Geocaching

Swapping Minis – Part 5

If you haven’t already, go back and read Part 1, then follow the links at the bottom of the posts to find your way back here.

The weather folks were right in their weather predictions, there was no further snow or rain and the temps were above freezing during the day. The roads up and down the Cascades were dry and clear for our trip over & back to Medford and John’s Auto Care Center. The 7 miles of OR140 through the pass, between Lake of the Woods and Fish Lake, did require a bit of slowing down in spots because there was some left over ice on that stretch.

We drove over on Monday and spent the night in a HIE so that we could get the Mini to John’s early on Tuesday. We knew that they needed at least 3 hours for the job and I wanted an oil change and coolant flush as well because who knows when the last one of those was done. After dropping the car off, instead of sitting around their waiting room for several hours we did what we did the other time we had some work done on the old Mini, walked the 1/2 mile over to the Rouge Valley Airport and rented a car.

We went back to the hotel and killed a little time and then checked out. We drove into downtown Central Point and dropped a Travel Bug we’ve had for too long in i5’s Travel Bug BnB. From there we drove back to Medford to shop a little at Harry & David. Next up we wandered around the Rouge Valley Mall looking for a winter knit hat that matched Donna’s winter coat. From there we drove over to get some lunch at chain that we don’t have in Klamath Falls and we used to enjoy back in Aiken, Firehouse Subs.

Having not yet heard about the car and with nothing else we wanted to do we drove back to John’s to ask in person. The Kombi switch was in, but they didn’t have a slot to do the oil change until 3:00 PM, so the car would be ready at 4 o’clock. We still had the car, so I said, “Let’s go for a drive.” After about a mile or so, Donna asked where I was going to go, I had no answer. She said, “I’m tired of driving around, let’s just return the car.

After giving National their Toyota Corolla back we were going to just shop in the little airport store, but the only way to get to it was through the TSA checkpoint. As we were walking out I saw a sign that said Observation Deck, so we rode the elevator up to the second floor and spent a pleasant hour or so watching regional jets take off and land.

With our Mini on the lift getting the oil changed I wandered into the office area and asked if they had contacted CarMax about payment for the Kombi Switch. The fellow handling it said he tried and left a message earlier, but hadn’t heard back yet. The last time I tried contacting the service department I left a message and was called back less than 5 minutes later. I said, “Let me try.” I called, left a message and waited. Nothing back. By now the car was done and we were ready to go. I tried again and instead of leaving another message I hung up and called the main number. After telling my story to someone random in their call center I was finally transferred to a different person in the Salem location’s service department. Finally, with about 20 minutes of emailing back and worth between John’s Auto Care Center and CarMax a working one time credit card number supplied the money.

Because of the time of year, by the time we got home at 6:00 PM, it was full on dark and I got to use our now working as advertised high beams.

26,000 Square Miles Of Desert

Geocaching in the Desert

Last November when we stopped in Beatty, Nevada for the night we stayed at the Motel 6 and we were very unhappy, so this time we booked a room in the Death Valley Inn and RV Park. It is pretty much a standard motel accommodation, but it was leaps and bounds above the Motel 6.

Side Note: Turns out we have been pronouncing the name of the town of Beatty wrong. We have always pronounced it like it looks, ‘beat-e’. We had stopped at a quick mart just north of Las Vegas and while Donna was chatting with a tribal police officer outside the store waiting for me to fill up he pronounced it ‘bait-e’. Later, when we checked in at the Death Valley Inn, I asked the clerk how the town name was pronounced and he confirmed it, ‘bait-e’.

Also, the last time we were here, we ate at Mel’s Diner for breakfast and we weren’t very happy with it either. So this time we tried the Denny’s inside the Stagecoach Hotel & Casino. While this is pretty much a standard Denny’s, the food was leaps and bounds above Mel’s Diner. The big problem with this place is that you had to walk quite a distance through a casino that still allowed smoking and it smelt it.

Side Note: When we ate at Mel’s back in 2018 and it was run by a kindly old man and the food was great, but by last November a different younger couple had bought him out and their food was below average.

Today’s drive was similar to the Loneliest Road in America, AKA US-50, in that it is 300 miles of empty desert with a couple of 100 mile stretches where there is no place to get gas. It was very dissimilar in that there was copious traffic in both directions, including about 25% of it being 18-wheelers that needed passing.

We had a couple of geocaching travel bugs that needed moving along, so I picked out a few caches with regular sized containers to find, and it didn’t take long to drop one of them. We stopped at the first cache only 40 miles north of Beatty.

The photo above is of the CX-5 from that cache that was about a 100 yards off the road. That CX-5 had just passed the 26,000 mile mark 32 miles back.

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.

Caution! Bridge Freezes Before Roadway

We went for a morning walk along a section of the OC&E Trail that we hadn’t been on yet. I wanted to walk someplace different and we both wanted something paved, so as not to have to remove the very cement-like mud from our shoes that developes this time of year.

