'Ketchup' with the Oregon State Fair

The Big Tomato was calling us today to visit the Oregon State Fair in Salem. Earlier I had taken some of Mariah's quilted items to be entered in the fair, and today was the day to see how she did.

But first, a little "history" on my angst of purchasing State Fair tickets. The OSF website says that "advance*" tickets are $8.00 for an Adult and $10.00 at the gate. Yesterday I went to Safeway to purchase an advance ticket for today; however, they stopped selling tickets before the first day of the fair. I guess "advance*" doesn't mean the same thing to everyone! Pass the Ketchup, please.

After a night of plotting my revenge on The Big Tomato, the morning came with a new sense of calmness. I awoke refreshed and ready to enjoy the day. The trip to the fairgrounds went smoothly and we arrived about 30-minutes before the gates opened. Good thing, as today was free Big Tomato t-shirt day for the first 150 people. We managed to thwart another "attack" from one of TBT's evil hench-woman when she said, "All of the shirts are the same size." They weren't...and we picked through them and each of us got the correct sizes. No thanks to TBT's evil doings!

Once making it through the throngs of people at the gate, we navigated our way to where Mariah's quilts were on display. We were surprised and thrilled with the results.


Mariah's "Kansas Star" wall hanging that took Best in Show at the Benton County Fair won Second Place at the Oregon State Fair. Her "Valentine Heart" wall hanging and "Busted Buster wall hanging each won First Place in their respective classes. And finally her quilted pillow case won a Second Place award. Not too shabby for a 9-year old competing in classes ranging up to 17 year olds.

We spent the rest of the day seeing exhibits, listening to Brandon Cash (the son of Johnny Cash), eating, and tons of walking. I think everyone enjoyed the day. Although you never feel like you got to see and do everything you wanted. We learned some tips and tricks for next year. I think we'll return. My parents hadn't been to the State Fair in many years, and I think they enjoyed themselves.

Next year maybe there will be Watermelon instead of Tomato(e)! Do you want fries with that?

A fun way to start the day

Last night I saw two new Geocaches pop up near my home coordinates. Unfortunately, they are located in a "sketchy" part of town, known for the homeless camps. Sweet and I had previously cleared out all of the existing Geocaches, but now there are two new one's calling my name..."Dude", "Dude"...

After e-mailing back and forth with a.k.a radar last night about the "campground" in this park, I vowed to go find these caches. I awoke with a mission and gathered my gear, dusted off my mountain bike, and headed to the caches.

As I approached Waverly Boulevard, I decided to take the "scenic" bike route under the street and around Waverly Lake. Passing previously found Geocache hiding locations, I pedaled and thought of my earlier adventures. On the northern side of Waverly Lake, I crossed Salem Avenue and continued along the bike path. This lessor known path that connects Salem Avenue and Waverly Drive NE, is a fun jaunt that passes under some train tracks and past blackberry bushes-yum.

As I arrived at the parking lot at Simpson Park, I noticed a truck sitting there. "Oh, great! Someone is already out there findting them." I continued down the hill into the park and noticed yet another vehicle parked. This one had a young woman in the driver's seat and her dog was barking. "What is going on?" I continued on as I knew this area well, and headed to the first cache, East of Bowman. You can read my logs on the cache pages. After logging that cache, I headed off to find the next one further down the trail. Just for Kicks was a kick. I had a great time finding this one as well.

I chatted with a.k.a. radar after logging these two caches, and we discussed setting up a CITO event for this park. On the surface, the park looks clean and safe. Upon further investigation; however, there are a lot of homeless people that live in Simpson Park. Although I am empathetic to their situation, ignoring it will not improve it, or make it go away. Time for SWAG to work with the City of Albany to help improve the look and safety of this greenway.

