Wondering where I should go today to take my little schnauzer dog, Fritz, for a walk and get a little workout myself. I decided on hiking the ridge line of Little Badger Mountain. I had a couple of good excuses:

• A local cacher had just placed 3 geocaches along the ridge line
• I could map the trails and send them to Northwest Trails for inclusion on the next update.
• Next week I hope to hike up around the Wallula Gap overlook and this would be a good practice.

Little did I realize it would take me 3 hours and would end up walking 4.8 miles. The trail starts at an elevation of about 700 feet and the primary summit is a little over 1200 feet but with all the ups and downs my GPS reports that I climbed 754 feet on the way out and a total of 1156 feet by the time I was back to the car. My legs believe those statistics! I wish I had put a GPS on my dog. I am sure he must have covered at least 20 miles. Next time I take him out I will attach my old GPS to his harness. Besides seeing how far he traveled, it will be fun to superimpose his track log on top of mine.

I transferred my GPS track of the hike to Google Earth. I started out at the position marked “Trailhead NW” in the upper left corner of the map. The green line is my hike out to the end of the ridge line. On the way back I strayed a bit, shown with the blue lines, to pick up some of the other trails. The hike down to the spot labeled “Trailhead SE” and then back up just about killed me. I was glad there was a lower trail around the side of the mountain (that, of course, had to be mapped) and did not have to hike back up to the summit. The track file has been submitted to Nothwest Trails and includes the trails marked in red that I did not walk but felt needed to be included. The last time I was here I came up the trail labeled “Trailhead NE”. That was a steep hike. I did not want to walk down it today since I was pretty sure I would not make it back to the top.

The three caches I had come to ‘hunt’ were Yankee II, Yankee Go Home, and Just BPA II. All three were found without too much difficulty. Another cache, Hawk’s View, is on the ridge line but I had found it and a couple of other caches in the area back in December 2007. I wish I had brought a couple geocache containers up with me since there is plenty of room for a few more good hides. Guess I have an excuse to come back!

After I got back to the car I did drive to the point labeled “Trailhead NE” to get the exact GPS coordinates and while there I replaced a cache called (Canteens’ Fantasy II). Another cacher originally had hidden it nearby but had archived it. The location was a good spot for a cache so I decided to resurrect it.

Now I am home and cannot move without groaning but my little schnauzer dog seems to be just fine. Here are some more photos of my hike.

Wednesday, March 11th 2009, is the date for Second Harvest Tri-Cities’ 4th annual signature fund raising event, “Taking a Bite Out of Hunger” at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Kennewick. Taking a Bite out of Hunger brings together hundreds of individuals and businesses to raise money to fight hunger in the Columbia Basin. Last year my wife and I enjoyed ourselves thoroughly and are looking forward to attending again this year..

The areas finest restaurants will be providing samples of their best main dishes and as well as exquisite hors d’oeuvres and desserts. Area wineries and microbreweries will be featuring their award-winning wines and beers. Guests also will have an opportunity to bid on items laid out for the silent auction.

So, while taking a bite, all who attend are also taking a bite out of hunger in our local area since all the money raised is used locally to help those who are in need.

For more information on how to donate an auction item, become a sponsor and/or attend the event, contact Second Harvest Tri-Cities at (509) 585-3924

Fighting Hunger, Feeding Hope

Second Harvest, founded in 1971, leads a network of more than 300 neighborhood food banks and meal centers throughout Eastern Washington and North Idaho. Second Harvest provides more than 1 million pounds of donated food each month to help feed hungry people.

According to the Second Harvest Tri-Cities’ website, they bring community resources together to feed people in need through empowerment, education and partnerships. Although not a traditional food bank, 2nd Harvest Tri-Cities functions as the distribution warehouse to other food banks. Food donations that arrive at the 2nd Harvest Tri-Cities warehouse are distributed through a network of agencies serving non-profit food banks, food-feeding centers, and churches. According to the Director, Kathye Kilgore, “It’s literally the food bank to the food banks.”

Second Harvest Tri-Cities is committed to ensuring a safe and nutritious supply of food is available to families, children and seniors in need in our neighborhoods. Thanks to generous community partners, Second Harvest is able to provide six pounds of donated food for every dollar donated. The 5,000-square-foot warehouse in Kennewick distributed 3.2 million pounds of food last year. This makes every donation to Second Harvest a valuable investment in fighting hunger and feeding hope.

