Last summer a Portland geocacher decided to place a “tribute” cache for each of the top 100 Oregon geocachers. Top….simply in terms of how many geocaches they had found. Quantitative – not Qualitative! At the time, I was in that list somewhere around 53rd place with over 4200 finds.

TRIBUTE 53 (POPOP)

All of these geocaches were placed in the greater Portland area and today I finally had the opportunity to go find mine and sign the log. Patricia and I were up visiting with and helping move daughter and son-in-law. In addition, Patricia was attending a two-day photography workshop. Today my commitments were minimal so I spent the morning geocaching from Gresham back to north Portland. First stop would be the aforementioned tribute cache…..

While the location of the hide wasn’t my favorite (urban micro with lots of people around), I appreciate the sentiment and acknowledgement with which it was intended.

While the two photogs worked up and down the esplanade, I collected information from nearby kiosks to satisfy the requirements for an Earthcache. No other geocaches in the area so I did a lot of standing around waiting for them to finish. Well, I snapped a few pics with my iPhone but those pale in comparison to the images they were creating!

Willamette River * Waterfront Park * Portland Downtown Cityscape

Sunrise Color * OMSI Parking Lot

We began the new year still visiting with Kim and Andrew in Portland. Patricia had a photo shoot with them in nearby Washington Park. Kim wanted to make sure they had some ‘belly shots” before the baby came.

I managed to work a short multi-staged geocache while they were busy with the camera work.

Washington Park "Belly" Photo Shoot

Later in the day, we headed to a shopping complex in Tualatin to try a new vegan eatery Kim had heard about….only to find out they were closed! Oops, nearly forgot what day it was! Instead, we hung out at Peets Coffee for a bit followed by drooling at the Apple Store. As we made our way back to the car, I side-tracked from them momentarily in order to hunt down a nearby geocache.

We are spending New Years Eve in Wilsonville/Portland visiting Kim and Andrew. This is the latest we’ve ever had our trailer out.

For a Christmas gift they treated Patricia and I to a visit to Portland’s annual ZooLights display and dinner afterwards. Such thoughtful kids!

After dinner and visiting with the kiddo’s we came back to the trailer to settle in for the night. However, I had one more thing to do before the day ended….find three more geocaches to end 2011 on a nice even grand total of 4500! Hopped in the car and with less than 30 minutes left in the year I found all three….and was happy!

Geocaches found:

• A Place Of Learning
• Fun Center Fun!
• COLES STASH