So in my last post I mentioned that for our 29th anniversary this year Tony & I decided to go back to Princeton. We went there last year but, because of the circumstances in our lives at the time, well... let's just say it kind of sucked. So we thought it would be good to go back and come full circle and put some closure on the past year. What a great idea that was I must say.
Thanks to the incredible Tulameen Turtles and many other awesome cachers we had so many places to choose from to explore. And you know how we love to explore! We missed the Great Coal Rush Event but at least we got to experience some of the fun albeit a bit late.
We cached our way through Manning Park (I love that area) and then, after settling into our motel room, we decided to not to waste any daylight and went up Whipsaw Creek. We travelled as far as we could before dark and found one cache (GC2AM74) "Strawberry Fields Forever". On the way back to Princeton we grabbed the flashlight and did a little night caching... (GC25NYK) "Entering Princeton From the West."
The next morning Tony decided to do some wildlife scouting and, according to him, you must be up before the sun to do this properly. Since it was our anniversary he did the gentlemanly thing and let me sleep in. Good man. I didn't sleep in too much though - Tony doesn't do urban caches, he refuses to "look like a dork" he says, so I figured I'd better grab all the 'in town' caches that were within walking distance of our motel. It was a Sunday morning and soooo quiet. I so enjoyed walking through the empty streets grabbing the caches at the fountain, museum, restaurant and high school.
Once Tony got back we had breakfast and made our way north along the Princeton/Summerland Road, headed West on the Belfort Road and then went north on 5A to just north of Allison Lake. Our plan was to explore the backroads in that area and come back out by China Creek. According the mapbook those roads should go through... they don't. Now maybe we missed a turn somewhere but we just couldn't find a way out (if you know where it is please let us know) and the roads drawn on the map just weren't there. Oh well... at least we know that area really well now!
The next day we went up towards the Copper Mountain Mine. I wanted to find the caches at Allenby so we headed in that direction. We found the two caches that were close to the road and then Tony noticed another old logging road heading down towards the river. "Let's go down here" he said. We drove down slowly, the new 4x4 faithfully navigating all the ruts and bumps and hairpin turns. When we got down to the bottom my Nuvi sounded with the now familiar "ding!" "There's a cache here?" I said. A quick look and sure enough we were right by GCQ3B1 'Standing Wall, Sinking Shaft.' I was so excited to be so close to another cache that I didn't read the cache page. BIG mistake! Tony decided to get me as close as possible, drove up the old hillside as far as we could go (very close to the 'wall') and then BANG... the truck's front wheel fell right into a hole... hence the 2nd part of this cache's name - Sinking Hole - well we now know what that means to say the least. The look on his face when he got out of the truck... well I knew it wasn't good. He did a little surveying, put the truck in 4 wheel drive, I said a big prayer and... it backed right out!! We couldn't believe it! We really thought we would be there for hours. What a huge relief and quite the excitement for our anniversary day.
After all that we finally got a chance to find the cache that we came for in the first place. Wow.... I know I've said it before but this is why I geocache... for places like this. You would never come to a spot like this otherwise... not in a million years. If you're ever in this area go find this cache (just not the way we did it)... pictures do not do it justice.
All too soon it was time to start heading home. We made our way on the connector road to August Lake, back into Princeton and then eventually back to the Valley.
They say that all good things must come to an end but for us it was a wonderful and incredible way to end a very eventful, wonderful & stressful year. And it's all good.
