OREGON TRIP 3 – DAY 1

Wednesday, June 23^rd I left on the last leg of my journey to log a geocache in each Oregon county by motorcycle. I was on the road a little after 6:00 but it wasn’t as cold as my previous trips. As the western part of the state was my target there were no Oregon caches to do for a long ways.

The first cache attempt was in Multnomah County. It was supposed to be near two waterfalls with a trail leading up to them. As I was on the Interstate I had to exit and reverse my direction to access the falls area. However, even though I got with .15 miles of the cache which was just off the Interstate I could find no trail. To get to the cache I would have to climb 200 feet in elevation through thick brush and blackberry bushes which was totally impractical given my time constraints.

I got back on the Interstate, reversed my direction again and shortly stopped at a small pullout where a cache was supposed to be located down by the Columbia river. To get to the cache you had to walk through about 100 yards of woods and then across some marshy flats for about 430 feet. Unfortunately, with all the wet weather, the flats were in about 6” of water. I didn’t want that cache bad enough to endure wet feet for the rest of the day and maybe longer depending how long it would take for my boots to dry.

As with most counties, I had 3 caches lined out for Multnomah County. I had received prior warning that the next one might be in a construction area so I wasn’t surprised to find that was the case. I exited the freeway and turned south to find myself immediately in the construction area where they were stopping traffic. When it was my turn to go through I found that access to the cache was right in the middle of the construction so I pulled over to the shoulder of the road and parked in the construction area. Access to the cache was also fenced off by construction fencing. The cache was located in the woods so I had to work my way around the construction fencing and find a trail over to the cache area. Eventually I found the cache in the thick woods. All this area has lots of blackberry bushes which can make hiking brutal. I can tell you it was a load off my mind to finally get a cache in Multnomah County. That was easy, I said to myself.

Portland is in Multnomah County so my plan was to find caches for that county east of Portland and thereby being able to bypass all the traffic and congestion and then crossing the Columbia into Washington in the Longview area. As I hope to complete the Washington counties next year I had lined up three caches in Cowlitz County, WA. I was in Longview now just after midday and there was quite a bit of traffic. The first cache was in a little area near a creek. The coordinates took me to a rather unlikely spot in the open at the base of a hill where there was a beautifully ornate but broken container. I thought someone had robbed the cache but it was such an unlikely spot for one that I decided to look around a bit more. I saw a tree up the hill which was covered in tall grass so I climbed up to it and, sure enough, there was the actual cache.

The next cache was still in town so I found a parking spot in a fast food lot. It had gotten really warm so I took off my heavy shirt and overpants and packed them away. I had to walk a couple of blocks to find the cache which was cleverly hid. It was a benchmark but the top of the bench could be lifted off its base and the cache was down inside.

As my goal has always been two per county I skipped the third one I had lined up and crossed the river back into Columbia County, Oregon. The first cache was supposed to be a Travelbug hotel where Travelbugs are exchanged. It was located on a very busy highway 30 which is four lanes separated by a median barrier. I had found that as I got into these woods and steep hills my GPS reading would jump all over the place and caches had to be located more by where you think they might be (geosense) than by GPS readings. I must have searched for this cache for close to half an hour even crossing the four lanes to the other side of the highway. I didn’t stay over there very long because it seemed a very unlikely placement. Just as I had decided to give up I thought I would forget about the GPS and try one more search up the hill into the woods just looking for likely spots especially as it was supposed to be a rather large container. Just as I was about to give up again I found the container lodged in the crotch of a small tree or bush close to the ground. There weren’t any Travelbugs in it, however.

The next cache was a little beyond the really heavy traffic at a public boat launch and small picnic park. It was a small inlet and quite pleasant. Again I had to rely on my geosense rather than the GPS and eventually found the cache located in the end of a log. I took a pop break here on the boat dock.

Now on to Clatsop County and the 1880 Westport Tunnel. To access this cache I had to travel about a ¼ mile on an old unpaved dead end road through deep woods. I didn’t actually get to see the tunnel because the road was getting so bad I was afraid to go any further on my motorcycle. Again I found the cache by geosense and using the hint given in the listing. It was located in the middle of 5 trees almost grown together a little ways into the woods.

The last cache (Fallout III) I got for Clatsop County was near Astoria and was so named because the cache owner thought the neighborhood looked as if it had survived a nuclear explosion. It was in dense woods also and the cache was in a tree just within reach but not hard to find for a change.

I arrived at my motel in Astoria around 5:30 and after unpacking had a bowl of split pea soup courtesy of the motel. After eating I walked around Astoria a while which is an interesting place. Fortunately I was there on one of the few days it isn’t raining. There was no computer in the motel lobby so I had no way of logging my caches for the day. After lubing my motorcycle chain I turned in for the night. It had been a successful but somewhat frustrating day. M/W