TEXAS CHALLENGE 2011

So, it's been awhile since I have written about geocaching.  Not that I haven't been doing it - in fact, I've found 641 caches since the last time I wrote an actual entry about geocaching.  Apparently I needed my outlet to explore my feelings about my failing marriage, subsequent divorce and beginning of a new relationship instead.  So...back to our regularly scheduled program....
We've been anticipating this year's Texas Challenge for a long time now.  Last year was my brother's first time to participate in this type of format for geocaching, and it fed right into his competitive nature.  His local region did not have a team of their own last year, so he played for our team, SouthEast Texas.  Since then, the cachers in the Corpus Christi area united under the banner of the South Texas team and made it their mission to come back this year and be a serious contendor in the field against North and Central Texas, as well as our team and possibly West Texas, if they decided to show up this year.
Our team was still wound up over our victory in San Angelo last year, and we also wanted to win, although we had sort of gotten used to losing.  Plus, we were the hosts this year, which meant a lot of planning from those who normally would be involved in the hunting process.  You can't do both.  This time, it was on our home turf so to speak, and hosted in the town of my brother's alma mater, so he was excited about the logistics.  Several text messages and emails were exchanged making plans, which curiously did no good because we weren't organized until up to the last month, even with a year to prepare.
During the midst of all this planning, my father's probably-terminal illness had been getting progressively worse.  The medication does not have the same effects that it used to. With my mother's prodding I am sure, he had begun to take the steps to having an operation on his brain that has a good chance of slowing down the progression of symptoms.  Somewhere along the way in discussions, he was invited to camp with us for the evening, and attend the Challenge with us.  The original plan was for him to join my brother in the competition on their bikes.  In the last minute strategy meetings before the event, though, on both the South and SE region sides, the terrain was discussed, and how it would play out in biking.  My brother and I both thought at this point the biking portion sounded too tough for my father, whose primary symptom is a loss of muscle coordination, so in a series of texts to follow, it was determined that my dad would hike with me, and this would free my brother up to bike more rugged terrain.

So it was that Friday night, the company around our campsite included my brother, my dad, my children, my handsome darling boyfriend, another couple we have been spending some time geocaching with lately (Chris and Shelley), their teenage daughter, and this friend of my brother's that helped us last year and then helped him form their own team, David.  We brought some wood - the origin of the firewood is a story for another day, really- and made a fire this evening, and we all roasted some marshmellows, made smores, and stayed up too late talking, some with beers to keep them company as well.
My brother and J had actually gotten up here the night before, as well as David.  We had made the camping reservation, and yet when J left to go pick up the kids and I from another fellow geocacher's house who  graciously allowed us to park our extra car at her house close to the park, my brother and David had hung up their South Texas banner across our picnic shelter, claiming our camp as belonging to their team.  Things got a little more interesting when our hunt team leader asked if we could use our camping shelter as home base to prepare our team and act as headquarters during the competition.  Turns out South Texas had the same idea.  So, we decided to share.  And that is how in the morning of the competition, we had about one hundred and fifty cachers, give or take, wandering in, most wearing pink bandanas to signify they were with the SouthEast team, and a smaller number wearing yellow banners advertising their allegiance to the South region.
If the Texas Challenge is foreign to you, this is how it works.  Numerous temporary geocaches have been hidden all over the designated park, and the different teams have four hours to find as many as they can.  Each one holds a certain point value, based on the difficulty of the find and the terrain it is located in.  Each cache has a corresponding number on a paper scorecard which is punched with a hole punch that you find in the cache itself, each one bearing a different design for verification purposes.  The cards HAVE to be turned in before the event officially ends, at which point the scores are tallied, and then averaged among the number of cachers competing to determine the winning region.  There are three ammo boxes given to the top three teams, each being painted either gold, silver, or bronze.  The team that wins the coveted golden ammo can gets bragging rights for the next year.  This contest is in its ninth year of existence, and this is my fourth time to attend.
Because my dad was potentially going to slow down the hiking, and because J wanted to get out there and try to score as much as possible, we had decided to split up and for him to go by bike.  Also, we had my dad's canoe with us, which was a competitive advantage, but only two adults could ride in the canoe at once.
When the contest begins, the team leader is given the thumb drive with the file on it that has the locations of the caches and the first aid stations.  Then there is the tedious process of loading those waypoints on to everyone's GPS units.  J always gets roped into being actively involved in this process, being that he is like the technology expert.  This day, my dad and I left on our canoe when the contest started, right after getting our waypoints, but J was held up for almost the whole first hour of the competition dealing with a particularly tricky GPS unit that no one had software for.

Close the 4/5 cache hide site

My dad and I's strategy of taking the canoe originally panned out for us very well, because we were able to get a cache find on the water, which was a high terrain and therefore high scored cache.  However, once we beached the canoe and got out on land, my plans for us to excel this day began to unravel.  We wasted about 45 minutes of the first hour looking for three caches we could not find (granted one of them is what they call an "evil hide" and the other was a 4/5 on Difficulty/Terrain, which may as well be called an evil hide).  We also had to cross the spillway that I show in this first picture.  After that, we began hiking down the Chinquapin trail, we started actually making some finds, getting about a dozen in about two hours or so of hiking around.  The last hour, regettably, we wasted a lot of time just trying to get back to the lodge from where we were, and walking along the road, find just a couple of caches in that time.  I think we could have gotten more if I had thought to call home base and have someone come get us and take us to another trailhead to get to another cluster, but I was not thinking too well at this point about where we could go next to maximize our finds.  We were really tired and wore out by that point.