Event Info

• Location: Three Rivers Convention Center, 7016 W. Grandridge Blvd., Kennewick
• Date: Wed Mar 11, 2009
• Time: 6:00pm – 9:00pm
• Table Sponsorship: $500 – seats 8
• Advance tickets: $50 per person in advance
• At the Door: Not Available
• Contact: (509) 585-3924
• Website: 2nd Harvest Tri-Cities

(Continuing from part 1)

End of the Rut was next on our list. The GPS brought us to bolder inside a nice little park. In 1906 Ezra Meeker had the words “End of the Old Oregon Trail 1843 – 1906″ cut into its face. The cache page said that we needed to follow the wall made by hands to where we would find a wall made with no mans hands. Following these instructions we were led to the corner of the park where a natural stone wall rose up 10 or 12 feet. Searching through the ivy we found a zip lock bag containing the cache contents. Seems that the original container was ‘muggled’ and some cachers had collected the remnants of the cache and placed them in the zip lock bag. I see that the cache page now has new instructions to a different location. Hopefully this new location will not be tampered with.

We noticed on our GPS that there was another cache nearby, The Crucifix, and decided to go after it even though it was not one of the 12 needed. Sometimes geocaching becomes an obsessive compulsive behavior. We followed the GPS to the front of First Christian Church. We looked in all the obvious places in the rhododendron bushes up against the building with no luck. I checked the hint: “one of three of a kind”. Hmmm. There were 3 brick protrusions from on the building, but we had checked there. So we checked again. Still nothing. I stepped back from the building to see if I could get a better perspective. “What’s this? Hey guys, here it is!” Coordinates need to be fine tuned to place the location 30 or 40 feet from the front of the building but that is what you have to deal with when geocaching.

One of the reasons the Chamber of Commerce created this cache series was to get folks off the highway and into town. According to Dana Schmidling, Executive Director of The Dalles Area Chamber of Commerce,

When we started The Dalles Dash, our goal was to get travelers off of the highway and into our town. Since the view of The Dalles from the highway is not particularly appealing, we wanted to do something to get people into town to see our “hidden gems”. When we decided to do The Dalles Dash we selected our historic sites and locations with great views. It seems to have worked. People are always saying “I didn’t know that was there.”

So far, I would have to agree. I am seeing a lot of the area and we are not even 1/2 way done with the caches. My family has driven by The Dalles numerous times. Except for a quick stop years back for a couple caches in town, our only other stops have been after 10pm at night when we would pull into K-Mart to Boondock with our travel trailer on our way to Ocean Park on the Long Beach Peninsula.

It was now time for us to support the economy of The Dalles. With the 3 caches we did on our way to The Dalles Dash and the 5 caches done so far, we were hungry! One of our foursome suggested Burgerville which we easily found 2 blocks away (but only with the help of our GPS). Lunch was great but was cutting in to our caching time and the weather looked like it was going to start getting nasty.

Looking forward to Part 3 … the long walk

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Just signed up my 11 year old daughter for the ‘Kennewick Fishing Kids‘ program that is being held on May 2nd, 2009. There are 300 spots available in each of the 4 different time slots scheduled, 9:00 am, 10:30 am, 12:00 pm, and 1:30pm. So sign up early before there are no more openings.

A number of girls from her American Heritage Girls group are planning to fish together during the 10:30 slot. It only costs $5 per kid and they are given a ‘Fishing Kids” T-Shirt and get to keep the Zebco rod and reel and any trout they catch.

The program is put on across the state by the Department of Fish and Wildlife between April and June. Its primary goal is to give kids an opportunity to go fishing.

As part of its effort to “Get more kids fishing, more often,” the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and C.A.S.T. for Kids Foundation have teamed with businesses, organizations and volunteers from all over Washington to provide about a dozen fantastic fishing opportunities for children ages 5 to 14.

My daughter is really looking forward to go again this year. We were not able to make it last year but the two previous years she had a blast. Pre-registration is required, and the number of kids per event is limited, so if you have a child between 5 and 14 years old, get them signed up now.

Cool Photo of the Day

© All rights reserved. Used with permission

Jes caught a gorgeous sunset from the Pasco side of the Columbia River with the Cable Bridge in the foreground.

