Category: Travels

Oregon Travels: Tillamook

After Bridal Veil Falls, we had continued along the Crown Point Scenic Highway that runs parallel to I-84 on the south side of the highway.  We stopped at Multnomah Falls and did the climb up to the Benson Bridge, took some pictures, and checked out the gift shop. We didn’t do the traditional caches there because for some reason I did not load them, so we will have to come back someday.  We were going to check out Oneonta Gorge after that, but we actually just weren’t in the mood, what with the argument earlier and being hungry and all. So we pointed the car west and headed towards Portland, and food, and other fun caches.

There was one cache in Portland that we really wanted to get, but turns out it is in a location that is not accessible on Sundays.  Darn!  It was around the corner from a Taco Time where we could have lunch (max amount of Taco Timing when we are in the Pac Northwest!) and a really, really cute TB hotel (Shelrik’s Happy Cache Inn).  Here is a picture of the inside of it:

After this, we realized we needed to make some time in order to reach the night’s destination in time. To get to the coast, we had to go through Tillamook State Forest. Maybe it was because I was wearing these sunglasses that make the world a better place (brand name: Costa’s: seriously the best sunglasses ever), but Tillamook was so incredibly beautiful. We didn’t stop a LOT, and we ended up not going for the grandfather cacvhe out here in the interest of time, but we did stop a few times for caches and general exploring, including finding this hidden waterfall due to a cache. Here are some of the photos from out there. Definitely a place worth exploring more in the future:

In my opinion, this forest was one of the highlights of this trip. It is 364,000 acres located just 40 miles west of Portland along Hwy 6. You should check it out if you are ever in Portland!
After this, we reached the actualy coastal town of Tillamook, where the cheese is made. I had to stop at the creamery. I ended up buying this cutting board and knife set and two blocks of cheese, summer sausages, and crackers that we ended up eating off of for the rest of our trip.
Finally, we made it to Nehalem Bay State Park, our campsite for the night, and base of operations for our hike into Oswald West State Park, which was so cool it deserves its own post. Next time I have computer time, I will tell and show you all about this jewel of the Oregon Coast.

Bridal Veil Falls

When we left Sandy the morning after finding those old caches, our first mission was to head for some scenic waterfalls along I-84 heading east, with the intent to double back around at some point and head west towards the coast.

The first of the waterfalls, and accompanying caches, we were after was Bridal Veil Falls.  The approach to this one got us into a huge argument that will probably live in infamy in our relationship.

Our first road trip together, there were no fights.  We were still in the Love Bubble I guess, and now we have gotten to the point where we can really drive each other crazy.  In this case, there was an argument over where to park, which direction we needed to start heading down the trail on, and what was the appropriate solution to some freaking out the GPS was doing.  In the end, we did it Jason’s way, and he turned out to be right.  Likely, he will tell you he is always right.

I almost didn’t even want to walk down the trail with him.  In the end, though, the beauty of the waterfall and the flora surrounding it was therapeutic, and I was in a much better mood coming back up the trail back to parking.  Especially after we found the cache (and turns out he was right about where it was hidden, too).  Here are some photos.  Cache is GC1A224, Bridal Veil Silver.

 

 

The Original and Un-Original Stash and Misadventures in Molalla

I’ll just say that perhaps our plan for this whole day was overly ambitious, this fourth day in our vacation. This was the same day I wrote about in the post below, where we left Ashland in the morning (after dwelling way too long at a posh hip diner in town with terrible, annoying alleged free wifi) and drove north to points just south and east of Portland, where we hiked an hour or more doing the GC16 cache, and then afterwards, where we made our pilgrimage to the spot that started it all.

The Original Stash Tribute Plaque (GCGV0P)