After the scorecards are turned in, there is typically a bbq lunch and then later on a casual party.  We had decided to skip the bbq and bring our own lunch, and our afternoon was spent kind of traipsing back and forth from our campsite to the lodge to make appearances at the events, let the kids play on the playground, and visit with our friends. We were there at the lodge for the official announcement of the winners.  South Tx claimed the golden ammo can in a triumph of victory, having a small but dedicated team desirous of winning this year.  North got the silver, Cen-Tex the bronze, and our team got nothing this year but pats on the back for hosting.  Next year we'll have to make a comeback.
The highlights of my weekend were some of the casual moments spent in this day, before and after the competition:  laughing over breakfast with J over some conversation we have been having since the origin of our relationship over a year ago, some musings I had while the kids were playing on the playground as I looked out over Lake Raven and watched the wind make the tops of the trees dance, and of course the revealing of Texas DreamWeaver's ingenious stunt during the evening event, which involved a Bingo game where everyone was a winner.  Later there was another campfire, more smores and marshmellows, roasting weenies, and then snuggling into our double sleeping bag that I got J for Christmas (so we could sleep together in the same bag when we go camping, something we have done four times already this year and hopefully many more to come).

The morning after the Challenge typically begins with a pancake breakfast and ends with a CITO event.  If you aren't familiar, a CITO event is where we gather to pick up trash and make sure we leave a place better than how we found it.  I had decided to do our CITO much like we did the Challenge, but substitute the company of my boys for that of my dad.  This idea was born from K's requests for a canoe ride, and because I highly suspected my father had chunked a plastic bottle into the woods during the Challenge the day before.  So we rowed the canoe across the water, beached it, hiked the Chinquapin trail, then rowed back.  We could not find the bottle of my dad's that had mysteriously disappeared from his hands, but we did find several other plastic bottles and about half a bag of trash or less by the time we were done, including the stuff we found along the way in the parking lot.
Now, we made it all the way across the water and back,  a one mile round trip, without capsizing the canoe, so I was pretty happy about that.  However, as we pulled up to the boat launch, I realized my camera was missing.  It was a cheap disposable camera that I had, but I wanted the pictures I had been taking off of it all weekend.  I had just had it in my hands before we prepared to beach the canoe, and so it had fallen out of my pocket not too far out.  I looked around, and then saw it not six feet out in the water, resting on some swampy lilypad area.  I gave my cellphone to my son and took off my shoes, preparing to wade to it, but the water was too deep for wading.  So I took the canoe out by myself, and as soon as I reached for the camera, I realized it was off balance and, poof!, I was in the water.
So, I got my camera back, but I was soaking wet now. The boys were on the shore laughing hysterically as I swam back, pulling the canoe with me.  This explains why my pictures look psychedelic - they did turn out, luckily, but the film had gotten wet and warped.
Then I had to change clothes.  I had one clean shirt but I had to wear two day old dirty jeans, and no underwear, for the rest of our journey.  We cached our way out of the park, then did a little bit of caching around the Sam Houston statue, running into fellow geocachers at every stop.  After a misguided lunch in Huntsville, we set out for home, with stops for dogs along the way back.  We were pretty tired and it took us a while to get back in gear after this, but luckily I had taken the next day off work to help with that.
Next year my oldest boy says he wants to do the Challenge with us, and not stay back at the Camp Lil Cacher program they put on every year to watch the children while their parents participate in the event.   Last year was J and I's first challenge together, but we were just starting out together and were somewhat distracted by infatuation.  I am hoping next year the two of us will get a chance to work together and score up some high points, so AJ might be in for a tougher ride than he thinks, but we will just have to see!

CASINO NIGHTS.... AND THE GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT
I had high hopes for Reno. I think I was looking forward to this part of the journey more than anything else. We had made reservations at Circus Circus, and it was going to be this great big fun fest in "the Biggest Little City in the World".
And I don't know what happened, but it didn't happen like it was supposed to. The drive there was not terrible, but maybe because we had stopped to grab some geocaches along the way, it took longer than it should have, and we were all a little grubby, hungry, and tired when we got there. The whole finding the parking spot, checking in, unloading the luggage, and getting up to our rooms in the face of so much temptation (in the form of glittering lights and games for the kids) was grueling. Then there was showering and getting ready for a dinner our bellies were ready for hours ago (didn't see any Taco Times along the way this time!).
Try taking two young kids who don't listen very well to a huge buffet, agreeing to a plan with your husband, only to find him not listening to the plan very well (go figure) and losing absolute control over the dinner table. That was a nice start to the evening.
Circus Circus was our choice because of the great big Midway for the kids, which was crowded and boy, was that a challenge to keep up with everyone in there when we made our way down after the buffet. The kids were super stoked and running all over the place, and I kept losing my husband and/or one or two of the kids, and eventually my frigging mind.
It was time to calm the kids down and get them ready for bed. Good luck for that at a casino hotel! The husband took the money and ran...down to the casino, and left me in charge of the kids, which was a bad idea. I was way too tired and they were way too excited, and this is how that scene unfolded: the phone rings sometime close to midnight, and the front desk is on the other end of the line saying, "Are your children disturbing the other guests?"
How am I supposed to know? "It's possible," I said, "They are disturbing ME!"
Apparently there were two complaints to the front desk about the noise in our room. Butts were kicked and kids were shoved under covers with the threat of death if they made a peep, and when the husband showed back up, $20 richer, I made him give me that and then some so I could go let out my frustration by pulling some levers on the slot machines.
And girl can't get a break. He told me the waitresses would come by and offer you free drinks, but yeah, that didn't happen. I had to chase down one haggard waitress to get a cocktail an hour into it, and I stayed up too late feeding all my money to the nickel slots, slowly....
Anyway, I had these big plans for the morning, back when I was dreaming about this trip, about how I wanted to go find my childhood idol's grave, and read the poem I wrote in tribute for her (the one at the bottom of this blog), leave some flowers, say some words to her spirit. I wanted to cache my way out of Nevada, and all the way south.
It didn't happen like that, either. The town is kind of confusing to me, doesn't seem like the map at all, and I had lost all sense of direction and specifically where we needed to go to get to the cemetary where Mrs Velma Johnston is buried, and, I didn't feel like it anyways anymore. We were all tired, and got a late start, were fairly grumpy and discombulated, and just wanted to get out of town....
Long way down the most congested road I could have found to get us out, and finally we were free...stopped at Virginia City to not find a cache that should have been easy, and wasted too much time here by this big prospector searching in vain for a Golden Nugget that was too elusive for us, only to end up spending too much money in the nearby candy outlet on sweets these hyper children did not need....
That day was probably the worst of our road trip. Part of my disappointment lay in the fact that I hadn't planned very well for this part of the road trip, geocaching wise. I had been counting on the fact that we were going to have the laptop with us, and I would be able to load a Pocket Query from the road to have caches in my GPS unit to find. We ended up not bringing it, and I had only a sparse amount loaded as a precautionary measure. As a result of this, I missed some caches, lots of them, that I could easily have done. We also spent way too much time going after a planned cache that turned out to be too rugged for us, vehicle and/or hike wise, a fact we realized after spending an hour or two in the efforts.
The day after Reno ended on a sour note as we passed up several decent looking hotels, in the interest of making such good time, and then had to settle for the only thing we could find at the end of a long day of driving. It was the worse motel I have ever stayed in, seriously. I was so disgusted, and made everyone sleep ready to roll at a moment's notice because I was completely convinced there were bed bugs that would attack us as soon as we went to sleep and leave festering wounds on the children. I did not sleep well that night. That part of the journey was really bad, but we got to see some fabulous sites along the way, too. More on that later.

