SCENIC SUNDAY - TO QUAD OR NOT TO QUAD

I’d like to say we slept late today, but no luck. We were up again by 4:30am but actually didn’t leave until after 7:00am because we were so tired the night before we didn’t get any planning done for today’s trip. After some last minute changes and discussions, we were on our way.

From Weed, we were headed south, but first, we needed to go north. That’s geocaching for you! The first cache was along the way to Yreka and proved to be easy. Then, when we arrived in Yreka, our luck turned to muck. On the third try we finally found one and could put this quad in the found column.

At this point we had another decision to make. Do we head down I-5 to early wine and miss a quad or do we…Wait!! Wine…A Quad…Wine…A Quad. Hummm? Yep! It was a tough one but wine lost and off we went down another backcountry road to another adventure. The roadside was full of yellow wildflowers everywhere and we passed through several little towns each with their own unique quaintness. Mike particularly loved the town of Etna. It was located in Scott Valley and surrounded by lush green meadows and tree covered hills. There were old broken down barns along side brand new houses. It was quiet, peaceful and incredibly beautiful.

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any more remote, we turned onto another road that wound it’s way up yet another gorgeous canyon. Our GPSr’s told us the cache was only 7 miles away but we weren’t fooled (we’ve been down that road before). Nearly 12 miles later we finally reached the location of the cache. We parked near the cache and Mike and Larry hiked up a short but VERY steep hill to…a parking lot. That happens a lot in geocaching, actually, more than is acceptable. Armed with hand signals from Mike, Cynthia drove up to within 20 feet of the cache and provided a much safer way off the hill for Mike and Larry.

On our way back to Interstate 5 we passed through the town of Gazelle. We just had to stop and take a picture to send to Teri (NevadaWolf) since Mike had called her a Gazelle in his story of the cache at Box Falls. Here’s to you Teri!

By the time we made it back to Mt. Shasta it was noon and we decided to have lunch at the Black Bear Diner because we couldn’t bear another MacBurger. Little did we know that we would spend the remainder of our retirement waiting for the healthier option to fast food. There’s a lesson there somewhere… While waiting for the inevitable, we decided to try for another quad in Fall River Mills, a mere two hour detour for one lousy cache.

After driving for about half an hour, we turned onto a road and instantly became members of the cattle drive coming at us. We inched forward and they all scattered around us. Great fun!! And great pictures!! While we waited for the cows to pass, a mother cow looked behind and frantically started mooing. All of a sudden a little black calf came running by and the mother cow whipped her head around and ran after him. “Kids” are a worry no matter what animal you are! By the way, none of the “cowboys” were on horseback. Nowadays it’s a quad. Sometimes geocaching is full or irony.

As we reached I-5 at Redding we could hear the wine calling our name but somewhere in the background a quad was whispering so….off we went on another backcountry road to quad 55. And what a road it was!! As Mike was yelling YEE HAH!! the passengers were searching for the barf bags. Once there, the cache was easily found and then we had to retrace our steps back to I-5. YEE HAH!!!

We finally arrived back to our starting point in Roseville at 7:07. These 12-hour days of driving have taken a toll on all of us. We creaked out of the car and collapsed onto the couch and chairs. We were all looking forward to a good night’s sleep on a comfortable bed!! What we do for a little, actually a lot of, fun is amazing. No one could possibly accuse us of whiling away our retirement years sitting in rocking chairs. I guess this is the new retirement.

The map at the top shows the entire 3 day trip. It represents 22 quads and 7 counties covering over 2000 miles.

INTERSTATE MADNESS!!

We walked out our door this morning at 6:00am to find RAIN. But not to be deterred, we again took off early for our second day of touring the Northern California coast and then heading inland. Yesterday I complained that I never got to see the ocean, so soon after we left Fortuna, Mike said “The Ocean’s on the left, can you see it?” Well, NO, the fog was heavy and there was no blue ocean in sight. Maybe later!

Our first stop of the day was in Eureka where we picked up a quick cache and then immediately headed out again. We had a lot of miles to cover today and our driver (Mike) let us know in no uncertain terms that we couldn’t spend time at any other caches or we wouldn’t finish our designated route.

Finally ocean. It was gray not blue because of the cloud cover, but the waves still made it an impressive sight. We saw cars driving right on the beach – where’s GeoJeep when you want it. (FYI, we left the jeeps at home and carpooled in GeoSequoia to share the cost of gas.)

Have you ever heard the phrase “I can see it, but I can’t get there”? Well, that was us trying to get to the scenic highway for our next cache. We went in circles north and south on Highway 101 till we managed to finally get the right exit. We jumped out of the car and were hit in the face with the cold. We shivered our way out to the cache where we had a beautiful view of the ocean, the beach, the surfers, and the beautiful rocks in the shallows. I guess it was worth the cold. Farther down the beach, we saw a big group of people that appeared to be standing around. Linda wondered if they were watching for a tidal wave. But no, on our way out we saw that that was clam beach so we guess they were claming. Linda’s explanation was more exciting!!

