Seattle Bound: Day 8

The Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA

Lauren is really concentrating...

All the aircraft you see is the real deal!

Does she look like a fighter pilot?

Hilarious!

Tiki Luau Event: The Logbook

Holy Slugs, Batman!

On Friday, after a week on the road, we were excited to have a day "mostly" free from commitments. We really wanted to make it to the Tiki Luau Event later that evening and we did have dinner reservations with our fellow Review Team members at night, but the rest of the day was open. When talking to our "boss" Jenn, she recommended the The Museum of Flight and that was all Mike needed to hear!

Seeing all of the real airplanes indoors was really fascinating and I loved the write-ups on each plane and on the people that have made flight possible. The girls weren't particularly impressed but there were fun things for them to do and a special area just for kids really piqued their interest. We also had fun up in the "Tower" area, where you could clearly see the runway at Boeing Field, hear the communications between the Tower and pilots in the area and see the incoming aircraft on the computer monitors. Very cool...

After that, we headed to the Tiki Luau Event which was awesome and really well planned. The hotdogs were delicious and all the food was free. BONUS. There was an awesome surfboard to sign as the "logbook" (can you find our name (Tikibirds)) and everyone was given Hawaiian Leis when they arrived. We picked up some cool swag, hung out with our fellow Michigan geocaching family members and watched with fascination the giant slugs that seemed to everywhere! Good times!

Seattle Bound: Day 6 & 7

Panorama View of Twin Falls, ID

 A different kind of Train Table!

Ummm, do these cows belong here?

Sunset over Oregon

Starting the 4 mile "Ape Cache" hike...

Acting like monkeys after finding the "Ape"!

Rivers and Waterfalls along the trail.

Hiking down the Annette Lake Trail in Washington.

Bridge over the river on the Asahel Curtis Nature Trail.

We drove through Salt Lake City, UT which was having blistering 100 degree temps and into Idaho, a new State for both Mike and I. We stopped for lunch in Twin Falls, which was an unexpectedly beautiful area. Loved it! We continued on into Oregon and continued our climb into the mountains. We ate dinner at this really cool restaurant where a train constantly ran through the entire place and right past where you were eating at your table! This, of course, was a big hit with the kids (including Mike).  :)

We spent the night in Kennewick, WA, visited the local REI store and picked up our daily Parks Pass. Our only real goal for the day was to make the hike to find the only remaining "Ape" cache in North America: GC1169 Mission 9: Tunnel of Light. This is a 4 mile round-trip hike, with some very steep sections and one of our most important goals for the trip. It was POURING rain when we arrived and there were other cachers coming back from the hike or starting their trek every couple of minutes. With the elevation and the weather, I wasn't feeling that great again so I opted (reluctantly) to stay back while the girls and Mike took on the challenge. 

The girls did a great job, never complaining or falling once. They were really disappointed to find out though when they got there that someone just before us had stolen the top off the cache. What a shame...at least everything had been recently bagged and another cacher had put a big bag around the cache to try to keep the water out since now it was completely open to the elements. Word has it that a new cover is in the works or has already been put in place. 

I couldn't just stay in the car so I decided to hike the Asahel Curtis Nature Trail, which started right next to the Annette Lake trail but was only 3/4 of a mile around. It was such a beautiful area and just how I pictured hiking the Cascade Mountains would be. It was an adventuresome day and by evening, we had finally made it to Seattle! Yes!

Seattle Bound: Day 5 (Park City, Utah)

Tara goes for Gold!

Well, if you insist! (what a great name for a street!)

Going up the chairlift at Deer Valley!

At 9300ft elevation, it wasn't surprising to see snow at the top!

Going down....

A hidden park in downtown Park City (we're Geocaching, of course)

Park City, Utah was extremely beautiful and I would love to go back any time of the year. We spent a good portion of the day caching, picking which spots we wanted to explore the most, like the top of mountains and Olympic Venues. We even met another set of geocachers while exploring downtown. The crazy part was that they didn't use team names, didn't log on-line and didn't use a GPS unit (just their phones). I don't think their style could have been more different from ours, but here we were with the same goal and find it we did! 

We went up to Deer Valley Ski Resort where we grabbed a few caches and then decided to ride the chairlift up to the top of the mountain to do some hiking and exploring. They had an awesome mountain bike course down the mountain that was clearly very popular...it looked like fun! There was snow on the mountain and we had a good time throwing snow balls at each other...in June! Unfortunately, the altitude was not particularly friendly to me and I ended up feeling pretty lousy after our adventurous day. I recovered quickly and we were on our way to Oregon and Washington the next morning. I'll miss you, Park City. Stay gorgeous until I return!

Seattle Bound: Day 3 & 4

The Twins found the Geocache!

An unexpected find in a park in the middle of nowhere Kansas! Hello F-14!

Finding "MINGO", the oldest active cache in the world!

The rain on the plain in Kansas.

Uncle Fred, Aunt Wink, Fred and Jennifer met us in CO for breakfast!

On top of the world in Wyoming!

Sunset in the mountains...

We had beautiful weather on days 3 & 4 as we drove out of OK, through KS and into CO. We were lucky enough to be able to get together with Mike's Uncle Fred and his family while we were in town. It was so nice to see everyone!

Our drive through Wyoming was exciting as the terrain and landscape were really starting to change at this point. It did take us longer to get to Park City, UT than we had anticipated though. By the time we got there, everyone was beat and just wanted a bed to put our heads on. Luckily, it was a really nice place and I'll share some the adventures we had there in my next post!