Caching in Huntington, OR - June 29, 2008

My brother decided to take the week before the July 4th weekend to do some camping and fishing along the Snake River with some friends of his. Since I don't fish and my Dad doesn't really like to camp, we made plans to drive down and hang out. Of course, once I found out where exactly my brother was going, I mapped out all of the nearby caches.

We left early on the 29th and headed south towards Huntington. On the way we stopped at the Baker Truck Corral in Baker City and had my favorite breakfast - corned beef hash and scrambled eggs.

A short while later, we made a quick stop in Durkee, OR to hunt outside looking in by maint/man (GCT4GJ). This was a nice cemetery cache.

The first cache we hunted upon arriving in Huntington was THE LAST SPIKE by Jeron (GC12AMZ). It was one of those magnetic keyholders on a caboose, that I normally dread. This one wasn't hard, but there were lots of muggles in the area. If I had been by myself, I probably would have spent more time reading about the history of the spot.

After finding the cache, we drove to a place nearby where my brother and his friends were camped out. After learning that my brother was off somewhere, we decided to go ahead and hunt a few more caches.

HUNTING IN HUNTINGTON (Geo that is!) by Jeron (GC12AMH) was about 1/2 mile away. This was in an area that looks like you could camp nearby. It is also in an area convenient for fishing. The coordinates took me to an area with some big rocks, and since the hint mentioned rocks, I got to turn each one over. It turned out that the cache location was under a rock in a pile a little further away and covered with vegetation and mosquitoes.

The next cache - Brownlee View by GeoTechnician & OliviaRed (GCN3BH) was a little further down the road (River Road). There was no place really close to park, so my Dad dropped me off and drove down the road a ways. Because this was a fairly steep hike, I used a zigzag approach to make it a little easier. My GPSr arrow was acting goofy, but I eventually found where the cache was neatly tucked away. I had an excellent view of the Snake River from the cache spot, so I rested for a moment before heading back down.


After getting back to the truck we doubled back into Huntington and headed south for more caches.

I was looking forward to the next cache - Birch Creek Rest Area by newlifelawn (GC126T0) because I assumed it would be at a rest area. We drove down a few windy gravel roads and my Dad and I thought we might be in the wrong area. It turned out the be an access area for the Oregon Trail. This is a pretty barren area for the most part, so I paused to imagine what it would be like for the pioneers traveling this way.


The next cache was Catfish Connection by n2life (GC13M2M). It was basically a small container hidden on the grounds of a bait shop/RV park. It was a quick find. At this point we headed back north for one more cache.

The last cache we hunted was Indianhead View by Shebear & Storminn (GCQWXR). After parking, I headed down into a small ravine and got to spend a bit of time searching through some rough brush and find the cache. It was getting to be pretty warm by this time, and we were both ready to head back to the fishing camp.