Pasco-caching

Last week I decided that I wanted to head out to Pasco the next time Andy got an overnight there. That way I wouldn't have to pay for a hotel. The mission would look a lot like our mission two years ago before Pyper's first birthday. It was a Geocoin mission. But this one was even crazier, not only were there leftover geocoins from the 2014 Challenge, but there were also some 2013 coins still floating around. The goal of the challenge is to find 10 geocaches in a city and be rewarded a piece of a three part coin. The Pasco area is known as the Tri-cities in Washinton. The neighboring cities are Richland and Kennewick. Each one is very unique, especially in terms of geocaches. So for each city, you find the caches, get the coin, and put the coins together. 

Two days after I mentioned this Pasco idea to Andy, he informs me that his next shift has him overnighting in Pasco. We might be the only couple on earth excited about our luck. The universe heard me calling. I was in no way prepared, but got as ready as I could. The big debate was whether to fly or drive. We went with drive.

Andy got up at 4am and went to work. Pyper and I got an early 8am start. She surprised me with her car riding ability, staying awake the whole ride there. It took us three and a half hours. We even played the alphabet game. 

Once arriving in Richmond, caching was slow going, but it was good to get out of the truck. After about 5 caches in 3 hours, I headed to Andy's hotel to pick him up. With Pyper asleep we grabbed a couple more caches, then headed in to take care of Pyper business. At this rate, it wasn't looking good to finish either challenge, so I took off solo, while Dad studyed and Pyper vegged out in front of the hotel tube watching discovery channel. I returned with seven more finds. 

Our first caches of the challenge somewhere in Richmond. 

Fun caching and having dad around. 

Since we didn't celebrate Valentine's day, we decided to use it as an excuse to spurge on a "sunset dinner" at Anthony's Home Port. The sunset was spectacular and dinner superb. 

The next day Andy headed to the airport for work and Pyper and I grabbed our first cache for the day. We were actually able to complete the two Pasco challenges by 8:30am, having only 5 left. The majority of the Pasco finds we did the day before. We celebrated with a Mexican bakery stop. 

The cache she found before me, and the biggest donut I've ever seen! 

Next on the list was Kennewick. We checked off the list around noon, celebrating with a ice cream sandwich. I think sugar was the only thing keeping us going at this rate. Most of the caches were at parks, so we either tricycled to the caches or played on the toys. 

Kennewick was full of treasure and fun exploring. 

A sweet reward is always welcome. 

Finally, back to Richmond. We had eight left, since that's were we started and we were able to tick some Richmond caches off on our Kennewick loop. Somehow Pyper managed to keep awake and even found caches before I did. 

Happy to be caching in Richland, they have some awesome caches. 

Posing with our two completed coins, that's six individual coins total. 

We hit the road back and managed to be home at 7pm. After checking the statistics of the day, we managed to hit an all time high of number of caches found in a day, 26 caches!!! I think that's 3 more than the previous record, which I think happened when we were on the 2012 geocoin challenge journey. 

Flashback - Pyper happy with her find in Richmond two years ago.