ABC Challenge Weekend-Saturday 6/22/2008

Since Sweet was in Idaho all week and Pablo Mac was otherwise "obligated", I took it upon myself to find some Geocaches on my own. I've never been into Geocaching by myself, but what else was a Dude to do...sit around the house and watch TV? I think NOT!

I had made plans earlier with my Dad to meet in Corvallis on Saturday to try out some kayaks at Michael's Landing. Peak Sports was offering free demonstrations for people to come down and try them out. I had never paddled a kayak before, but they looked like fun and my Mom & Dad have been considering buying some. Hey, it's free and something to do! Before we went out, my Dad and I shared some pizza and some sodas overlooking the Willamette River. Then it was down to the boat launch.
I tried out two different kayaks and was amazed at how easy they are to paddle. The current on the Willamette was quite fast at this time of year, but it was quite easy to stay even on the river, or even move upstream. The kayak in this picture is a fairly inexpensive one (≈ $800). It is much heavier, less maneuverable, harder to make way, but more stable. Not too bad for a weekend warrior, but I wouldn't want to take a long trek with it.

The other kayak I tried out was longer and sleeker, and more expensive (≈ $2300). This kayak was a "performance model" kayak with carbon fiber paddles and an aramid bottom-half hull. This kayak was much more maneuverable than the one shown here, but much less stable. In fact, as I was returning to shore, I made a rookie mistake and turned the kayak sideways in the current and then paddled on the upstream side. This threw my balance off just enough that I ended up wet...up to my neck. I did manage to swim the kayak to shore, and the water-craft representatives were very impressed with my ability to rescue the kayak "so they didn't even have to get wet". I got a little embarassed, and a high-five from the rep! Fortunately I wore a swimming suit and water sandels. Unfortunately, I forgot my towel and an extra shirt!

I wrung my shirt out and headed back to the car with my Dad. We talked for a bit while I dried out. Then he said goodbye and I was left not wanting to go home yet. I just finished a nice cool swim, and had a lot of energy. Time to pull out my trusty GPSr. Wow! There is a Geocache a couple of hundred feet from the car. I decided to walk down there and grab it. Hey, why not...I'm too wet to sit in my car and drive home. I found the cache pretty quickly and then I got the Geocaching bug. I headed back to the car, changed my shoes, and starting walking into downtown Corvallis. I searched for "Welcome to Corvallis", but was unable to find it (as it turned out-it had been Muggled). I then continued south and found another ASoUC cache, DNFed another, an ended my walk with an amazingly lucky find. The coordinates took me to an obvious hiding location, but there was no cache to be found. As I was heading back to the car, I looked to my left and there it was...more than 100' away from the posted coordinates. I thought that was a great way to end my Saturday. I headed home to log my finds.

Tomorrow is another day.

How to have a "Guy's Night Out"

Step 1: Ditch all women
Step 2: Jump in a Jeep
Step 3: Explore the wilderness
Step 4: Go geocaching
Step 5: Buy some beer
Setp 6: Watch a movie and eat popcorn for dinner

Japanese Glass Fishing Floats From Alaska

It was a tough choice between going to Lincoln City, and swimming in the South Santiam River to play with Odder, but we decided to stick with our original RSVP and go to the Oregon coast. As it turned out, the weather was beautiful, but very windy; and we had a great time.

My parents met me (Dude), Sweet, and cuteTpie at the Lincoln City Community Center for some good ol' fashioned Geocaching Games. Bostonmangum hosted another fun event which draws scores of geocachers from around Oregon. He always puts on a great event and is very gracious. This days events included a variety of event-only caching games including "Find the Nano", "Find Ground Zero", "The Multi/Puzzle to Find Ground Zero", "Create a Star, Smiley Face, or Object" with your GPSr track feature, and finally "Complete the Quest" task which was similar to a letterbox in which you use clues, rather than a GPSr to locate a final location.