North of Klamath, we passed statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe, his blue ox. Linda and I wanted to stop for a picture since as children we heard many stories of how our father was a good friend of Paul Bunyan and in fact helped him and Babe build Puget Sound. You know little girls believe anything their father says! Anyway, by the time we screamed stop, we were too far past to turn around. Besides we were on a mission.

Finally we were traveling right along the ocean. Unfortunately the fog was so thick we couldn’t see a thing including the highway. What happened to the sunshine we were supposed to have for the weekend?

Our final caches along the coast were in Crescent City where we visited a memorial dedicated to the shipwreck of The Brother Jonathan and the Saint George Reef Lighthouse that was placed on the National Register of Historical Places in 1993. From there we headed inland through the Smith River Canyon on our way to Grant’s Pass Oregon before heading back into California. We had to travel through Oregon because there were no roads that went east from Crescent City. There were a lot of pesky mountains in the way.

As we were traveling the small mountain road, to our surprise we came upon a red light. What’s this doing here in the middle of nowhere? Well, it was their answer for road construction. Put up a light and save money on a flagger. Actually, it worked really well as our wait was minimal. Soon after the sun finally broke through the clouds. Yea!!

We stopped for lunch in Grants Pass, Oregon and then walked across the parking lot for a quick lamp skirt cache. Then began the longest stretch of our trip today. We had to catch 62 off of I-5 near Medford, Oregon and head to Klamath Falls where we turned south to head back into California to snag a cache in Modoc County. This cache was located near the Tule Lake Japanese internment camp a place I didn’t know existed. But I learned there were 10 such internment camps during WW II.

Now we had a decision to make. It was 3:30pm. Should we head south seven more miles to get Quad 29 or turn around and head back to 161 and to Weed a three hour drive. Well, you guessed it. We had come this far and were so close we just couldn’t resist. What do we care if we’re doing the final caches in the dark!! So south we went. The cache took us up our first dirt road of the day. The sequoia did a great job. The final walk to the cache was about 50 feet with climbing on rocks involved so we just knew it was a good thing we went the extra miles. Mike loves to rock climb.

After finding this cache, we then headed back north to catch 161 that travels along the Oregon, California border. We had two more quads to get before the day could end. The first quad was an easy ammo can find. Good thing, we were getting tired.

As we headed south down 97, Mt. Shasta came into view. It’s still covered by snow and is a beautiful site. It was even more beautiful because we knew our very long day was almost over. We planned to stay in Weed, California for the night, not far from the base of Mt. Shasta.

The last cache (and quad) of the day was in a Memorial Sculpture Garden. We walked the paths seeing various sculptures depicting different wars. In amongst the walkways, we easily found the cache. After a long day in the car, it certainly was great to do a little walking.

Our day ended at 6:01pm when four very tired cachers walked into the Comfort Inn in Weed. Mike was right – we had to move right along all day – but I’m happy to report we completed our route and found 12 caches that included 3 counties and 8 quads. We enjoyed our cocktails, logged our caches, and planned our trip for tomorrow.

CRUISING THE COAST

We were up at 4am this morning to begin our trip along the Northern California Coast with Linda and Larry (L3-Geo). We were on a mission to pick up counties for the “Discovering and Logging California’s 58 Counties” cache and quads the “California DeLorme Challenge”.

The morning commute traffic slowed us down for a few minutes but finally we were on our way. We traveled through the wine country and were amazed by the acres and acres of grape vines. After two hours of travel we found our first cache at a new winery in the Calistoga area. Now we were cooking.

Next stop – Clear Lake, via a long curvy mountain road reminiscent of a roller coaster ride. Unfortunately, Mike (the driver) was the only one having a good time. Everyone else was too busy hanging on to their high tech gear and themselves to appreciate the experience. Clear Lake according to Larry was formed from the tears of Konocti, an Indian Chief, after he lost his daughter.

Our next stop was Lakeport, where we walked out on a pier over the water to find the cache. While there we visited with the nearby fishermen and gave them our advice on how to catch a fish. I guess we were good luck, because as we were leaving, one of the fishermen caught one. We also were lucky enough to spot a catfish meandering through the shallow waters near the pier.

We had lunch nearby and were on our way again. Trees lined the road and covered the mountains on both sides of us. Because we are from the driest state in the country (Nevada), we were in awe of the green countryside. Further down the road we made a quick stop and U-turn to look at bison lounging in a nearby field. There were flies all over their eyes, so they wouldn’t hold still for a picture so we did our best. Mike made a joke about picking up a bison tube for a future cache (only geocachers would understand his humor).

