The Road Home

Today we headed home up Hwy 95. We waited until we were out of the Las Vegas area and then we began to cache. We found two caches in the Indian Springs area, an Air Force “reservation”. As the jets zoomed over our heads on their practice runs, we walked through the desert hoping they wouldn’t bomb us. For one of the caches, we felt like we were in basic training as Mike had to “slither on his belly like a reptile” to get under a fence to the cache site. After finding the caches, we watched three planes doing acrobatics in the sky. They were zooming straight up and straight down, making us nervous as they approached the ground. But each time, they would pull up just in time.

When we reached Mercury we drove out in the desert for a cache with a view of the Nevada Test Site. Unfortunately we reached a sign notifying us that the area was closed so we had to pass it by. We did get to see the test site and Yucca Mountain in the distance. Next we stopped at the SHM “Nevada Test Site” and learned all about the area.

While we were stopped at “Chain Gang” and up a slight hill at the fence line, a Nevada Highway Patrol officer stopped to see if we were stranded. We explained geocaching to him and he told us he was headed back to Las Vegas after being called up to Reno in anticipation of the storm. He told us it wasn’t as bad in Reno as they expected, that Carson City received more snow than Reno did, and that he had escorted FEMA around Fernley where the levy broke. As we visited with him, we just knew that all those cars zooming by thought we were getting a ticket. If you were one of those cars, we didn’t. He was just happy we were enjoying ourselves and we both went our separate ways.

We made a quick stop at the “Little House out Back” which turned out to be a miniature outhouse in a bush. When opened, it came complete with a toilet and plenty of bathroom products. It’s amazing what you can do in the middle of the desert. If you get down that way on Hwy 95, be sure to stop. It’s certainly worth the short walk.

After that we sashayed from side to side of Hwy 95 picking up caches. We arrived in Beatty for lunch about 1pm. We ate at Rita’s in the Stagecoach Casino. Another hamburger. Middlegate Station still wins as the best hamburger of our trip.

We stopped just short of Goldfield so Larry and Linda could visit their first Brothel. Fortunately, the CottonTail brothel was closed and boarded up. We did find a cache on the sign though. From there it was a straight shot to Tonopah and then 4 hours to home.

All in all it was a great 5 day trip to Las Vegas via Ely (although certainly not the warm trip we had hoped for) and we ended with 159 caches for the weekend.

Cold and Blustery Event

We started the morning at Whole Foods logging our 40 finds from yesterday and enjoying our breakfast. We headed out to cache about 9am and had a pretty successful morning. We headed to the event about noon and spent a few hours visiting with fellow cachers. We won a geocoin and each received another geocoin from Jeremy of groundspeak. After lunch we wandered around the park and found 5 caches. Then it was time to head on out to get more caches before heading to dinner. We picked up another 40 caches by the end of the day and celebrated our success with a bottle of wine at dinner. After dinner we again visited the Whole Foods parking lot to log our caches using their free internet access. When we arrived back at the hotel, we all collapsed. It’s exhausting work finding caches in the wind and cold!

Thrashing in the Rain (or is that caching)

Here we are in Las Vegas where it is supposed to be warm and dry. Not today. The big storm we’ve been avoiding since Thursday finally caught up with us and it is raining. Last time we were in Las Vegas it was raining too. Maybe we’re jinxed.

We started the day at Starbucks - of course. We needed to find internet access to log our last two counties for the Nevada Counties Challenge. As soon as we got access, we also checked for free wireless access and found that we can sit in the Whole Foods parking lot and get on the internet for free. Yea!

We started our caching day very frustrated. We just couldn’t seem to find the right streets to reach the caches. We finally decided to go to an area that had established streets and we finally began to find caches.

Finally it was time to find the final Nevada Counties cache. We followed our GPSrs to Longwalker’s house and began our search. Unfortunately, Frank (longwalker) was not home so we couldn’t meet and chat with him. We did meet his wife. We found the cache, took our pictures, and headed on to lunch at Baja Fresh where we celebrated our success.

