Geocaching

Cache Archiving Day

About 7 years ago, a 3 mile section of old US 301 in South Carolina near the Georgia border was turned into a walking trail. When we found some geocaches on the 1-1/2 stretch from the Savannah River back towards the middle we noticed that there were none on the other mile and a half. So over the next few months we placed 8 of our own on that first section.

Back in 2011 we were geocaching fools, it was our biggest year where found 332 caches, averaging almost one a day, so the distance, about 50 miles one way, to these caches didn’t seem that bad. Over the intervening years our caching has tapered off. This year we have found all of 73 and almost all of those were on our big trip out west in May. Last year we found zero, didn’t even try.

So now, that hundred mile round trip seems awfully long to do any maintenance and while there hasn’t been too much to do, it is still not a lot of fun to make the trip. We decided to just go ahead and archive the caches and on Sunday made the trip down to collect the containers. They were all fairly easy to find except for one camoed matchstick container. We were pretty sure we knew where to look, the hint said, “under log”, but there was nothing under the obvious one.

We brought everything home and salvaged what contents were worth it. We also weeded out which containers were worth saving as well. The plastic lock-n-lock was broken, so into the trash they went. The gasket was shot on the bison tube, so it went there too. The green penlight was an on-the-fly improvised container not really well suited for the job and was no longer usable as either a geocaching container or a flashlight, so, yup, we threw it away too. The ammo cans and the matchstick holders will get reused in 2019.

Fun with Figures

Day 2 of Not Being on our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

We were gone for 31 days and of those, 20 were spent driving from one place to another. There was a day in west Texas visiting Donna’s brother, a couple days in Albuquerque, seven days in Lake Tahoe and another day in Louisiana visiting a friend. We filled up with gas 18 times and used a total of 190 gallons for the 7,291 mile trip for an average of 38.4 miles per gallon.

The Mini uses premium fuel and I never really shopped around so take these numbers for what they are worth. The cheapest gas (besides the original fill up at home) was in Pelham, AL at $2.95 a gallon. The next cheapest was in Albuquerque, NM at $2.96. The highest was in Reno, NV at $3.72 a gallon and the second highest was also in Nevada in West Wendover at $3.63. For the trip we averaged $3.21 a gallon and spent a grand total of $677.05 on fuel.

Like I did 9 years ago with a rental car when we went out west, I attached a static cling travel bug to the back of the Lady Bug for our drive to and from the west, And just like that one no one spotted it on the car and logged it. I dipped it in about half of the geocaches we did along the way to rack up some miles anyway. Because the mileage for travel bugs is tallied in a “as the crow flies” manner between caches it only totaled only 4,834 miles compared to the 7,291 the car itself traveled.

We geocached for 17 of the 31 days on the trip. We looked for 70 caches. We found 63 and DNF’d seven for a success rate of 90%. Our biggest day was finding 12 caches, missing 2, on a Tuesday in Albuquerque1 while walking along some trails near the Rio Grande River. We found the most, 23, in surprise, Texas the state we spent the most time in. We found the fewest in Louisiana, just one on the way back thru and by grabbing 15 caches in Nevada we added another state cached in to bring our total to 30.

A Wife’s Revenge?

Day 25 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Amarillo, TX to Gainesville, TX. Traveled through the Texas panhandle today with lots of long trains, powerlines stretching to the horizon and several wind farms. Five of six in geocaches today. The only one we missed was called A Wife’s Revenge in the town of Memphis, TX. Here is the description:

Ahhhh, a woman scorned is a scary thing....

Not far from this cache is a very unique memorial to a roaming husband. As the story goes, this sculpture was placed on the husband's grave by his widow. Supposedly, he liked to entertain (or be entertained) by various ladies. The sculpture is a naked lady hiding her face in shame. This was the story that was told to us. However, it looks like it might also be one of the people from Pompeii... You draw your own conclusions.

