Last weekend was another fun location.  We left the house about 3 pm and headed for Alder Lake, near Elbe, WA.  It only took about 2 1/2 hours to get there. 

Friday evening was a pretty easy set up.  We are getting this down to a science now.  Rick has the things he does on the outside and I do the inside stuff.  And poof!  In no time we are cooking dinner. 

This is our site #409

Funny thing about Alder Lake, it doesn’t have any water in it!!!  OK, it has some, but not much.  You can see tons of stumps.  The lady that checked us in said “Oh you have one of the best sites of the lake, too bad there isn’t water.”  This made me wonder, what the heck is she talking about.  When we got to the site, we found out.  It was still a very pretty spot and you can see some water in the lake.  The view from where I sat at the table for dinner was pretty darn nice.

Dinner table view.

Satuday – my birthday – yes, that’s right I’m now 44!  The weather on Saturday was great, not hot, not cold, not sunny, not cloudy, just a little of everything.  A great day to go Geocaching.  And did we ever.  Found the first one pretty quick, it was down an old fishing trail just past the bridge on the way out of Elbe.  We walked back along the river and the dogs loved it.  The cache was a bird house with a trick bottom in the trees… pretty clever!  The next one, I’m sad to say we did not find, and not for a lack of trying and trying and trying!  We had time for one more before lunch, and it took us up behind Elbe on fire access roads.  Way UP!  We had a lot of fun just driving around up there and didn’t ever find the cache we started out looking for.  When we finally started heading down, any road that went down, we came out 8 miles north of Elbe, just this side of Ashford. 

Back to the campground for some lunch (a quick nap for Cassie).

 

 Rick and Thor talk about the next Geocaches we’ll go find after lunch and naps!

After lunch we took off for Mineral Lake and the small town of Mineral.  This is a very pretty place to visit, and the lake is beautiful.  I highly recommend visiting here.  We found two caches just north of Mineral.  One at a Forestery place and the other at the old Power and Light building (now abandoned – build in 1925).  One more and this was the longest walk for the day.  On to a site that took us across the lake by foot.  The lake is so low that we were able to walk across to the island!  It was so cool.  The area for swimming had a log boom around it, and all the logs were on the dry ground.  It was a little weird feeling and there was no shortage of duck droppings.  Just like at home!  I can’t beleive I forgot to bring my camera with me.  The cache was on the island, and we had to tromp through sticker bushes to get to it, only to find out that it needs some TLC, and the log book and everything inside are damp/wet.  Just as we headed back it started to gust a little and we could see the storm that was coming across the lake.  Time to hurry back home to our camp site.  Good ol #409!

 

This is the storm as it started to blow in.

We had the awning set up and the fire going before it blew in, so it was nice to sit outside and cook dinner on the grill under cover.  When the rain began, it didn’t stop until the next morning.  I love the sound of the rain hitting on the roof of the camper.  Unfortunately, I didn’t want to run down to the bathrooms (not real close to our site) in the rain that night before bed and in the morning I thought I was going to die!  Rain or not, I was running down to the beautiful pit toilets! 

Sunday – Our 1 year anniversay!  I can’t believe that one year ago we were on the beach getting married in the sunshine!  I thought about this the whole time we took down the camper and the rain started up again.

When we got home the sun was out and shinning bright!  They told us never to leave the camper down more than 48 hours after taking it down in the rain, or while it’s wet.  So it’s a good thing we could set it up in our drive way and let it dry.  In the mean time I dug our wedding cake top out of the freezer and started the thawing process.  After dinner that night I surprised Rick with what else… cake!  Let me just tell you that it was yukky and that I did eat the cake part.  We both choked it down like we had too!  It was a good laugh.  The trash received the rest of the cake.  I did eat the white chocolate pieces off the outside of the cake too!

 

No more camping until Labor Day weekend, Then it’s north up the coast to the Forks area.