Monday, August 01, 2011

Geocaching Adventures: Ebey Bluffs

Today is my last day in the Pacific Norhwest and I need to get 200 miles south to Portland to catch my flight tomorrow morning.  Just going south is too easy, so I took a trip an hour north to Whidbey Island to check out the bluffs at Ebey's Landing State Park first.

The bluffs overlook Pugent Sound, the Olympic Mountains, the Straits of Juan de Fuca, and on a clear day, Victoria BC.  The bluffs are also home to several geocaches.

To get to the caches on the bluff one has to walk a very narrow path that snakes along the edge of the bluffs.   In places the bluffs are 200-300 ft high.  It is definitely not a trail for the timid, or the acrophobic.  I actually know a cacher who is acrophobic who did the cache at the top of the bluffs - it took her a while, and she's sworn to never do it again, but she did it.  After hiking this trail I can see why it would cause some concern.  At spots there is only a few feet of grass between you and certain death.

It is a 2.5 mile round trip hike to the Ebey Bluffs cache, and two others along the way.  Once I grabbed those I hiked an additional 1.4 miles along the beach at the base of the cliff to grab the Hula Cache, where one is supposed to post pictures of the finder doing a hula dance.  I did a little hula, but I didn't have anyone to take my picture so I can't prove it.  I did confuse a flock of sea gulls tho.


After the bluffs I drove the 4 hours to Portland and checked into my hotel.  When I did I found out that there was a power trail  (a long series of caches placed as close together as the guidelines allow - in this case 32 caches were placed) that was recently released along a walking trail by the river running beside the airport.  I needed to kill some time and wanted to go for a walk, so I finished my day by doing 11 caches along the trail.   Along the way I was treated to a nice view of Mount Hood.






The flight path for PDX goes right along the river so I also snapped some pics of some planes close up in the air:







To finish off this blog, I leave you with this photo I took of my footprints on the Ebey Bluffs trail.  It seemed the most appropriate way to sum up the unofficial theme of this trip:  Life is a journey, not a destination.

Farewell from the Pacific Northwest. See you on the trails in North Carolina!