Outside the BLM Wild Horse Corral

Burns, Oregon

So, this is the closest I have come to the wild horses in Oregon so far. And I didn't even see one, just this statue. We had pulled right up to the gate of the wild horse management area to look for a geocache. Funny thing was, for some odd reason I did not have the coordinates to this one loaded in either GPS. I had the hints printed out, though, and by using the hint, and searching for a good twenty minutes, I was finally able to find it. Yeah!

This reminded me, though, of my fervent wish to get closer to the mustangs that live in this area. Mustangs are near and dear to my heart - just listen to the tribute poem posted at the bottom of this blog - and I've been following their management by the BLM for over two decades. Lately, the management of the mustangs have been facing some dire issues. The recession has hit the horse market fairly hard on the bottom side. The high priced luxury horses are still moving, but the low end has suffered from the economic crisis coupled with the end of horse slaughter in two big markets - California and Texas. The market is saturated with broke down, outlaw, and cull horses no one can sell, and the people who would buy these horses, the cheap horses, are also the ones who would adopt the mustangs. There are 30,000 mustangs sitting in boarding stables across the country that cannot be adopted out, and there was talk of euthanizing ALL of them until our new horse hero emerged. This is an issue that strongly speaks to me, and I wish I was in the position to do something about it.

On my "Bucket List", there is only one thing - to ride with the wild horses. Someday I will do it. I will saddle up a trusty mount, ride out to one of their ranges, find a herd, and ride among them. The gloriflying moment of my life will come when I am galloping alongside them, hair flying, lifting up my arms to God, in unison heart and soul with these creatures that have spoken so much to the depths of my heart. I want there to still be some wildness left on this earth, some place where horses still run free, and I want this for America, for America to keep her wild horses.

On our trip, we passed by three wild horse management facilities. This one in Burns is an area they bring them to when they are rounded up to prepare them for adoption. Some, like the ones we passed in Nevada, are actually protected ranges for them to live on. Someday, I would like to adopt my own wild horse, but this will have to wait until I have a proper enclosure and time to spend working on gentling it. These are the dreams I have in my life, dreams of wild horses and thundering hooves, and a gentleness inside a fierce and free nature. I hope that someday these dreams do come true.

AT LAST...OREGON!

This is what the "back side" of Oregon looks like - coming in from the eastern edge. The secenery was like this for about two hours. We found a geocache or two along the way and also really came to understand why Oregon attracted a lot of Scottish immigrants. They felt the landscape reminded them of home, and was a good place to raise sheep. However, I do not recall seeing any homes or ranches along this stretch...a whole lot of nothing in the middle of scenic nowhere....

SALT LAKE CITY

TOUR OF DUTY, by CoolCache

Best (and Only) Geocache we found there

This was probably the best cache find of our trip out west, and I would highly recommend this cache as a "must find" in the Northwest region. Check out the cache page here.
From the description, I thought this would be a fairly straight forward cache on the grounds of the Little America hotel. We parked in the hotel parking lot, but that was not really neccesary, turns out. The cache is actually out at the street level, ten feet from a major road, and very accessible, but awfully well hidden. It took me quite a few minutes to figure out where two large ammo cans would be hidden from everyone's view here.
I had this travel bug to drop off that was sort of special to me, War Bride and Soldier. This travel bug is in dedication to the women left behind in war, like myself.
The cache itself was a dedication to the troops overseas, in particular geocachers who are serving over in the Iraq War. As my husband was leaving for the war ten days after we returned from the trip, it was a "must-do" to find this cache before he left. As you can see, the War Bride travel bug fit the overall theme of the cache, and our trip, perfectly.
In one of hte ammo cans, there is a scrapbook of geocachers serving overseas, in their uniforms and doing the types of operations they conduct on their tour of duties. I am going to have to get Ted's pictures taken to submit for this scrapbook. It was a real honor. A miniature version of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle was attached to the lid of one of the boxes. I was disappointed not to find more travel items in the cache, but I think I traded mine for another. This cache has moved an amazing number (1015) of travel bugs/geocoins.
Then, onwards, we had to get out of Utah before it was too late to make it to Idaho this day.