We spent the rest of the afternoon caching around the hotel area. It was very cold and windy, but we did manage to find 40 caches by the end of the day. On our way home we stopped at Whole Foods. While Linda and I sat in the car and entered out finds for Friday, the men went inside and bought some meat and cheeses. We returned to our room and enjoyed our snacks and reviewed our fun day. When we all started to fall asleep we went our separate ways.

Las Vegas or Bust

Today we were late. At 7am, we headed out to breakfast at the elite McDonalds close to our hotel and had our egg McMuffins. Ely doesn’t have a Starbucks so we were out of luck. We had all kinds of troubles with our computers this morning - guess they were too cold - so by the time we finally headed down 93 to Pioche to get our Lincoln County cache it was 8:12am. We had 65 miles of driving before finding our first cache so we needed to get moving. This morning the sun was shining, the temperature was 32 degrees and the wind chill was 24 degrees. Mike was prepared with his ski mask, coat and gloves and Larry had on his sweater. No stopping us now!

As we traveled down 93, the mountains and clouds were spectacular and we were glad to discover that Nevada considers this the “Scenic Route”. I think that’s because it’s not the fastest route. But as you can see from yesterday's blog, we never go the fastest route. What fun would that be? Anyway, the scenic route lived up to its promise. We saw snow covered mountains, every kind of cloud, blue sky, big birds and lots of contrails, which we decided were those aliens headed to Area 51.

At around 9:30am we found our first cache. It was an easy ammo can hide, but it made us sad. When we were working on the Nevada DeLorme Challenge we had to travel through Lake Valley to reach Mount Wilson for the only cache in the quad. The people finding the Challenge now just have to find this cache along the roadway. What a loss for them! The challenge isn’t really a challenge anymore.

Our next cache was a walk through 8“ of snow. Since this was a much nicer day than yesterday, we all made the walk. As we went we were sinking in and slipping and commented that this was worse than walking in sand. We saw lots of animal tracks and tried to follow them, but while they don’t sink in, we certainly did. We found the cache quickly and since this cache qualified for our Lincoln County cache, we only have one more cache to find in Clark County and then we can head to the final County Challenge cache.

Our next stop was the Boot Hill Cemetery in Pioche. According to the sign, 72 men died in the 1870’s with their boots on and were buried at Boot Hill. The tombstones were all wooden. We loved exploring the area.

Next we stopped at Cathedral Gorge. Mike has been talking about stopping here since we started planning this trip. Today was the day. Too bad it was so windy and cold but we still enjoyed the view and took lots of pictures. While in the area, we visited the Bullionville cemetery and found a cache there.

The Lincoln County Airport and Panaca were the next caches we found before heading south again to Caliente. It’s now 47 degrees, which seems like a heat wave in comparison to yesterday, but the wind is howling so it’s still cold! As we approached Caliente, we passed through a canyon and actually started to see traffic. OK, 2 cars, but compared to the rest of the day that was rush hour.

It was lunch time when we reached Caliente and we began to look for somewhere to eat. The Branding Iron was our choice since it appeared to be very busy with locals. We’ve found a lot of great places by stopping in small towns at local restaurants. Unfortunately, today wasn’t one of them. After lunch we wondered around Caliente and found several caches and then headed on to Alamo. As we traveled the Joshua trees came and went. They only survive right around 5000 feet so we knew each time we reached that elevation. After passing through Alamo, we stopped for a cache at Lake Pahranagat, a wildlife refuge, and Mike told us this lake was formed by springs from an earthquake fault. Nevada never ceases to amaze us!

Now it was getting late and we had one more cache to find at the old southern Nevada border before heading straight to Las Vegas and our hotel. When we got there, we decided to round out our numbers to 25 caches today so we picked up one more cache in the parking lot of our hotel. Since we were now in Clark County our Nevada County Challenge was done. Tonight we email the final caches to longwalker and tomorrow we find the final cache. Another challenge completed. Now on to finally completing the California Counties Challenge and the California DeLorme Challenge. We only have a few counties and a few quads to go. Wish us luck!!