In May of 2000, Dave Ulmer hid a bucket here and then posted the coordinates on a website and asked people to see if they could find it. This was the beginning of geocaching, but before there was even a word for it. So many people were interested in the concept, and then wanted to hide their own and find more, that a game was born. Read more about the history of geocaching here. Eventually this original geocache was destroyed, but Team 360 and some others realized the importance of this location and had the plaque made. A person finds the plaque and signs a log at the nearby ammo can to claim the find.
I had actually logged this find in August of 2008, in a previous life, but J had never been here. As someone who has been involved with the game from the early years (2003), I thought he really should have this find under his belt. Plus, it is part of what is called the Geocaching Triad, or Trifecta – which includes the (now archived but reborn as just a regular) APE cache, Groundspeak Headquarters, and this cache. We were headed to Groundspeak later this week, and I wanted us both to be able to say we completed the Triad.
Meanwhile, while he was checking it out and signing the log, I made the trek right up the hill behind this cache site to get a grandfather cache, GC92, or: The Unoriginal Stash.
I didn’t get this one last time I was here because daylight was fading and I really needed a flashlight to be able to find it, and it is up this hill that is really muddy and slippery. That day, I had already gotten the bottom of my jeans dirty that day and we were kind of in a rush to get to the Portland airport at the time to fly back to Houston. This time I had daylight and wasn’t in a terrible hurry. I didn’t fall down either, which I thought was impressive because it had been raining on and off out here (go figure, being so close to Portland) and the ground was quite wet.
We weren’t in a particular hurry up to this point in the day, but perhaps we should have been. The thing is, we didn’t give ourselves enough daylight to get to GC12 and 17 together in one day. GC17 we ended up having to skip entirely. It’s a five mile round trip hike when done correctly. We had about an hour until the sun went down when we got to the area where the trails began, and we gave it all up on GC12, which should have been a lot simpler.
To get to GC12, you take these forest roads that get more narrow and remote. We finally ended up parking at this “y” juncture and first taking the wrong fork, then the right fork to walk to it. It was only about a half mile walk but it was like the longest half mile ever. Some people drive right up to it, but the trees lean their branches in and scrape their little “fingernails” against the car, and we didn’t want to have to pay for a paint job on the rental car. So we walked, but we weren’t really thrilled about it. I think we were sore from some other hikes or just kind of tired and not in the mood, but mostly we were a little freaked out, feeling really small and vulnerable in this forest. J was worried about human predators and I was worried about animal ones. Then, the cache took forever because it was surprisingly hard to find, considering it is a big white and blue bucket.


So it was almost dark when we got back to the car from this misadventure. Plus, we needed to find a camping spot for the night, and my original idea was to find one northeast of this little area, and we never made it out that way.
We had a long day of hiking and driving and the last thing we wanted to do was go without dinner and fumble around in the dark pitching a tent to stay in for one night, so we wended up paying too much for an only halfway decent hotel in Sandy, Oregon.
Now we’ll have to go back to this area one day, yet again, so I can scratch that darn GC17 off my list of the oldest geocaches left unfound.

GC1AA06 The Crown Jewel: The Unforgettable Smith River

One of the other highlights of this day of our trip, besides the Eight Dollar Mountain Road and subsequent mud issues, was an exploration of a section of trail in the Smith River National Recreation Area that lead to the confluence of the Middle and South forks of the Smith River.
The hike we took was not a long one, but was scenic. A wet, dripping dark green laced trail led to an area where you had to go down a little rock ledge to this overlook.
This area is part of the Six Rivers National Forest that forms the east and northern boundary of the Redwood Forest, stretching from Northern California to just past the Oregon border. The area is composed of 957,590 National Forest acres and 133,410 acres of other ownership.  Of this space, 450 acres were designated as part of the Smith River National Recreation Area by Congress in 1990 for protection of wild and scenic rivers, ecological diversity, recreation opportunities, and sustained productivity of natural resources.


The Smith River is unique in that it is the only river system without any dam in California. This means that the entire river system is accessible for any length of trip by rafters and kayakers.  Due to the lack of a dam, though, and also to the rocky watershed that contains little soil to hold moisture, the river only runs well during a rain or within a few days after.  February is said to be the best month to kayak or raft the river, with the season running from November to April.

Some of the best fishing in the US is said to be offered by the Smith, including trophy sized steelhead trout, chinook salmon and other game fish species.  Besides rafting and fishing, camping is a popular activity. There are four campgrounds in the area. Some hikes lead to popular swimming holes, and there is always opportunity for bird watching or plant/wildflower walks.  The summer weather is allegedly dry and in the 80-100 degree range, so of course it figures that the day we were there, it was like 50 degrees and raining.

We were there for, you guessed it, geocaching along the trail. Since I really enjoyed the location and this cache find, I left two travel bugs in the cache that I brought from Texas for the next finder. This is another place I would like to spend more time in next time we are ever in this area of the country, and a place I would recommend to others traveling this way.