BEST WESTERN ADVENTURES

Series 7

UP ON TIMBER MOUNTAIN

After leaving our friend Misso's house, we were in the mood for some refreshment. We decided to drive up to the Timber Mountain Store in Tionesta, taking a gamble that they would be open this late in the afternoon. It was around 7:30 pm on this day, the end of our second day of traveling.

Tionesta is an old logging town at the base of Timber Mountain, and on the southeastern edge of the Lava Beds NM. When we lived in Tulelake, Tionesta is where my husband would go to find a Christmas tree for us in the winter.

It is located on the edge of the Medicine Lake area in the lower Cascade range. We used to go up to Medicine Lake in the early days of our marriage, before children. My husband would fish and I would swim and play in the lake with our dog, Rascal, who was just a pup back then.

I could see the mountain ranges from our kitchen window when I was washing dishes, and would always ask if we could "go play up there". The area is rich in Native American history, and the story is that the name of the lake came from them, because they believed it had healing powers.

The Timber Mountain Store is down a dirt road that also leads out to the Eagles Nest RV resort. When we pulled up, the owner of the store came walking down from the row of trailer homes beyond the parking lot and offered to open up to sell us some sodas for the road. My husband went in with the kids while I headed straight to my favorite geocache of all time, Belly Up!.

I made the find on this one last Christmas, and could not believe my luck when I was the FTF (First-To-Find), four months after it had been posted. That would never happen in my area, with the stiff FTF competition we have going on! Within two hours of being published, the FTF hounds start to circle, and if a cache goes more than 12 hours without a posted find, something is off.

Apparently there are not a lot of FTF hounds in Northern California, or maybe this cache seemed too remote in the wintertime. At any rate, as you can see, it is located in a piece of history - an old crematorium from WWII era, never used, that actually used to reside at the Tule Lake Relocation Center I mentioned in the previous entry.

The reason I was going to visit this geocache is because I have it on my watchlist, and knew the last finder had left a travel bug there. That would be that little red duck next to the geocache, also known as "HELLDUCK". I swapped one of my personal geocoins for this travel bug, leaving behind Boomerang Gold.

Interesting story about this coin I call Boomerang Gold. I ordered a five pack of my favorite geocoin design from Hogwild coins - the "Hogwild Famous Traveling Geocoin"- and planned to give this particular one to my brother. I sent it to him in a birthday card, and two weeks later I found the card, still in the envelope, with the other mail on the kitchen table. Instead of heading to North Carolina, the card actually headed to Jacksonville FL, and then was returned to sender, with a big gaping hole in the envelope! At first I was mad that I had lost my coin, but then when I straightened out the kitchen table, I found the coin just sitting there! It made it all the way to Florida and back, for some unknown reason, only to fall out as soon as it got home. It continued to be a slippery devil, too. Every time I would round up my coin collection to take to events, somehow it would manage to get left behind and I found it in the most random places. I'm telling you, this coin has legs!

After making the swap, I went in to round up the family from inside, which was a good idea, since suddenly everyone was after crackers and I think we were overextending the store owner's courtesy. She and I talked about the geocache, though, and she told me some adventures relayed to her by a recent finder from Germany.

We had time for two more geocaches before the sun finally sank, both near the turn towards Canby and Alturas, and neither as remarkable as Belly Up. The hiders of Belly Up!, rock&crystal, were part of the team that hosted this year's annual geocaching festival, GeoWoodstock VI, that I have talked so much about. I met them in person there in California, which was really cool. I also talked about this geocache in my interview for being the Featured Cacher of the Month for the Houston Geocaching Society this month.

On the way back down the dirt road to the highway, we had to wait out some range cows who apparently trusted they had the right away. The sun going down on the Peninsula was ominous, and I knew we had to make some good time to get to New Pine Creek tonight. So here we go, pedal to the metal for more adventures and, for tonight, dinner and a good night's sleep ahead.