We all had a blast completing the games and comparing the three different GPSr's that we had brought. My Dad finally began using his Garmin iQue M5 for more than just a paperweight. A few days prior to the event, I learned how to upload a GPX file with 500 geocaches to his iQue. One of the caches was the event, and I set him up with turn-by-turn routing to the event. It all seemed to work okay as they ended up parking next to us at the event.

After completing the games, Ivan had a drawing for prizes and passed out authentic Japanese glass fishing floats. These were not the "art-glass" types of floats you'd see in a gallery, but were gathered along the beaches of Alaska. We each picked out a float as a reminder of our day. During the prize drawing, Sweet's number was called and she chose a camping headlamp. cuteTpie and I won mini-kites.

After the event, we all enjoyed a yummy picnic lunch my Mom (mummu3) had prepared. My Dad and I went on a self-guided tour of the Community Center and we were both impressed with the facility. It was nice to see how the community has supported a facility like this.

After lunch, Sweet & Mummu3 wanted to do a "quick" shopping trip at the Factory Outlet Center; and then it was off to the beach. I used my double-top secret way to the Taft Waterfront and we all found parking close by.

I think it is safe to say that we all had a great time flying our new kites, playing in the sand and water. We did work up quite a hunger and ended up walking down the beach to Mo's. After dinner, we bid farewell to my parents. Now it was time for some serious geocaching! We were able to find 7 caches, plus the event, and posted a DNF. The day was just too beautiful and we would have liked to have stayed a little longer. As it turned out, we didn't leave Lincoln City until about 10:30pm and finally arrived back in Albany at midnight.

What a fantastic day and a fun way to spend Father's Day Saturday.

And now for something completely different...

How to tell when a Catholic is driving too fast.

Kolly Wobbels #7 Tranquility Geocache Account

STF in 2008. We decided to make a side trip to Nevada after attending the GeoWoodstock 6 event yesterday. It looks like we brought the Oregon weather with us, as we've had rain and sun down in the valley.
Of course, at 7200' above sea level, that rain turns into SNOW! We were determined to find this cache the Dude/Sweet way (increasing the cache D/T level by at least ½-star each). We were in tennis shoes and shorts, but did bring light coats with us.

With snow on the ground, and not stopping to find a trail, we just followed the "GoTo" cache route from the I-80 Summit cache, picking our way amongst the rocks, snow melting streams and snow fields. Dude picked up a fallen log and added it in the middle of two other logs, in order to fjord one snow-melt stream; and helped Sweet across the stream feeding the lake.

As we neared the cache location, the snow started falling harder. Dude yelled out, “Only 140 more feet to the cache!” Just then, the batteries died. Being a former Boy Scout, of course Dude was prepared and swapped batteries for some new one’s in the driving snow storm. Dude/Sweet waited for the GPSr to acquire the satellites. What else could go wrong? Finally with enough satellites acquired, we could hike onward to the cache.

Dude approached the cache from one side and Sweet from the other. Sweet managed to find the cache first, safe, secure, and dry. As we huddled beneath a tree, Dude signed the log sheet and tried to protect it from getting wet from the snowstorm. As Dude replaced the cache, he stared out into the near white-out conditions, and then to Sweet, wet, cold, and shivering and remarked, “Good thing we have a GPSr to find our way out. You know, this is near to where the Donner Party was. I’d hate to have to eat you to survive!” A calm sense of “tranquility” befell them both.

Just then, Dude thought, hey my cell phone! Hey great! It works. He called his good friend Pablo Mac back in Lebanon, OR…voice mail! Dude said to Sweet, “Nice, I guess Pablo won’t be saving us today. We’ll have to hike out.” From the cache’s vantage point, we were able to pick an “easier” way down. We used our GPSr back-track feature, as well as our footprints in the snow to make it back to our Geo-mobile. As stated in earlier logs, there is no Geocoin in the cache. We managed to CITO out some trash on the way down.

This cache, and the I-80 Summit will be added to our list of most favorite and memorable!

TNLNSL,

Dude/Sweet