GREAT WESTERN ROAD TRIP

Back Country Utah!
And GrandFather Caches
We were finally on the road, feeling the wind through our hair, making great time up the highway towards Salt Lake City. The rate we were going, we would be there by noon....so, we took a detour.
Now, I had been studying this area on the map for a long time. Specifically, I had been trying to figure out if we could get close enough to get a chance at some "grandfather" geocaches, some of the oldest caches hidden. I had been working on a list of the 100 oldest active geocaches, and had stumbled upon a few that weren't particularly too far from the highway we had to take on up to SLC, and on to Idaho.

So, we were making such good time, and were all feeling adventurous, and that is how I happened to earn finds on two of these one hundred oldest caches, Pony Express Stash and Clover Springs Stash.

We found the Pony Express one first, after stumbling upon the right county road, luckily. Here is my log for it:

August 8 by hardings (1620 found)This cache was so fabulous. I grew up loving stories of the old west, and being a horse lover, the Pony Express always interested me. We enjoyed the plaques along the way to this one, and the hike. Was a bit of a tough one for us Texans! Thanks for keeping this one going, it was incredibly awesome to find two grandfather caches today and we enjoyed the history. Left Red Jeep TB.

That was a fun hike, about 0.11 straight up a hill, with prickly desert plants all around. In retrospect, the terrain actually reminded me a lot of Austin. We spent a lot of time exploring the Pony Express station "remains" and plaques. Then we drove next to the Clover Springs camping area, which was about thirty minutes away, if I remember correctly. This time I went by myself to find the cache, which was only about 250 feet from available parking, albeit straight up and devilishly well hidden. Here is my log for that one:

August 8 by hardings (1620 found)We made a side trip just for this one. What an honor to get one of the grandfather caches! It was a short hike, but the uphill about did this Texan in. Actually walked right past it a few times, it was so well hidden, but just right there. Way cool. Thanks for keeping this one alive!

We had so much fun driving through this part of the state. I would recommend these caches to anyone, even those traveling with small children like we were. On the map, it looked like this area would be remote and inaccessible, but it really was not. It is such a pretty area. We had such a good time, but boy, were we famished by this point! (Damned ham sandwich story forthcoming). Luckily, the first town we pulled up into had a TACO TIME! in it - we brake for Taco Time. Turns out too many times on this trip. It's those crisp meat burritos that drive us wild....

-delay in blog posting due to any number of issues, which I hope to correct soon-

GREAT WESTERN ADVENTURES
Slow Death of the Pocketbook
It's a small trading post, established 1850, perched at the eastern edge of the Grand Canyon. Two Native Americans sit outside, drinking a soda, and watching the people walk by...into the much larger, modern day trading post next door. filled with several native crafts and tourist type knick knacks, with a deli in the back. There was a virtual geocache at the end of the parking lot, and after spending some time there, I spent an even greater time period shopping inside the doors. Pottery of every type imaginable, with many different textures and colors, lined the shelves, most with steep prices reflecting the degree of craftsmanship. Dream catchers, moccasins, beaded necklaces, furs, and coffee mugs with western designs grabbed the eye. Torquoise necklaces and totem animals gleamed from display counters. Showing economic restraint in the face of such temptation was very difficult. I finally fled the store after purchasing two small vases and a little souvenir for Kaleb (AJ had gotten one at the Grand Canyon store), considering myself very lucky not to have broken the bank in that place.
Then, as we were making our way around the twists and turns of the Marble Canyon area, we saw many little stands, flea market syle, out along the highway, or down a dirt road off to an overlook. Many stood empty, but a fair enough were doing a bang up business out there, selling crafts off the side of the road.
We watched cliffs in the distance come closer, and followed the weave of the road as it struggled to stay next to the winding river. There was a man in an old RV we followed for some time before being able to pass him, with all the curves, and T got frustrated because of the view we could not fully see. We got in front of him just in time to get some nice views of the Vermillion Cliffs, which might have been my favorite spot along the drive.
As the road and river curved steeply to the west, we came upon two very interesting virtual waypoints, The Navajo Bridge and Cliffdwellers. The historic bridge was a sturdy steel bridge constructed in the late 1920s, and had a nice interpretative area and gift shop.
The Cliffdwellers was nothing formalized as that, but a trading post set up in the shade of one of the boulders that had shelters carved into them was doing a booming business, and got some more of my cash. I was hoping now just to get out of Utah so I could stop spending my money on Native American crafts. T kept teasing me about this, since I had been giving him such a hard time about pre-trip budgeting, and AJ kept pouting about things he wanted as well.
I thought initially that the Cliffdwellers abodes had been inhabited by Native Americans, but the sign nearby one of them told a different story, which I found most interesting. A woman traveling solo by automobile in 1928 had broke down at this location, and was so interested in the property that she bought it, and in the 1930s, invited friends to come live there and turn the boulders into dwellings. So it was a white girl thing after all, who knew? The automobiles at the time were manufactured with the gas tank in a location that would run empty if the cars made their way up the canyon road in the normal fashion, so travelers during that era had to drive their cars backwards up the incline to avoid running out of gas! Based on this information, I would say that woman traveling solo who bought the property sure had a lot of courage.
Both of these places had a great wind factor, and with the air being much drier than we were used to, we kind of wanted to stay inside the car for a while. After a much needed caffeine break, a driver switch, and a couple of pathetic attempts to get some more geocaches on this leg, we slowly made our way into St George, Utah, where we promply got lost.
Personally, I was very glad to make it out of Arizona without losing all my money to the Navajo, and to reach our destination, and a bed. Now, on to Utah's adventures...

