Birthday Caching

Since my birthday fell on a Tuesday this year, we decided to celebrate it the Saturday before. After making me breakfast Saturday morning, we decided to do some geocaching. We haven't done much of it this year, but there is a contest going on that we wanted to take part in, so we headed over to the Mt. Hood Territory to do some exploring. We found five of the ten caches for the contest and saw some neat things too.


For some reason our maps didn't print out on our cache sheets, so we had to find the locations strictly with our GPS. You wouldn't think this would be that difficult, but it took us quite a while to find our first cache location which turned out to be a winery with a small lake.


We visited an Elk Ranch. Though we didn't take the time (or the money) to participate, they have a full tour. We may come back some other time to take the tour and visit the petting farm. They even sell elk meat and interesting jewelry made out of elk horns and elk droppings (eewww!).


We also went to a demonstration forest with lots of trails and apparently a campground because there was a lone Boy Scout looking for his troop. Again, we didn't take time to hike all the trails, but we will do that when we're in the area again sometime.


We found a cache at a lavendar farm. They had already harvested the lavendar for this year, except for the decorative areas. It was out in the boonies, and I was relishing the absolute quiet!


The last cache we found was at a place I've been wanting to visit for some time called Philip Foster Farm. It is a mid-1800s interpretive center. An excerpt from their website says:

Philip Foster was one of Oregon's earliest settlers, arriving with his family by ship via Cape Horn and the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) in 1843...Foster was also an entrepreneur, partnering with Sam Barlow in constructing the Barlow Road in 1846, operating a store in Oregon City, and founding a flourmill and cattle company with Dr. John McLoughlin, known as the Father of Oregon. Foster bought a 640-acre land-claim in Eagle Creek in 1847, which he developed for the arrival of emigrants traveling the Barlow Road, the "last leg" overland segment of the Oregon Trail. He cleared land, planted crops and orchards, built a house and a store, as well as constructing a lumber mill and gristmill. The Foster place became a welcome sight for pioneers struggling over the shoulder of Mt. Hood after their 2,000-mile journey from Missouri. With the store, cabins to rent and meals offered to the emigrants, Foster's Place was indeed the First Destination Resort in the Oregon Territory.

Unfortunately, it was closed when we were there, but we were able to walk the grounds and look at the buildings and covered wagons. Our homeschool group is planning a trip out there this fall, which will be great!