Reno to Las Vegas Via Ely

No, we’re not crazy. Of course, it would be faster to go to Las Vegas down 95. But we’re on a mission. Aren’t we always on a mission? Well, this one happens to be completing the Nevada Counties Challenge (GCWRTZ). We have found all the counties in Nevada except three - White Pine, Lincoln, and Clark. White Pine and Lincoln are on the eastern side of Nevada and Clark County is Las Vegas. The final cache is in Las Vegas so while we are there to attend an event and get lots of caches we decided to finish the challenge as well.

We were up at 5am to prepare for a 7am departure. We packed up all the luggage for Linda and Larry (L3-Geo) and us and believe it or not we actually were out the door at 7:05. We were packed like sardines in our Geo-Sequoia. You’d think we could pack lightly for our trip. But no - we are supposed to get the storm of the year, so we had to pack extra coats, gloves, hats and more. We filled every empty spot in the car. We made our traditional first stop at Starbucks and were on our way. We were trying to keep ahead of the big storm as much as possible. We certainly didn’t want eight feet of snow stopping our progress. As we headed towards Fallon, the sun was trying to out race the clouds so it could burn our retinas as we headed east. The sun finally won out in Fernley, but for only a short time. The rest of day was cloudy, windy and cold. We made two quick stops in Fernley for Linda & Larry to pick up caches we had already found and then headed on down the road to Fallon. LIttle did we know that a few days later a levee in Fernley would collapse and over 120 houses would be flooded with eight feet of water.

We found eleven caches in the Fallon area. Most were bison tubes hanging in trees or lampskirts. A few were challenging. We enjoyed lunch at Middlegate Station. We had heard that it had burned down and were very sad so we were delighted to see its familiar building as we drove up. This was our fourth visit here. Three lunches and one dinner. Our first visit was when we completed the Nevada DeLorme Challenge. The food and friendly owners gave us an excuse to stop every other time we passed by. As we left, we asked how long the trip to Ely would take. Three and a half hours we were told. We left at 12:30pm and arrived in Ely about 5pm. Cachers can always add hours to driving trips!! Soon after heading on up the road, we stopped for a cache near where 722 and 50 split. We ran into a snow grader waiting for the impending storm. Actually we saw all kinds of snow removal equipment and sanding equipment as we traveled and we were glad to still be ahead of the storm.

Several state historical markers later we stopped at the cemetery in Austin (“Where all the Dead People Live”). The snow was over two feet deep. The guys tried to get to the cache site, but when they started to look and uncovered a tombstone, they decided that they didn’t want to destroy a grave site, so this one would have to wait.

As we drove out of Austin up to the 7440 foot summit, we were treated to some beautiful views of the valleys below and surrounding mountains. We were also treated to some very icy patches on the road. When we reached the top, the wind was howling and we were glad we didn’t have to get out of the car to find a cache.

Finally, we were entering White Pine County. We stopped at Little Antelope Summit and Mike and Larry walked 200+ feet in the 2.5 feet of snow. While getting to the cache site, Larry fell flat on his face and thrashed around for a bit before he could find his feet. Leave it to Larry to provide the entertainment. When Mike and Larry arrived at the cache location, they actually found three caches. We’re still trying to figure out what that was about. As they returned, Mike sprinted through the snow to get back to the warm car. We made one more stop at a historical marker.

As the sun set, the last rays abandoned the highest mountain tops and the sky caught fire. Just after this awesome firey display, we rolled into Ely.

As we unloaded the car, we “enjoyed” a wind chill factor of 25 degrees. We could hardly wait to get our wet clothes off and jump in a hot shower. Once dry, we spent the evening logging caches, drinking wine, and eating snacks. All in all it was a great beginning to a great weekend.