VERMILLION CLIFFS

Great Western Road Trip Adventures:
Grand Canyon Style
As much as I enjoyed the Grand Canyon, I must admit our trip did not go as I planned. There were many things I would have changed, mainly revolving around the interest of time.
For instance, check out our hotel, the Best Western Grand Canyon Squire Inn. It had all these great things to do there with kids (like the Family Fun Center, and bowling), only we were so tired from traveling all day that we did not have the energy to engage in it fully.
Then, when we made it to the Grand Canyon, we spent so much time checking out every overlook along the way (Ted's idea) to the Village that the children were worn out by the time we made it to the line for the Red Line shuttle to go out to Hermit's Rest (my idea). All the geocaches along this side of the park were either scenic virtuals that we could have reached via the Red Line, or lengthy hikes down the trail into the Canyon. Both would have been nice, but the shuttle bus ones would have been the only ones possible with the kids.
We ended up lunching at this diner type restaurant inside the Grand Canyon Village area. The decor included menus from the 1940s and '50s framed on the wall next to us, and we laughed over the prices and the language used (Riding Mounts All Types 1.50/hr). The children each picked out a souvenir, and Ted bought a hat with an elk on it. (Earlier that morning, he had spotted a huge bull elk sauntering across the highway, and had been tripping out on it all day).
We had spent quite some time in a converted studio that now sold souvenirs. I picked up an interesting book in the gift shop, and want to tell my friends about it later, so next time you see me, ask me the story about Glenn and Bessie Hyde, who disappeared in the Canyon on their honeymoon in 1928...
And then we were off, with sleeping kids, around the eastern side of the South Rim and into Utah...

Great Western Road Trip Ramblings #1

It is hard to know where to start with a journey of this magnitude. The planning and plotting along was tedious and timeworn. It's generally best, though, to start at the beginning, and so in this case, PHX, where four people - two small and two big - stood waiting for their ride. No, it was not the Winnebago they had conjured visions of, but a steel grey Santa Fe that would carry them on this epic journey to the Western frontier.

This family of four loaded four suitcases and four carry on bags into the back of this Santa Fe, and took off, heading north out of town on 17, Flagstaff bound.

The first stop was unexpected, a sudden need for drinks in the town of Black Canyon, which was remarkably hard to navigate through. T went inside the store for liquid refreshments, while I watched the compass of my GPSr unit align to straight across the street, 500 feet, for a chance at our first geocache of our journey. Here is the online log:

August 5 by hardings (1609 found)This one has the honor of being our first Arizona cache find, although sort of accidentally. We were actually looking for a place to get sodas and I checked the GPSr to see what was nearby, and voila! Was quite a climb for this Texas crew, real close up look at cactus. Lid of container broken and a piece fell off when I opened it, but contents in good shape. Thanks!

Finally, we got on the road again, stopping next at this place, the picture of which sums up my ideal scenery when stopping to find a geocache:

I was so excited to look for this one, but not so excited not to have found it, especially before the thunder and impending rainstorm chased us out of the search area.

Who knew Arizona could be so green?

One of the Best Stories from this Weekend
Sunday, July 12, 2009
hardings found A Foodie's Paradise (Traditional Cache)

Okay, funny story about this cache. I am in town for a dog show, and was staying closer to the Alamo, but wanted to come this way to see Barney Smith's Toilet Seat Museum. Apparently, I left my GPSr on or something, and it drained the battery and I had brought no extras. I didn't anticipate needing them! Well, now I had to find batteries, which meant a store, one that was open early on a Sunday. Luckily, I took the right path (led my instinct about these things I guess) and ended up here. Only, I had no idea this was the place the cache was in. Well, I had gotten some great salami and cheese here along with the batteries, and on the way out of the store, the cashier and I were talking, and she was saying this was the only grocery store close to downtown at all. Amazing.Once I got the batteries, I couldn't get reception for so long that I had driven north and west of here by about a mile and a half, and did the caches I had planned over there, and made my way here for the cache...ending up where I started at. How wild. At first I almost gave up on the cache, but it was just blending really well. Left a TB. Thanks!

HIGH ROAD TO NOWHERE

The objective was clear: first thing, a cemetary cache. He was ready to go there the night before, but I didn't want to get caught in a unfamiliar graveyard in the middle of the night. Instead, I offered first thing in the morning, after some gourmet hotel coffee.

We drove back out to Manitou Springs. "This is a little bit more like I remember it," he said, as we drove down the main street on a quiet Sunday morning.

The day before, the street had been jammed with people - the normal tourists, residents, and a race through Garden of the Gods that started near the park we had gone to. Lots of freaking cars. This morning, the streets were slightly dewy and we saw only a couple of cars along the way to the backroads cemetary behind the school.

It took us a few times of circling to find the right road. Welcome to geocaching. Sometimes a little planning and Google Earth helps that aspect, particularly in a strange town. And Manitou is definitely a strange town....

So, we arrive and start looking around, although not in the same places. He wanders off to check out the graves and I wander off to find a piece of tupperware wrapped in camo tape near some trees.

After this, we decide we are going to take a hike. We get in the car and start driving around the backroads, looking for the right little fork that would give us best access to The Intemann Trail.