Our next cache took us to the Mendocino County offices to search an old tractor. Unfortunately, the sprinklers were on. So Mike, Linda and I stood with our feet on the sprinklers to block the water while Larry searched. He managed to stay dry, but I was soaked. The wind blew all the water right back at me. Next Linda took over the search, but after searching for about 15 minutes, we all decided enough was enough and we headed out to find another cache in this quad.

Before we knew it, we passed through “The Gateway to the Redwoods” at Willits, California. It took us forever to get through this little town. Everyone seemed to be in Willits today.

As we drove to the next quad, we realized that somehow we did not have the information for the next cache – one of the downsides to paperless geocaching. So Linda got on her phone, connected to the web, and looked up all the info. Luckily we found this one so we didn’t have to attempt a nearby cache where previous geocachers had reported bear activity (no not that kind of bare).

Eventually we reached the Richardson Grove State Park where we wandered through a grove of huge redwoods searching for some answers to a virtual cache. We weren’t sure if we found the right answers, but we got some great pictures of the giant redwoods.

Our final cache for the day took us to an old locomotive and a steam engine in Scotia. We learned about the 19th century lumber industry in this part of Northern California. There was a fantastic old inn where we considered staying for the night, but it was too early and too expensive so off we went again heading north.

We finally called it a day in Fortuna, California. It’s about 30 minutes south of Eureka, our first overnight stop on our trek up the coast tomorrow.

TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS!

Monday morning arrived with a surprise. We all survived a night in Bruno’s Motel! Cynthia and Linda had to admit that it wasn’t as bad as they thought it might be, but it’s only fair to note that Cynthia didn’t see the large colonies of mold lurking in the shower.

After enjoying breakfast at Bruno’s, we were on the road again (this is when Cynthia and Linda would break into song). The plan today was to take a very circuitous and scenic route back to Reno. After traveling west out of Gerlach for a few miles we turned onto a gravel road and headed roughly south along the west side of the Smoke Creek Desert. Even though it has it’s own name, the Smoke Creek Desert is geographically connected to the more famous Black Rock Desert that is north and east of the Smoke Creek Desert.

Twenty miles down the dusty road was our first cache of the day. Once we found the right road, it was an easy and fun Jeep ride up a hill bristling with tufa. We weren’t surprised that the cache was on top of one of the tallest chunks of tufa and it was Mike’s job to get up there and find it.

For the next 30 miles we followed the old stagecoach route that linked the few widely scattered ranches located wherever there was water. Surprisingly, a few of these ranches still exist today but, sadly, most are gone or are being slowly consumed by the desert. Along the way Linda and Larry picked up a cache located on a bridge spanning Smoke Creek. It’s hard to imagine that all the water flowing under the bridge will soon disappear when it reaches the thirsty playa less than a mile from here.

Toward the southern end of the Smoke Creek Desert the road passes through Bonham Ranch, an old stage station. To the left of the road is Round Hole Springs, a large deep spring about 30 feet wide and to the right (behind the old ranch house) is an artesian well. As the water flows out of the ground and onto the playa it transforms the otherwise barren desert into an oasis of life and color.

Terraced Hills and Sand Pass separate the Smoke Creek Desert to the north from Pyramid Lake to the south. Ten thousand or so years ago they were part of one huge inland sea known as Lahontan. Today, Pyramid Lake is all that remains of this inland sea, a victim of global warming that occurred long before white men came to this continent.

Just south of Sand Pass we turned west onto Fish Springs Road, another dry dusty gravel road. Thirty miles later we grabbed a cache near The Widow Maker, a steep hill climb into the Fort Sage Mountains. The plan now was to take a dirt road north to Herlong and then west on pavement to Hwy 395. That was the plan but sometimes plans have a way of turning to dust and blowing away just like the road we took to Herlong. At the end of the road with pavement in sight we came to a locked gate and there was no way around it. Crap! And just to rub salt in our wound, the gate had an old rusty handmade sign indicating that beyond the sign was a gated community. Har Har, very funny.

Our only option was to turn around and head south several miles to Laver Crossing Road and Hwy 395. Then north on 395 to where we should have intersected 395. Only a 16-mile detour and we were already behind schedule and to make matters worse we ran into road construction and lost even more time. After much teeth gnashing we turned off the highway, picked up some food and, of course, a cache.

Five miles up Hwy 395 we left the road just as the traffic was stopping for another construction zone and took the Milford Grade road into a completely different world than the one we had been in all day. As the road ascended up into the Diamond Mountains the visions of vast dry lifeless playas were replaced with forests literally bursting with water and wildlife. Within a few short miles of each other two completely different worlds exist side-by-side. And water is what makes them different.

