Saturday, March 20, 2010
Boat Caches on Columbia River
One of the challenge caches I’m working on is the Oregon History Challenge - finding the remaining 22 geocaches from the first 12 months of Geocaching’s beginning back in 2000. At this point, I had found nine of them.
A few weeks ago, a Eugene cacher - tobe4evr1 (Dana) - arranged a boat rental for a group of up to eight to hunt a few caches on Government Island on the Columbia River at Portland. One of these caches - The Government Duck - is one of those 22 caches in the challenge. Dana put out an email to garner interest - I bit right away since Pat and I were already scheduled to be in Portland the weekend he had planned…..today!
Dana booked the boat for four hours so as to avoid the “Gillian’s Island” curse (you know…..a three hour tour….). We were scheduled for 10:30 am to 2:30 pm.
So who were the eight going? Dana and his daughter (ukrainian princess), the TREKKS (couple), Team Greenwoodturner (couple), Rod of Family Explorer and myself.
We couldn’t have asked for better weather! No rain (that was coming next day!). Clear skies. Some wind to contend with but not bad.
Rental guy launching the boat for us
After an hour long checklist and instructions from the rental person, we boarded a pretty sporty looking boat with Captain Dana at the wheel. We headed over to Government Island talking strategy all the way. The hope was that we could pick up six caches associated with the island or very near by. As it turned out, we only managed to get three - just took longer getting to the island and docking at the three locations. But the important thing was getting the main prize - the Government Duck cache.
But first we pulled up to a public dock on the north side of the island to get the Pyrat’s Booty cache. Once on the island it was a short walk to the cache and fairly easily found - not surprising given eight experienced cachers in fine form! Back in the boat and off to one more dock-accessed cache…...Dock-it Up. That hunt went much the same way. The exciting part of that one was parallel parking the boat between larger boats in a very tight space! Dana did great plus we had help from folks on the dock! One of those people turned out to be a geocacher and had a container with her that she was planning to put out on the island that very day! We promised her we’d return another day to find her cache…..then we all mumbled “NOT” under our breath as we headed ashore to hunt our quarry! LOL ONE time to the island is probably enough!
Docking Up at the Dock-it-up Cache
The final, most important was next! We had to go around the east end of the island and come around to the south side and look for a sandy beach area to anchor by…..nope, no dock here! We were a little concerned with this strategy since we got quite the lecture from the rental guy about not getting sand up in the jet engines! So we start rounding the eastern tip of the island and all we can see is a shoreline of large riprap rock! No sandy beaches! Then as come around further, we see the sandy beach finally and are happy once again….for a moment anyway! Waiting between us and the sandy beach is a line of pilings. Well, not to worry, we just have to boat out around them….no problem. We get around the end piling only to discover a second row of pilings connecting with this one in a T-shape blocking access to the sandy beach! EXCEPT for a little tiny break just wide enough for the boat! With the water a bit choppy and the wind blowing we circle a couple of times pondering and talking over whether to go through or not. No choice really - we have to since we didn’t have time to go all the way around the other side of the island. Dana did a great job slicing through there! Just like a pro!
Beached! Pretty pic of Mt. Hood in back!
Finally we approach the sandy beach and ease in as far as we can and come to rest on the sand with about 20 feet of really cold water between the boat and beach! We hop off the boat and wade to shore. We realize that we have to break into two groups because someone has to stay with the boat holding in in place by rope - we had nothing to tie the boat to at the beach! The cache is about 400 feet from the beach so Rod leads about 2/3 of the group inland through blackberries and nettles while Dana, Elaina, one of the TREKKS and I hang back to watch the boat.
Mrs. Greenwoodturner and Rod fighting through the berries and nettles!
As we waited, we pondered an alternative approach to the cache because we were sure the others were having a tough time getting through the vegetation. I decided to try walking on the jumble of large rock rubble lining the island edge around the tip instead. Sweet! It was much better and I beat the others to GZ but couldn’t find the cache! Yikes! Not good! With the others now helping, the cache was finally found and signed. Hurried back so Dana and Elaina could make their way around and sign the log for themselves.
Captain tobe4evr1 and ukrainian princess returning via the “easier” route!
With everyone back at the beach, we push the boat off the sand and start back to the rental place - time had run out, no more caching for this trip! Had to play slalom with sailboats on the return trip. Also lots of fisherman out on the water today.
Once back at the rental office we finalized the paperwork and said our goodbye’s. Fun day getting cool caches and meeting new cachers!
Big thanks to Dianna Fisher (half of the TREKKS team) for the photo’s!
