed a machine that hadn't been played yet for the day, it was my only chance of getting a high score!  :-)

One of yesterday's caches was on the grounds of Washington State University, called the "Wailing Bell", and featured this unusual sculpture off in the woods. Inscribed on it are quotations from essays by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Gary Snyder and award-winning Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan. It works, too.

So in the morning we pull up our tent pegs and hoof on down I-5 towards Grants Pass. There are 16 caches waiting for us in rest stops along the way.  :-)