There were three caches up here. The first was an easy drive-up cache by a gorgeous lazy stream running through a verdant valley. Then came “Otis Overlook”, a cache at the end of a long Jeep trail overlooking Honey Lake and the world we just came from. I’ll let the pictures describe what we saw along the trail and at the overlook.











After our experiences with Otis we were anxious for another Jeep Trail Adventure to the next cache…until we saw what laughingly was labeled as a “Jeep Trail” on the map. After about 50 feet the “road” vanished into the grass. After some discussion we decided to go up the road and check it out, after all, the worst that could happen is that we would have to back down a few feet. So the intrepid cachers cinched up their seat belts and…discovered that there was something of a road, no..a path beyond the grass. As we followed the path up the hill we wound around trees and boulders and over large dirt berms. Eventually, to the astonishment of us all, we drove within 700 feet of the cache. From the “parking lot” it was an easy hike to the cache. On the way back down the road we took the time to take pictures of the Jeeps as they negotiated over the dirt berms.

By now we were out of time and had to get back to Reno so we bailed on the “plan” and descended down the Doyle Grade Road to…you guessed it…Doyle. From there we headed to Reno picking up a few caches along the way. Once in Reno, we stopped at Chili’s, swapped pictures and ate some food. After lunch we all headed west on I-80 to pick up one last cache before Linda and Larry took off for Roseville and we came home and collapsed with a grin on our faces.

THE ROAD TO GERLACH

Today we headed to the "NV DeLorme Finders Get Lost in Gerlach Event" in beautiful downtown Gerlach, Nevada. We started early and headed into the rising sun (an every day occurrence when we were pursuing the Nevada DeLorme Challenge cache). The first cache of the day was on top of one of the many mountains in Reno. We explored several possible entrances to the area and on the second try we found the right road. We were able to drive pretty close to the cache and were glad to start our day with such success.

On down the road in Fernley, we picked up several new caches and then finally headed out the long road to Gerlach. We passed beautiful Pyramid Lake and had lunch along the shores of Winnemucca Lake, an area once totally covered by the waters of ancient Lake Lahontan, but now just a vast dry lake bed.










After lunch, we headed into the Selenite Range through the Limbo pass in seach of the "LIMBO CACHE" (GC10RPZ). The road was a pleasant change from the usual rocky roads we encountered in our travels through the rest of Nevada. The last 0.35 miles was up a steep rocky incline (the more usual Nevada road). Along the way, we saw thousands of baby mormon crickets and smooshed our fair share. But luckily, they were nowhere to be seen at the cache site. We found the cache after a short search and enjoyed the fabulous views.











Our next stop was Gerlach where we met up with our fellow geocachers and exchanged stories (some true and some exaggerated) of our common obsession. After enjoying a great dinner of Bruno's famous handmade meat raviolis, we all strolled across the street for a picture of the group and, of course, to claim another cache. The whole time we were being eaten alive by a horde of little flying biting nasty gnats.

It was hard to call it a night, but everyone needed to make the long trek home, except us. We stayed at Bruno's Motel expecting a wild night in Gerlach - NOT!! Actually we had another exciting day of caching planned for the trip home to Reno and needed an early head start.

FOLLOW THE LEADER!

We started our day today with Linda and Larry (L3-Geo) by getting a First to Find on "Follow The Leader" (GC12KDY). It was a crisp beautiful morning and we followed clues that took us from tree to tree and finally to a cache hidden in a stump. What a great time we had but little did we know that the rest of our day would be more following the leader. Since we have found most of the caches in the Reno area and Linda and Larry were on a quest for 4000, we spent the day being more of a quide than a cacher - which meant they followed us around a lot.

We went from Reno to Sparks to Pyramid Lake to Wadsworth, to Lovelock and back to Reno (or was it the other way around, its been a long day) with Geo-Jeep in the lead and The Golden Retriever following. We hiked through the woods, we bounced over rough roads, we climbed rocks, we hiked trails, and we climbed tufa. At the end of the day, we had 8 caches and they had 29 which brought them to 4000.




Congratulations Linda and Larry!

OH NO, NOT AGAIN!!

I awoke this morning to the sound of the drain pipe outside our window dripping. When I looked out the window, what to my wondering eyes should appear but SNOW. Haven't we had enough?? Apparently not as we spent the whole day running between rain, snow, and hail as we made our way around Reno with L3-Geo finding some easy caches instead of 4-wheeling around the mountains having more adventures.

We had found all the new ones in the area and were two short of our 3700 mark. We considered taking a short hike, but we decided it was too cold and windy so we headed down to Carson to grab a few caches. Success - we ended the day with 3702. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day since we have plans to cache around Pyramid Lake.