Elberton

Elberton is a ghost town located about 5 miles southwest of Garfield, WA.  Last year I had noticed some geocaches there and decided it would make an interesting motocaching trip for son Clint and me.  For some reason it didn’t materialize last year so 08-18-18 was the day to do it.  Clint and I met at the Dynamart at the foot of the Lewiston Hill Saturday morning at 7:00 am and proceeded up the Spiral Highway.  We passed a trio of cruiser riders near the top of the grade and then took Hwy 195 north. I had planned to stop for a cache in Uniontown but it must have been annual yard sale day there so we didn't stop.  Before getting to Pullman we stopped and picked up a roadside cache on a guard rail.  I was glad we were on motorcycles due to very limited parking space.

Palouse cache

After passing through downtown Pullman we continued on Hwy 27 to Palouse where there were a couple of caches I hadn’t found.  Both of these caches were close together on a gravel road a little northeast of town.  After finding both we went back to town and continued on Hwy 27 to Garfield.  From Garfield we found Elberton Road which is paved all the way to Elberton.

Cemetery cache

Before getting into Elberton proper we took a gravel road up to a cache at the Elberton Cemetery.  These old cemeteries are always interesting and this one was no exception.  After quickly finding the cache we toured the old cemetery.  Except for the sign it was unkempt. On the way down to the town site we picked up another cache on a fence post.

Belaying equip req

Part of the course

The next cache was the most interesting one of the trip.  It was located in the woods above what had been a park across the street from an old church.  Signs at the park made reference to a “ropes” course and disclaiming liability for anyone who attempted it.  The course obviously hadn’t been used in years and seemed to be designed for extreme mountaineers.  It consisted of a series of stations some of which were beyond repair.  One required you to have mountaineering equipment and a sign said to not attempt it without belaying.  Another station required climbing a tree to access a platform to get to a cable so you could zip line down the hill to another tree about 50 yards away.  That would be fun!  It would be interesting to know when this was built and who used it because it isn’t near any population centers.  A lot of work went into building it, however.

Pretty nice old church

The next cache was “Elberton” and took us through what had been the center of town.  All that is left now is the rather large brick church.  Elberton was the last town in Washington to disincorporate in 1968 and the last store closed in 1973.  It was named after the founder’s son, Elbert.  For an interesting history of the town go to Geocaching.com and lookup GCRVNF in the Search bar.  We found the cache under a bridge over the Palouse River behind the church.

Got it!

We left town on a gravel road over to Dry Creek Road which is a good paved road.  We turned off it to get a quick cache and then I followed Clint over to Hume Road where we found his crash site from last year resulting in a badly wrecked bike and broken finger and damaged hand.

From there we traveled south to Colfax and turned on a gravel road for a rural cache east of town.  While there an old gentleman in a big grain truck skidded to a stop and asked if we were looking for that geocache.  He said it had been there for years.  It was an ammo box and an easy

Sneaky hide

find.  We went back into Colfax to look for one that Kathy and I hadn't been able to find a few years back.  They had moved it across the parking lot from the original location and Clint found it stuck in the crack of a telephone pole.  The log was encased in folded duct tape.

Cool cache

At Clint's suggestion we turned off 195 at Pullman and took Wawawai Road back down to the Snake River.  On the way down we stopped for a large and clever cache disguised as a direction marker of some kind.  It was hot down on the river (low 90's) a little past noon compared to the pleasant weather we had had for most of the trip.  We scored 11 caches with no DNF's and traveled 157 miles.  It was a great day.  M/W