This is the second day in a row we have DNF’d a cemetery cache and after not finding this one, both Donna and I felt like recreating this pose…

24,000 Sagebrush Bushes

Day 21 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Glenbrook, NV to Beatty, NV with a dip into Death Valley. Today was the first of ten travel days on the drive back home. Our Nevada drive today was a much better one than the one eight days ago and a thousand miles ago. Zero interstate and practically zero rain. We did do three widely separated geocaches on the day just to get in a couple of small leg stretches as an accompaniment to our usual snack stops along the way.

After dinner in Beatty we took a small drive down into Death Valley. A few miles into the park, NV374 turns into Daylight Pass Road and it falls from 4300 feet to below sea level in 13 miles. And even though the sun was already dropping behind the mountains to the west, the temperature in the valley was 101° (it was 80° at the top.)

Somewhere between Mina and Coaldale, Nevada along US95 South, the Angry Ladybug flapped her wings past the 24,000 mile mark.

Soth Lake Tahoe?

Day 15 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Glenbrook, NV to Round Hill, NV (Basically from where we are staying to 4 miles down the road to the store 🙂 ) and back. A hundred yards further up the road from where we are staying is a half mile drive up a hill to parking for the Cave Rock Trail where we went this afternoon for a hike and a little geocaching.

We were 4 for 4 for caches along the 1/2 mile long one-way trail and picked up a fifth by driving through the very exclusive neighborhood with fabulous views of the lake that was further uphill from the trail parking lot. With the two caches that were a bit off the trail, I bet we covered a couple miles of walking and being 6000′ higher than where we live, we got a pretty good work out doing it.

When I added the above photo on Instagram I didn’t crop it square like I normally do, so I decided to at some text at the top explaining where it was taken. It wasn’t until later when Donna saw the Instagram post that she noticed I missed a letter in the first word…

Made It

Day 14 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Sparks, NV to Glenbrook, NV (AKA South Lake Tahoe.) This was our shortest driving day, less than 60 miles and that was taking the scenic route, so we had a lot of time to kill before we could check-in at the Airbnb. First was we chilled in the hotel room all the way until 9:30 AM instead of 7:30, then we did some geocaching in Virginia City, followed by more geocaching in the state capital, Carson City. We found three in each place.

The ones in Virginia City were a bit more entertaining because just walking around town was a chore. It is a mining town situated on the top of a mountain, 6,150 feet up a windy road, where three blocks in one direction was a gain/drop of 10 feet in elevation, three blocks perpendicular was a gain/drop of 150 feet! In the middle of the 1800s when silver was found in the surrounding hills the town’s peak population was 25,000, now it has under a thousand people living there. If NV341, the city’s main street were unpaved and you squinted your eyes a bit, you could almost pretend it was still 1860, the sidewalks are still wood…

When we came down the mountain we ended up in Nevada’s capital city, without even realizing it. That is how our east coast bias is, I think we just assumed it was Las Vegas. The caches here were the usual magnetic micros and we normally don’t care for them, but it was Sunday and there was very little going on. After a leisurely lunch we drove up another big hill to get to Lake Tahoe.

We got to the place we are renting for the week at 2:00 PM, which was 2 hours earlier than the stated check-in time. We looked in the window and it looked clean, there was nobody about, so we opened the door and started moving our stuff in. By the time we supposed to be able to officially check-in, 4:00 PM, we had already unloaded the car, been to the grocery store, put everything away and had settled in front of the TV.

Aliens Crash Land in New Mexico

Day 7 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Monahans, TX. to Albuquerque, NM. Finally made up for our slight of Roswell, NM back in 2009 by making it through here on this trip. If it wasn’t for this very interesting “Welcome To” diorama south of town, the several little green men statues in random spots and the International UFO Museum & Research Center (we did go in) this could be any other town of 50,000 people in a desert setting. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but this wan’t it.

This was our longest mileage day, so there was not a lot of time for geocaching. We looked for just 2, the one that was near the above picture on the south side of Roswell and one on the north side that was near the road that branches off US285 leading to the 1947 UFO crash site.