We kept circling, and coming back into the neighborhood that rose along the hill. After a few false turns, we came to a road came High Road.

Well, we just had to take it.

Hairpin turns. No guard rail along the side. I could see sheer down the hill from my window, and it had me a little freaked out. We kept thinking the road was going to end in someone's driveway, but we also never saw a "No Outlet" sign, so we just kept going, past little cottages painted with murals across them, or with a unique statue, or construction. Round and round, and higher and higher, we went.

Until it was time to come down. Funny, I can't remember if the road ended, or if we just gave up the ghost. At any rate, we headed back down, still following the GPS arrow, and getting closer.

Until we end up back where we started. In the graveyard. Only we keep going, back to the back parking lot. Right in front of us in the Intemann Trail, and we are 0.15 to the cache.

Only that's mountain miles. That's switchbacks and uphill climbs, that's a gain in elevation to us Texans, and a heck of a hike on a warm day.

It seemed to go on forever, but at the same time, I never wanted it to end. There was no place I would rather be than where I was right then.

And we saw things out there.

Big things, little things, things made from some kind of amazing geological sequence. Things crafted in nature, and blossoming out for all to enjoy. The trail itself was beautiful, with little shoals of fools gold lighting up in the sun.

The one thing we didn't find was the cache. We followed the GPSr and went along the trail for about an hour. We stopped at the suggested waypoint for leaving the trail, and headed up a dry creek bed littered with sparking shoal. It got a little bit thicker, and steeper, around the time we got to "GZ", or the spot we were supposed to be looking in.

He went high. Figures. I went low. I looked on the east, and he looked on the west. Both of us came up empty handed.

Then he wanted to go down and try another apporach. I didn't want to do that, because the directions clearly stated to exit the trail at that location and head the 400 feet over this way, so it had to be here. The clue was "in some bush". That was kind of hard to interpret, exactly, but at least it gave us a place to start.

We walked back together to the trail, but then we disagreed on what direction to take from here. I was worried we didn't have enough fluids with us to attempt what he was considering, and thought we should go back.

End result was he went off by himself while I watched from the trail. We lost visual contact quickly, when he went off around a switchback, but we had verbal contact...for a while at least.

Meanwhile, back at the trail, I was getting antsy thinking about that unfound cache back there. So I went back to look....twice. No dice.

I had about half of a large Vitamin water in my hands, and occasionally I took a swallow, but mostly I was saving it for him. He was going to need it. He had gotten way high up there, and occasionally I would see the red flash of his shirt, or hear him skid on rocks.

Eventually,

he had to return, defeated. He couldn't get within 100 feet of it from that angle.

I handed him the water, and refrained from telling him I told you so.

"Let's go back."

The walk back was so much more enjoyable. Being able to take your eyes off the GPSr is a blessed thing.

And after all that hiking, so was getting back to the car.

"You know," he said, as we drove away. "I think that was my favorite did-not-find ever."

Mine too.

Oldest Existing Geocaches

Amended list from Oct 2001,
Checked over for archived caches and updates.
As of June 2009, these are the oldest caches still listed:
1. GC30, 5/11/2000 Kansas, Mingo by The Kansas Stasher

2. GC12, 5/12/2000 Oregon, Geocache by Jerry Connelly

3. GC28, 5/13/2000 Illinois, Beverly by Robert Reindl
4. GC3E, 5/18/2000 New South Wales, Australia, Lane Cove by Paul Edwards

5. GC46, 5/26/2000 New Zealand, Geocache by Kevin AndeO'Byrne rson

6. GC39, 5/26/2000 New York, The Spot by GPS_Fool

7. 19. GC31, 5/31/2000 Kansas, Arikaree by The Kansas Stasher

8. GC1D, 6/3/2000 Georgia, Beaver Cache by Jim Gooch

9. GC43, 6/3/2000 Ireland, Geocache by Chris

10. GC16, 6/4/2000 Oregon, Geocache by Jerry Connelly
11. GC1E, 6/11/2000 Georgia, Stone Mountain by Chris Reynolds

12. GC53, 6/15/2000 Kenya, Rift Valley (Virtual Cache)

13. GC25, 6/17/2000 Idaho, Camels Prairie Stash by Moun10Bike, Cindy, Laura and Jasmine

14. GC37, 6/20/2000 Missouri, Missouri's First - Watts Mill by Steve Brown

15. GCD, 6/21/2000 Washington, Geocache by ajromanelli

16.GC26, 6/21/2000 Idaho, Two roads by Ry Jones

17. GC27, 6/21/2000 Idaho, Eggcellent by Ry Jones

18. GC1F, 6/22/2000 Georgia, Geocache by Jim Pate

19.GC4B, 6/25/2000 New Zealand, Aukland Stash by nz_etrex

20.GC1B, 6/27/2000 Arkansas, Gorilla Stash by Ed Normandy

21.GC18, 7/2/2000 Colorado, Tarryall by Mike Frazier
22 GC40, 7/7/2000 Belgium, Geocache by Pierre Cao

