Grant County International Airport located in Moses Lake on the north end of the city, due north of where this cache is located. The airport has a long history serving the aviation community. Prior to the county taking over the airfield, it was Larson Air Force Base. The base opened as a training airfield during World War II and ran as a U.S. Air Force Base until 1966 when Grant County took it over and turned the airfield into a general aviation airfield. The airfield's runway is the 17th longest in the US at 13,500 feet long.
After Grant County took over the airfield, it continued to serve as an aviation training facility with Japanese Airlines (JAL) using the airport for 40 years as a training facility for their heavy jets until 2009. You could frequently see JAL pilots due "touch and gos" in their 747s. The U.S. Air Force and Boeing still uses the facility to this day as a testing facility. In November 1974, the airport hosted a new Supersonic Transport (SST) Concorde for a month during FAA Certification testing. During NASA's Space Shuttle program, the airport served as an alternative runway for the Space Shuttles program. In more recent history, in 2011 the 92nd Air Refueling Wing at Fairchild AFT in Spokane temporarily moved its KC-135 R/T fleet and operations to the airport while the bases aviation fuel distribution system was being upgraded. In September 2019 Boeing stored over 100 of the undelivered 737 Max planes during the FAA's grounding of the planes while the FAA investigated the 737 Max program.
The airport did have some limited commercial aviation flights. Big Sky Airlines had passenger flights to Boise, ID as well as Portland, OR. These flights ended in 2006. Skywest Airlines offered nonstop flights to Seattle from June 2009 until June 2010. Currently, the airport does not offer commercial passenger air service.
Enjoy the view of the lake. Be on the look out for snakes when searching in the sage brush for the cache.
In September 2002, a group of 19 concerned geocachers scheduled a meeting after hearing that the Washington State Parks was considering banning geocaches in the state park system. Out of this meeting, the Washington State Geocaching Association (WSGA) was "born" with its core values of promoting geocaching as a fun, family-oriented outdoor activity that increases awareness and appreciation of the environment and our parks and trails, provide opportunities for participants to enjoy geocaching and to socialize with other geocaches, educate park systems and land managers about geocaching and its benefits, increase awareness and support of the geocaching through interaction with other outdoor groups and the public, encourage low-impact geocaching and promote stewardship of our natural resources, and support "Cache In Trash Out" activities to help maintain parks and trail systems.
In 2022, the WSGA turns 20 years young. To celebrate this milestone, the WSGA is hosting a 20th-anniversary GeoTour. This GeoTour will give you the opportunity to travel to all corners of the Evergreen State while you search for 140 GeoTour caches. To make it easier to tackle such a large GeoTour, each of our 7 regional chapters will host a bite-sized GeoTour consisting of 20 GeoTour caches with the entire GeoTour consisting of 140 caches. To learn more about our GeoTour, please visit the GeoTour page on our website which you can find HERE. We hope that you enjoy getting back out on the road while touring around Washington State. If you have any questions about our GeoTour, you can reach out to us via the contact tab on our website.
GEOTOUR UPDATE
The WSGA's 20th Anniversary GeoTour will end on December
31, 2024, at
11:59pm PT.
You will only have until this date and time to find the
geocaches, post all of your logs for the digital souvenirs (if qualified), and
submit all of your passports of unique codes for the geocoins (if qualified).
There will be no exceptions.