Road tripping with Daddy: Summer 2025 rendition

As has become tradition, Daddy and I have enjoyed a little summer road trip as part of my summer holidays to the homeland. As normal, we didn’t really have a plan, just a general idea of where we wanted to go. And, of course, a whole load of downloaded geocaches for any eventuality!

This time, we enjoyed a 5-day road trip taking in portions of the inland northwest in both Washington and Oregon. It was quite hot for most of the journey, but with air conditioning in the car and the hotels, we managed without melting!

Warning: This is a long post. If you just want to see the photos, you can click here to go straight to the gallery.

Day 1: Steilacoom to Pasco on the quiet roads along Highway 12

We left my sister’s house in Steilacoom just before 10 am, heading south on I-5 towards US-12. Our plan was still in progress, but we knew there was a geocache at Mary’s Corner at the I-5/US-12 junction. This was near a coffee stand, so I had already planned to grab a refreshing peppermint tea there.

With our first geocache of the day in hand, we made our way east along US-12 with a couple of stops along the way. Our first stop was at the Riffe Lake Overlook, where we failed to find a geocache. Then we travelled a bit further along the highway to our next stop, Palisades Viewpoint. Sadly, the view is very overgrown, but the picnic area was a perfect spot for us to enjoy a light lunch – after I climbed around some trees in search of a geocache (success!).

After lunch, we stopped again for a geocache at Clear Creek Falls Overlook. The waterfall wasn’t as obvious as we expected it to be, but after walking a few yards to our right, we spotted the lovely cascading waters in a little gully surrounded by trees. And then, we were on the road again!

We decided to stop at Pasco for the night, as it is a small city with plenty of hotels and restaurant options. It would also give us a good starting point for Day 2, which is always a bonus. Once we were checked into the hotel, we made our way out to explore the area a bit and to grab a couple more geocaches – and, sadly, not to grab a couple – and to enjoy a nice IHOP dinner because you can never go wrong with breakfast for dinner.

Daily miles: 290 /// Daily geocaches: 5

Day 2: Pasco to Enterprise by way of the Oregon Trail and Walla Walla

Our second day began with a simple breakfast at the hotel before heading out to grab a missed cache from the day before. It was a great way to start the day and set us up for another round of (mostly) quick and easy caches on the way to Uncle Mike’s house in Walla Walla.

We opted to leave the main US-12 highway in favour of Old Highway 12. This route took us through the small towns of Touchet and Lowden before stopping at the historic Frenchtown pioneer cemetery and memorial. I love a nice historical cemetery, and this was especially interesting because there are no headstones or markers remaining, other than the memorial crosses. There is also a lovely old log cabin at the bottom of the memorial site, which was interesting to look around.

From Frenchtown, we travelled to the Whitman Mission Historic Site along the Oregon Trail. There was a small interpretive site (and clean restrooms) at the parking area and a monument at the top of a steep hill to the Whitmans. There was also a simple trail with interpretive signage and modern-day concrete outlines of where buildings once stood. I appreciated the history of it all, but I must admit that I am on the side of the Cayuse when it comes to the Tragedy at Waiilatpu, also known as the Whitman Massacre. White Europeans have a lot of bad deeds to answer for! But I digress…

On leaving the Whitman site, we continued to Walla Walla to visit Mum’s youngest brother, Uncle Mike. There, we enjoyed a refreshing glass or two of water and some delicious fresh blueberries, and (of course) a nice chat with Uncle Mike before hitting the road once again towards Enterprise.

We made several stops along the way to our evening’s destination, the first of which was Pomeroy to grab a geocache at the local courthouse, whilst admiring the building, and another at a random rest stop before stopping in Clarkston to fill up the gas tank. By then, we were heading into a remote and service-less area on a steep and winding road heading towards Enterprise. Along that road, we stopped at the tiny settlement of Anatone: Home to 38 people, 20 dogs, 17 cats, 11 horses, and 2 geocaches.

When we arrived in Enterprise, we checked into our hotel, then made our way out to explore the town a little bit before dinner. There was another lovely courthouse with a wonderful military memorial and an old WWII Japanese Howitzer, along with a couple of decent geocaches around town – and one that we had to grab the following day, too. Once geocaching was done, we went to the Burger Ranch for dinner, where I enjoyed a decent Ruben sandwich and a root beer.

Daily miles: 247 /// Daily geocaches: 12

Day 3: Enterprise to Joseph to Enterprise to John Day with a library quest for good measure

Day three of our road trip included a little bit of backtracking. We began in Enterprise before heading south along Joseph Highway to Joseph, Oregon. They were getting ready to set up for their Chief Joseph Days celebrations, so there was a definite energy to the small town. But we were more interested in some of the scenery and a few of the buildings. And, of course, the geocaches! Of course, it’s just a lakeside tourist town with lots of recreational activities. And it was getting hot. So, we just grabbed a few photos and geocaches, then made our way back to Enterprise.

