Olene

They are forecasting 1-3 inches of snow for us tomorrow and this afternoon was sunny and forty, so we thought we better get out and enjoy it. We decided to venture a whole 10 miles from home and take a walk along a section of the OC&E Trail that we hadn’t explored yet. To make the flat walk more palatable I downloaded some caches to look for along the way.

Turns out we were not the only ones with this idea. As we pulled into the parking spot there was a horse trailer and another car already there. There were two horses and riders just coming back, but the car driver and family was getting ready to go for a walk. As we changed into hiking boots another car pulled in with a fellow and his canine companion.

The trailhead there is “decorated” with a retired train snow plow car that had a cache so we went there first. By the time we found and logged the cache the folks in the parking had started on their way, but as we started on the trail proper we could see one man coming back. By the time we passed him we missed the first cache, but found a side trail that headed up the hill to cache #2.

That cache was a sneaky two-parter that we couldn’t find the second part on, so we had to DNF it. The walk up was worth it for the view, see the above photo. The next one was even higher up the hill and was an easy find. From there we headed back down hill to cache number four, which turned into another DNF. We spent 10 minutes wandering in circles using my phone and the GPSr to no avail. We didn’t even try the next cache on our track, it was on the way downhill we planned on taking, but gave up after noticing the trail required a very steep drop. So we took an easier slope back down towards the OC&E, before climbing back up a bit for one last cache. While I was still figuring where to start looking, Donna cried, “I found it.”

A couple hours in the sun, 2-1/4 miles traveled, 700′ of it up hill, and 3 of 5 caches found, all in all a very pleasant January afternoon in Olene, Oregon.