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.
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