23 GC35, 7/16/2000 Michigan, Power Island by Kluso

24. GC20, 7/17/2000 Georgia, Geocache by Jeff Andrews

25. GC19, 7/20/2000 Colorado, Geocache by Rob Garrison

26. GC 17, 7/21/2000 Oregon, Geocache by Jerry Connelly

27. GC23, 7/21/2000 Hawaii, Geocache by Tim Billings

28.GC21, 8/16/2000 Georgia, Lake Lanier by Jay Chamberlain
29 GC36, 8/21/2000 Michigan, Geocache by Gregory Benn
30. GC3B, 8/27/2000 Utah, Potters Pond by leaper64 & dirk88
31. GC57, 9/9/2000 Arizona, Geocache by Dan Rich
32. GC5B, 9/10/2000 California, Phil's Memorial Cache (Oldest CA. Cache) by GoodDogSD
33 GC5C, 9/17/2000 Idaho, Southern Idaho's First! by Eric
34 GC62, 9/26/2000 Texas Tombstone
35 GC67, 9/28/2000 Colorado, Paul Barclay Stash by Terry Shelton
36. GC 68, 9/29/2000 Alaska, Centurion Guards by Gary Short
37. GC6A, 9/30/2000 Denmark, Kippers in the Jungle by Klaus Alexander Seistrup
38. GC6E, 9/30/2000 Alaska, KidsGeoCache by Gary Short
39. GC70, 9/30/2000 North Carolina, Octopus Garden
40. GC72, 9/30/2000 Finland, Sun Gear by Kalle Reunanen
41. GC74, 10/1/2000 Massachusetts, First Mass by Jeremy Gilbert
42. GC76, 10/1/2000 Georgia, Rock Town
43. GC77, 10/2/2000 Germany, First Germany
44. GC78, 10/2/2000 California, Firestone
45. GC7A, 10/8/2000 Australia, Melbourne's 1st
46. GC7B, 10/8/2000 Arizona T824 Table Mesa
47. GC7E, 10/8/2000 Arizona, Labyrinth Canyon
48. GC7C, 10/9/2000 Utah Beaver Springs
49. GC7D, 10/9/2000 Massachusetts, Lowell, aka Second Mass
50. GC80, 10/9/2000 Utah Little Creek Stash

51. GC85, 10/14/2000 Massachussetts Camera Cache

52. GC 86 10/14/2000 Vermont 1

53. GC89 10/15/2000 Georgia Iron Horse

54. GC8A 10/15/2000 Utah Pony Express

55. GC90 10/19/2000 Mississippi Bonita Lakes

56. GC92 10/22/2000 Oregon Un-Original Stash

57. GC93 10/23/2000 Indiana's First

58. GC98 10/28/2000 Texas Double

59. GC9B 10/28/2000 Utah Clover Spring Stash

60. GC9C 10/27/2000 California Rabbit Eye View

61. GC9E 10/29/2000 New Hampshire Mines Follies

62. GCA0 10/30/2000 California Creekside Stash

63. GCA1 10/31/2000 Texas A Walk in the Park

64. GCA5 11/4/2000 Oregon Hembre Ridge

65. GCA8 11/4/2000 Utah Wah Wah Stash

66. GCAB 11/8/2000 California Orange County Stash

67. GCAD 11/11/2000 Australia Devil Bend

68. GCAE 11/12/2000 New York Sleepy Hollow 1

69. GCAF 11/11/2000 New Zealand Mount Cargill

70. GCBO 11/11/2000 New Zealand Flagstaff Hill

71. GCB1 11/12/2000 New Zealand Unity Park

72. GCB2 11/12/2000 New Zealand Botanical Gardens

73. GCB6 11/13/2000 Georgia Yellow River Stash

74. GCBF 11/19/2000 New York Boston Cache

75. GCBE 11/20/2000 New York Turkey Cache

76. GCC2 11/24/2000 California Azucar Mine Offset

77. GCC6 11/25/2000 Indiana Turkey Run Stash

78. GCC8 11/25/2000 New Jersey gerbiL cacHe

79. GCC9 11/28/2000 Texas No Walk in The Park

80. GCD2 12/2/2000 California Doggie Do

81. GCD4 12/3/2000 California Bovine Hill Stash

82. GCD6 12/2/2000 California Born Free

83. GCDE 12/10/2000 California Igor

84. GCEO 12/10/2000 Massachussets Aldo's Andover Geocache

85. GCE4 12/11/2000 Connecticut Another Brick In the Wall

86. GCE6 12/12/2000 Massachussetts Willow Brook Wander

87. GCEC 12/16/2000 Rhode Island Brenton Point

88. GCED 12/17/2000 Arizona Senda de Tonto

89. GCEF 12/17/2000 Texas CenTex Prime

90. GCFO 12/15/2000 Scotland Scotland's First

91. GCF1 12/17/2000 Australia Frying Pan

92. GCF2 12/19/2000 Massachussetts The Silver Lake Stash

93. GCF4 12/24/2000 South Carolina Modoc Stash

94. GCF7 11/25/2000 Australia's Used-To-Be Highest

95. GCF9 12/26/2000 Nevada XKD-380

96. GCFA 12/25/2000 Florida Christmas Cache

97. GCFE 12/27/2000 Arizona Diablo Point Cache

98. GCFF 12/27/2000 Pennyslvania Stone Wall Stash

99. GC101 12/27/2000 New York Hudson's Folly

100. GC103 12/28/2000 Denmark High Tension in the Bog

COLORADO CHRONICLES

We're not even going to talk

about where the first night went

Nor the morning after

Suffice to say, our plans pushed back

Midday is when we began to make strides

By a creek, down a trail, up a wall

Up a hill, by a rock, in a car

Fountain Creek, site of our first Colorado geocache, Family Reunion, where a local cacher named kwbforest had dropped off our very own travel bug the day before, with a note to leave it for us. This bug had the goal of making it to Colorado Springs, where we were, and was a tribute to our not-quite-perfect love.

Through the Garden of the Gods

We drove past the places of our past

Coming out into Manitou

The town of our youth

Then driving downtown

The streets of our passion

And finally a rest,

Youth not being ours

But belonging to the past,

Like this town, and our place in it

SPRING IN TEXASI had an amazing time geocaching in bluebonnet country on the way to and from Navasota for a dog show.