In a recent post I accidentally wrote ‘loose’ instead of ‘lose’. It is not because I do not know the difference in definitions of the two words. Loose is an adjective that means “not tight.” Lose is a verb meaning “not to win” or “not to keep.” I would never accidentally write lose for loose but I do write loose for lose. Why? Like many of my spelling errors I depend too much on the phonics rules and never learned many of the exceptions. Phonetically, lose would be more properly spelled luze but, of course, that is wrong. Phonetically, lose would be pronounced like hose since an ‘e’ following a single consonant makes the preceding vowel long. But no, this is wrong. It is one more exception that must be learned.

Paul Brians, retired Professor of English at Washington State University, has one of the best explanations I found to remember which word to use:

This confusion can easily be avoided if you pronounce the word intended aloud. If it has a voiced Z sound, then it’s “lose.” If it has a hissy S sound, then it’s “loose.” Here are examples of correct usage: “He tends to lose his keys.” “She lets her dog run loose.”

I also try to remember that lose with one ‘o’ is related to loss and lost — If you lose the game, you suffer a loss. If you lose a dollar bill, it is lost. All 3 words, lose, loss, and lost, have just one ‘o’.

We found a number of geocaches on our way to Ocean Shores. In looking over the list of potential caches I ran across Grab the Bell by the Horns and from the comments of previous finders knew we had to do it:

1/24/2009 by seresh2008
Will have to check and see if anyone has posted a picture of someone while finding the cache. It must look pretty funny to people passing by. tftc

1/17/2009 by lindlib
Why do I always get to find the ones that make me look like an idiot??I would guess there are muggles here 24/7 so we just went for it. A few strange looks but I’m used to that

1/17/2009 by pwezzr2
Boy, there is no way to look inconspicuous while doing this one. Good thing I always cache with the wife. I looked but didn’t find it so she looked and was successful. Good wife! TFTC.

9/15/2008 by pacrimman
You can’t be too tall or too short to find this one. But nice spot on a rainy day.

9/11/2008 by Emma60
Yep, the bell has a nice sound to it, especially when I use my head as a ringer. Thanks Squarehead and team.

9/6/2008 by lockettfamily
Cool hide. Have some wild pictures of sons while nabbing this. SL TFTC

8/25/2008 by the.james.gang
DJ got a good laugh at MJ as her and KJ were looking for the cache. Found it though! TFTH!

8/8/2008 by R-L-PAINTER
Found fairly quickly..This is a “No Guts, not glory” type cache..TNLNSL..TFTH..

7/28/2008 by TheCowboyWayne
0400 and still a high muggle factor! Loitered for about 20 min waiting for the coffee girls to go in. They may have thought I was waiting to rob the joint!(hard to look inconspicuous this early) I think the previous poster is right, wonder if anyone has ever been arrested while caching?… :) Great hide! SL

7/27/2008 by grandpadave
It was hard to be stealthy when retrieving this cache.I watched for pedestrians as Frisbee’r made the grab.Wonder what the people driving by thought?

7/27/2008 by frisbee’r
An interesting spot for a hide. I can’t help but imagine what the scene must have looked like to drivers passing by. Grandpadave and I enjoyed the fun.

6/14/2008 by espg24
People watching must have thought we were crazy. Thanks!

6/8/2008 by justpedalin
What are those crazy people doing fondling public art? One of these days this hobby will get us arrested. Went in and bought lunch afterwards. TFTH

6/8/2008 by ohjoy!
Wondering how to get this one? Just follow my example – pretend to be a 70 year old lady. No one questions me – figure it goes with the territory. And you get away with all sorts of strange behavior – like groping public art.

I checked the mouth, I checked the nose. No luck. Hmmm. The cache is a bison tube, is it a sepository? No. I wonder if they would…. Yep. There it is. That’s right. I am not going to give it away. Go find it yourself :)

On our way to Ocean Shores we stopped to do a couple geocaches. One of the most memorable was Winter Feeding by 6 Pack Rats. It brought us to the Oak Creek Feeding Station where we saw hundreds of elk. Bighorn sheep also feed here, but we did not happen to see any. Next time I will bring my binocuars.

The Oak Creek Headquarters Visitor Center is approximately 20 miles west of Yakima on Highway 12, 2 miles west of the junction with Highway 410. I plan to bring the kids up to this area and plan on riding the truck that is taken out among the animals. More info can be found at the Naches Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Washington State Department of Transportation.

This is one of the great attractions of geocaching. Many times it will bring you to places you did not know exist. To places you will want to return to with family and friends.