Yesterday’s completion of Mackie’s Oregon Walkabout 3 gave me another D/T combination - now I have 59 of the 81 combinations........
Rarely does the notification of a new cache create both instant trepidation and excitement more than a Mackie “Oregon Walkabout”! Such was the case in mid-July when Oregon Walkabout 3 popped up!
Having completed the first two, I thought I knew what to expect - WRONG! This one had eleven stages plus the final! Yikes, what is Mackie thinking?
On July 25th, Rod of family explorer and I set out early to tackle this monstrosity not really knowing how far we’d get in one day - on foot, that is. Early in the day we still had a glimmer of the hope of completing the whole trek on this day. Silly boys! Now that it’s done I just have to chuckle at that naive anticipation! Actually, if we hadn’t decided to grab a couple of “nearby” caches before starting our hike we might have made it - okay, probably not. We put in over four miles on the dunes before even starting the Walkabout!
Once we got started, completed 2-3 stages and noted the distance between stages we knew that we would probably not finish it this day. Somewhere in the middle of the stages we were inhumanely tormented by a sudden “short” stage reviving our thoughts of finishing today! WRONG! My knees were killing me by now and we managed one more stage before calling it a day and exiting the dunes. Counting the four plus miles prior to starting this cache my GPSr recorded 19.4 miles for the day!! Never done that before! Still it was a good day with lots of chatting about all things “geo” despite busting my favorite hiking stick. We vowed to return soon to complete the task!
Well, it wasn’t “soon” but finally we both had a day available to wrap this one up - today. Had to make a guess as to where to pre-position a vehicle. Once that was settled we dropped of the vehicle and headed back to the day’s starting point. We guessed well - a quarter mile from the final cache location! We had a mostly foggy morning trek for these final few stages and the final but did manage to have a few sunny moments along the way. One stage gave us a little scare as we weren’t finding the container! Not good. We even called Mackie confirming we were looking in the right spot. Rod finally spotted it after what seemed like a good 30 minute search. Whew - onward!
It felt really good to complete this one and was made more enjoyable by having someone else along for the fun!
How can you top this one Mackie? Oh NO - I should NOT have said that!
I’m REALLY feeling the trepidation now...................
Two Shady Characters!!
Practicing my PHOON pose for THIS cache!
Look! A duck phooning!
Packed up the trailer and headed into Bend to meet family for breakfast. After a brief visit to the Bend REI store to drool some more over the new Garmin Oregon GPSr we began making our way home via Sisters and the McKenzie River. Picked up one cache while stopped in Sisters.
Last full day in Central Oregon - only cache was Tumalo Cache near Tumalo State Park while having a little family reunion.
It seems fellow coast cacher Mackie got his signature on this caches log a few days earlier! Sneaky guy that Mackie!