Friday, December 04, 2009
Tryon Creek Caching - Portland
Pat had a work-related meeting in Portland today. I love it when she has these meetings because I’ll come along and get in a day of geocaching! Today’s outing - Tryon Creek State Natural Area. Along for the fun was son-in-law Andrew who has recently been bitten by the geocaching bug!
Nestled in the Lake Oswego community, this 670 acre park has 15 miles of mixed use trails. It had four geocaches for us to discover.
Andrew and I met up at 9am on the nearby PCC campus where I had just dropped Pat off for her meeting. Bitter cold this morning but we were ready for the conditions. We began the days trek at the main parking lot on SW Terwilliger Blvd. There were several parking opportunities on the perimeter of the park that could have been used to get a little closer to some of the caches. However, having a good hike was as much a goal as finding the caches so we elected to park centrally and hike a longer loop to get them all.
I had loaded up my older GPSr with the geocache information for Andrew to use. This would be his first solo cache hunt.
We headed off in the direction of the closest cache. When we approached to within 200 feet of the prize I let Andrew take the lead and bring us into ground zero (GZ). Once the GPSr readout told us 50 feet away, I just stepped back and left him to explore the possible hiding spots. It didn’t take long before he discovered the tell-tale pile of natural debris covering the cache container tucked neatly under a mossy log. After an enthusiastic “Yes!” and fist pump, he opened the container to examine the contents and sign his very first logbook. The first “davikins” scribing of many to come I suspect! We replaced the cache, selected the next one on the map and continued down the trail.
After a quarter-mile downhill to a major crossing of Tryon Creek, we side-tracked on a secondary trail for the second cache of the day. Again, as we approached GZ I laid back and let Andrew take the lead. Both of our GPSr’s were “bouncing” around a bit under tree cover and leading us first one way then another for the first 10 minutes. When this happens it’s best to just stand in one place and let the GPSr settle down then begin searching again. As it turned out, the real location was closer to an area that Andrew initially was headed towards before I called him back because my GPSr was telling me something different. We stopped to let the GPSr’s settle down and proceeded again, this time with success. I spotted the location first but called Andrew over so he could see what gave it away. Two for two!
Crossing Tryon Creek - Winter
Hunting cache number three took us along the west side of the Tryon Creek drainage and right next to a rather picturesque side ravine known as the Bunk Bridge crossing.
Bunk Bridge Crossing
At this point, Andrew and I had looped from the NE portion of the park down to the south end and were making our way back to the parking area in order to find the fourth and final geocache. As we crossed Tryon Creek a second time we encountered some workers clad in hip waders, rain gear and large backpacks slowly walking up the middle of the creek moving side to side probing the water with strange “metal detector” looking equipment. Research data collection, no doubt.
Approaching the final cache, we anticipated a difficult hunt due to remarks by recent geocachers saying they couldn’t find it. However, Andrew walked right up to it laying out in the open. I think he was a little disappointed and was anticipating honing his search skills. Unfortunately, recent trail maintenance work had dislodged it’s cover. We replaced and re-covered it in a geo-appropriate manner.
Upon returning to the parking area, we decided to check out the Nature Center gift shop and shelter before leaving. Very nice selection of nature books, clothing and gifts. It appears that this building is used regularly to host a variety of nature activities and classes. An admirable endeavor!
This was a really enjoyable morning excursion: 6.2 mile / 4 hour hike, some geocache hunts and some one-on-one time getting to know my son-in-law better…......Just good stuff!
Here’s a graphic of our travels this day….........