Back in Enterprise, we made our way to the city library, which had been closed on our visit the day before. There was a geocache hidden inside the building, and we wanted to add it to our list of finds. I knew (generally) what we were looking for when we arrived, and the librarian clocked quite quickly what we were after. Frustratingly, our search was fruitless… so the librarian came to the rescue to find the cache, which had been misplaced. I’m pleased to say my instincts were correct and that, had it not been moved to a different area, I would have found it straight away!

When we left Enterprise again, we began to make our way west on Oregon State Highway 82 towards John Day. Our first stop was at Elgin for lunch, where we were slightly surprised to see there are no geocaches – but we grabbed a little guardrail catch on the way to the next little town, Imbler. There, we grabbed two more caches – one of which took us to a lovely little church with a cache hidden in a bell.

At La Grande, we picked up Highway 84 towards Baker City (stopping to stretch our legs at a rest area where a couple more caches were found). Then it was further west along Highway 26 towards John Day – our primary road trip destination. Once we got settled into our hotel (a nice little mom-n-pop place), we made our way out for more geocaches. John Day was larger than I expected, and they had a large selection of caches for us to find, which means that Day 3 was the biggest find day with 19 caches.

Daily miles: 228 /// Daily geocaches: 19 (and my 700-find souvenir!)

Day 4: John Day to Rufus with painted hills and old churches

Our penultimate day began by exploring the Painted Hills in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. There are three “units” in the park, and the Painted Hills was the only one Dad hadn’t yet visited. Of course, I now need to return to visit the other two units at some point!

The colouring of the hills was absolutely amazing and reminded me of the Painted Desert in Arizona. Only much less crowded, which is always nice. It was quite hot when we were there, and Dad wasn’t up for long hikes, so I didn’t explore as much as I might have. But I think I had a pretty good exploration. Indeed, I even got to see the historic Carroll Cemetery on the edge of the hills. It was established in 1870 and is no longer in use. But you can tell that it is maintained to at least some extent, similar to the old Greenwood Cemetery from my hometown.

When we left the Painted Hills, we continued westward on Highway 26 without a real plan. We made a stop in Prineville to fuel up (coffee for us and gas for the car) then we carried onto Madras before merging onto Highway 97 for a northward journey towards Washington. By then, we decided we would stay in the small settlement of Rufus for the night, the last stop before entering Washington.

Along the way to Rufus, we grabbed a few geocaches at rest areas and small towns – including one at a fabulous, ruined church where a resident cat was very keen to visit us. We also stopped into a couple of little towns along the way, looking for a very specific old school building that Dad recalls from a previous visit to the area, but he doesn’t remember exactly what town – he just has a vague notion of the general area of the town. (This isn’t an issue of cognitive decline, but rather too many cool old buildings over a lifetime and not being able to pinpoint the exact one.) But our failure to find that building did mean we saw some other pretty cool buildings.

Once we were settled into our hotel in Rufus (a small town of less than 300 people) we made our way out for some more geocaches. There were several for us to grab on the road to Rufus and over the river in Maryhill, where we also managed to find some fresh fruit and berries at the farm stand. We ended the day with 13 geocaches – and a delicious dinner at the local greasy spoon.

Daily miles: 275 /// Daily geocaches: 13

Day 5: Rufus to Cle Elum to Steilacoom with a boring traffic jam to end the journey

The last day of our road trip was all about putting in the big miles. We started the day with a quick stop at McDonald’s for coffee and some ice for the cooler. Then we crossed over into Washington for our journey north towards Yakima – stopping just over the border to grab the geocache we had missed the night before.

Once at Yakima, we stopped to search for some fancy cheese for Royann, but failed in our mission. Then we made our way to Cle Elum for a quick pitstop before carrying on to Steilacoom. The journey was fairly uneventful until we started down the mountain pass and ended up in a traffic jam. We talked about options but ultimately decided to just go with the flow – finally exiting the freeway at Issaquah for a final (successful) search for fancy cheese.

And then, eventually, we arrived at our final destination, clocking up a measly 1 geocache for the day, but a respectable 275 miles.

Daily miles: 275 /// Daily geocaches: 1

For those keeping a tally, we totalled 1,315 miles and 50 geocaches. And countless photos.

Below is a small selection of road trip photos (far too many of the Painted Hills). I also have a larger geocaching gallery from the 50 caches on the road trip, along with a handful of others from my 2025 summer holidays to the homeland. Enjoy!