Plus there were a couple geocaches to find along this 2 mile section. We found the first, but didn’t find the second. Although the temperature was still in the upper 20s at 10:30 AM, the sunny sky and near zero wind made for a pleasant stroll.

The afternoon was spent watching NFL football. Every time there was a commercial for Black Friday or Cyber Monday I would wonder what they were talking about. Maybe because I found it hard to believe it was still Thanksgiving weekend having had our turkey & fixings meal a whole week ago. And between lunch and dinner today, not counting the white bean turkey chili we still have some of, all the leftovers are gone.

I printed out return address and address labels, then stuck them on the envelopes, for our old school Christmas cards. While Donna, bless her heart, hand wrote a short to medium personal note inside each and everyone of the 46 cards. They go out in the mail tomorrow, so if you don’t get yours in the next 4 or 5 days, you must been added to the naughty list this year.

1st First To Find

A little over a week ago we took a drive up to the Lake of the Woods because it was a nice 35 mile trip to somewhere besides to the grocery store or some local restaurant to pick up a bit of take out. But mainly to take hike and do some geocaching.

Wouldn’t you know it, two days later, somebody published a new cache very near where we were. Donna wanted to go right back up there to try and be the First To Find. I talked her out of it to concentrate on the Friends of the Children scavenger hunt. I told her if that cache hadn’t been found after the hunt, we would try to be the 1st.

In over a decade of caching with over fourteen hundred caches found we have never been the First To Find on a cache.

We didn’t even try back in Aiken, because around there, there was a regular squad that would drop almost anything, including work, to rush out and look for newly published caches.

We were close once, really close, a second to find, on a random happenstance in Colorado. We were passing through on one of our driving trips and I had picked out some caches along our route, one of which had no finds. But, by the time we got there someone had beat us to it.

By today no one had found that Lake of the Woods cache yet, so this was the day for us to go up there and see if we could. Last time we drove up we took the Mini because it needed the exercise, but this time we drove the Miata because today was the last day it will be near a high of 70 until probably 2021.

After a little bit of searching around we found the cache. When I unfolded the log it was empty. Our 1st First to Find.

House Hunters III

As I mentioned the other day how different a house and its street could look in 3D real life, as opposed to the satellite and street views Google provides. Figuring that same effect would apply to the interiors of houses and the photos on Zillow we decided to call a realtor and try to get them to show us a few homes.

We narrowed our list down to 4 houses. We picked the one that was the early favorite and called the realtor to she if she would show us that listing and if she had the time could she show us these other three. We agreed to meet at 10:30 on Wednesday. We were up front about our intentions, that we were just looking and and not actual buyers, for now. But we were seriously considering moving into town in the future and when and if we did, they would be our first call.

The first house we went into was practically around the corner from where we are staying. From there we headed into a nearby neighborhood that was close to the Oregon Tech. Then we headed off to get a look into a house we poked around outside of the 2 days ago. We even chatted with the neighbors. We finished off with the house that was the listing of our realtor. It was very interesting to see inside compared to the pictures online. At the end of the tour we thanked them kindly and went our separate ways.

If this were an episode of House Hunters and we had to choose from just the houses we saw today, we both agreed that the first house we saw would have been the winner. Not long after we got home, the realtor texted me to say that when she got back to the office she noticed that someone made an offer on that very house, earlier in the morning.

This afternoon we did a little more geocaching. Very little more, looked for 5 and found 3. Today’s walk was a touch over 1-3/4 miles. This “park” is on the other side of the Link River from yesterday and the word park is in quotes because it is basically a developer’s failed dream. There was a small loop of paved road with street lights and the utility boxes on home sites that covered a hill between the Upper Klamath Lake and Lake Ewauna, but no homes had ever been built. The land is city owned and open for walkers. Today’s photo is a field of wildflowers that had taken over one side of a large hill between caches numbers three and four.

House Hunters II

This morning we did a little more lookee-looing at houses around Klamath Falls. The one new house on Zillow that we added yesterday, its the one furthest east on yesterday’s map, we had high hopes for because it checked all the boxes and had a killer view. We drove up and down the street in front of it once and then parked at one end. We walked back up the block to see if we could get a good look at that view, we could and it was as advertised. As we started to walk away, the front door opened and a gentleman walked out to say hi. He told us that house was listed on Friday and the very next day they got a full price offer. Ouch for us, good for them.

We then checked out the community pool and YMCA pools for Donna’s swimming addiction. The community pool was way too busy and it was outdoors. The water is heated to 83-85 degrees, but still, with daytime highs in January of 40, that has got to be cold. The Y’s pool would work though. Its indoors and the cost would be not too much more than Golds is costing now.

We found a nice park with a ton of trails near our AirBnB, so this afternoon we did a little geocaching. Very little, looked for 3 and found 2. We walked only a total of about 2-3/4 miles, but both of us noticed the diminished oxygen at our current 4,200 foot elevation on the 120 foot climb up to the cache locations. The picture above is looking out over a piece of Upper Klamath and was taken from around the spot where cache #2 was.