Addendum 6-12-02 - After some feedback from GeoCache seekers, I
am upgrading the Terrain rating of this cache to at least a "2".
There is a very steep climb down (and back up) a gravel road to the
cache site and this may prove difficult for older and younger
searchers. (end of addendum)
This is my first Geocache and the first for Vashon Island. I
packed up the two younger kids, 2.75 yrs and 1.5 yrs and loaded up
the truck with food, water, mt bike and bike trailer. We also took
Doppler the Wonder Dog, the smartest border collie you might ever
meet. The parking lot is about 350 feet higher than the cache site
below. On the mt bike, with the kids etc in the bike trailer,
getting to the bottom takes about 12 seconds and getting to the top
takes about an hour. :^)
There is a high pier at the bottom of the hill
and [There is] a cobble beach [at the bottom of the hill]
with many interesting things to see when the tide is low. This area
is an old gravel pit, and the combination of excellent drainage and
rain shadow location make for a hot dry microclimate. If you are
familiar with Hawaii, this would be the Kona side of Vashon / Maury
islands. [Note: the pier was removed in 2008.]
We poked around for an hour, looking for a suitable cache
location. We saw several baby garter snakes under a chunk of rubber
and a beautiful garter snake with robins egg blue stripes. Two
kinds of lizard live in this area: The fairly common Alligator
lizard and the uncommon Fence Lizard, which looks like a little
horny toad. We saw both, and named the cache in honor of the rarer
beast.
In the spirit of traditional navigation and to reinforce some
rusting compass skills, you can find the cache by locating the
following waypoint:
N47° 22.814' W122° 24.228'
Walk a bearing of 50 degrees magnetic (earlier, I had mistakenly
reported a bearing of 310 mag - I told you my compass skills were
rusting) and you should trip over the cache, assuming I logged a
good waypoint. Its inside a new, unused paint can, with lotsa
geocashing.com on the outside.
NOTE: I downloaded my waypoints from my GPS to my Maptech
software, and the waypoint for the bearing seems to be too far
north. Try it out and lemme know!
I didn't put too much personal narrative in the logbook, being
in a hurry with the kids. The goodies in the can include an Outside
Magazine swiss army style knife (don't ask too much of it), $10
canadian, some plastic animals: t.rex, sheepdog (in honor of
Doppler), a tapir, and a lizard (must be a fence lizard). A couple
of seahells, and a bag of juice round out the offerings.
Additionally, there are a small cache of euro-style Vashon/Maury
oval stickers, take one. Post your visit here and send me
email at nullman@earthlink.net