Trip to Spokane - Sunday, August 7, 2011

I threw away two caches printouts for Sprague yesterday only to discover this morning that they covered DeLorme page 68. So I headed back to Four Lakes and Hwy 904. I thought the Virtual at the Four Lakes Monument was the most interesting cache of the day. I headed south to South Cheney. After I found the caches I drove the Auto Tour Route through the Turnbill National Wildlife Refuge located in an area of eastern Washington on the edge of the Columbia River Basin, known as the Channeled Scablands. I saw one chipmunk and one squirrel and ended up with a very dirty car. I found one Benchmark, one Virtual and three Caches this morning. The most interesting was the "Battle of Four Lakes" Virtual cache.

I checked into the Red Lion River Inn where I was given the Parlor Suite with a view of the Spokane River. I ate lunch at the hotel patio. I met the Elderhostel/Road Scholar trip leaders: Don Popejoy and Molly Smith. I knew Don Popejoy from two previous Elderhostel Ice Age Floods trips in 2007 and 2009. Molly Smith was the co-leader on the Elderhostel Oregon Trail 2007 trip. We had dinner and orientation at the hotel for The Great Ice Age Floods trip, August 7 - 12. I had a lovely view of the Spokane River out of the large glass windows. Afterwards Pat Sharp from Michigan and I drove to Walgreens to purchase BIC bright liners to mark the route on our Washington State maps - each day a different color.