Clackamas

Clackamas Oregon
Leaving the motel, we head south on I 5, it’s a nice drive in spotty rain. Washington is sure green! No snow on these mountains, just low hanging clouds. En route we stop to purchase some cold meds and skivvies. While we’re in WalMart, I look at cameras. I can buy a Kodak for less than last night's room and I want a camera.

We are in Clackamas too early to check in so we went geocaching. Our first goal is the Original Stash Plaque. This is at the site of Dave Ulmer's first cache. In May of 2000, President Clinton authorized the increasing of the accuracy of civilian GPS units. Ulmer acted almost immediately. He put a plastic bucket with some junk in it at this spot and posted the coordinates on USENET newsgroup sci.geo.satellite.nav. Thus the whole activity was born. Others soon followed suit and today there are over a million caches around the world. A guy from Michigan, Matt Strum, coined the term Geocach to get away from the negative connotations of the term “stash”. Then a guy named Jeremy Irish grabbed the term in the fall of 2000 and registered the domain name. He has effectively taken control of organized geocaching.

While we were looking at the plaque and taking pictures, a woman and her son pull up. She is a geocacher named Rose Red. She offers to take a picture of both of us at the cache. Very nice and thoughtful! All in all we find seven nicely placed caches in the area. We back off from looking for a cemetery cache, doesn’t seem like Memorial Day weekend is the best time.

Lunch is in Redland, dinner is Denny’s. Neither is comparable to the cruise.