More to follow

ADVENTURES IN CACHING

Texas Challenge 09

Fredericksburg, TX

This year's Texas Challenge was much different than last year's, both in the individual and collective experience, and in format and style. Now for weeks the weather has been gorgeous and I have been dying to go camping, and go on a wild caching spree. Of course, as Nature would have it (she is such a bitch), it turned nasty and cold the weekend of this much anticipated event. There were a lot of cold cachers out there (172 logged the event last I looked)!

I planned on caching on the way out there on the five hour drive or so from northwest Houston, but the very first one I stopped at, it just got me pissed off and not wanting to cache. It was so cold and the rain was just biting into me, and I took one look and said "&^%$ this!"
Luckily for us (me), the rain let up when we hit the other side of San Antonio. I was able to grab a handful of caches around Blanco, off 281, before Ted reined me in and said we had to get going. (My favorite one was Kokopelli's Hangout. It is a really cool area and I am glad we stopped there.)

We had to get to the campsite in enough time to check in, pitch our tent, get situated, and then we had to get down the road to go to an event nearby, in the little town of Luckenbach. Don't tell me you don't know the song! (If you do, sing along...let's go to Luckenbach Texas, with Waylon and Willie and the boys). Here are my boys outside the old post office, converted to a country store with a bar in the back (smoking area only). Around the corner was a dance hall with live music, and a little feed shack to buy some food. Elisa bought me a beer while we were here and we looked for a cache together. I really wanted to spend more time with her but both of us had our families pulling us different directions.

Last year I took my oldest son to the Challenge, and he and I camped it. This year, we went as a family and took our new tent our friends Mari and Todd gave us for Christmas. Boy was it cold! The first night the wind about blew our tent away. I saw vacancies at the local hotels and kept trying to convince Ted we should reconsider our accomodations, but he was insistent that we camp.

When I went last year, it was the sixth Annual Challenge based on a system that had worked over the years, but had generated a lot of geographic rivalry. Last year, there were a lot of disgruntled cachers, particularly from our area, seeing as that our last (or was it third?) place ammo can was kicked over to us instead of being treated with respect. Many people also felt the scoring was sketchy. There was talk of torn chads like you hadn't seen since Bush's brother helped him with the election....

This year, "Mrs Captain Picard", aka Julie, along with several Central Texas cachers, organized a different kind of Challenge. You could enter the competitive event, which previously was the only event, or you could choose to do "casual caching". The Challenge Hide Team hid around seventy caches all around Fredericksburg and surrounding areas. For each one that you found, you stamped a card, and when you returned that afternoon, you received a ticket for each stamp. The competitive challenge was not based region to region (usually we have four: North, Southeast, Central, or West) but team to team, with divisions for coed versus single sex teams and different age brackets. This competition was held at Enchanted Rock, which is a beautiful big dome shaped rock (technically an exfoilation dome) in a scenic spot in the Hill Country of Texas. Instead of my doing the competitive cache with other SE Tx cachers, the four of us did the casual caching together.

The town of Fredericksburg itself has its charms. It is an old German town that stood by its roots and still has a Main Street filled with unique stores that caters now to a tourist crowd who come to enjoy E Rock, German food, antique shopping, and wineries. This sleepy hamlet, albeit Spring Break and German festivals, boasts to be America's #2 Wine Destination. It also hosts fascinating eateries, such as the original Porky's restaurant, at which we took this photo at the end of the casual caching.

My husband kept telling me about this awesome pulled pork sandwich he had there about two months ago when doing more processing of soldiers for upcoming deployments. I wanted to check it out, but when we got there, I had to order a cheeseburger instead of the pulled pork. He says I was missing out, but really I had missed out the night before, because I didn't realize the Luckenbach "feed shack" was cash only, and we were only able to get chili dogs and water with the dollars we had on us.

Now, my caching experience was not what I thought it would be, but it turned out all right. Originally, my friend Elisa and I were going to ditch the guys at a fishing hole with a child, and take the other child caching with us. We were going to hit it! Unfortunately, the weather did not favor that plan. ):

It was blustery and cold that first morning, the morning of the Challenge, so instead of cooking a hot breakfast over the grill that we planned, we all piled in the car to head into town for some kolaches...Now if there is one thing I love about German food working its way into Texas consciousness, it's the kolache!

So we were all in the car and I was texting Elisa, but she didn't get my message until she was at the campsite looking for me. She had to come there to pick up her card anyway, but I felt bad about missing her. By the time she called me, we were finding our first cache of the day.

We spent the day driving all around the town hunting caches. My plan for maximizing our cache find went out the window with the change of plans to go with our families instead of us girls. We managed to find a lot right in the town before the kids started insisting on going to a park. We decided to deviate from the Challenge caches and go after two non-Challenge caches there in town that were at a park. When we did this, I realized that the little one's diaper had gotten wet and leaked out all over both the pairs of pants he was wearing (we were all layered with clothing due to the forty degree temperature outside).

I had new diapers with us but not new pants, so we decided to go back to the campsite and regroup. This took about half an hour out of our day and really threw us off our rhythm. After this interruption, we headed south instead of north to town, and started grabbing some of the caches "off the beaten path" on back roads. The back roads made Ted nostalgic for his hometown and he started going on and on about how much he hates living in the city and we should get a place in the country. Our route led us to many wineries (the Hide Team hid a bunch outside these places), and once he started wine tasting to pass the time while I hunted the cache, he got even more nostalgic.

Some of the caches were hidden outside old school houses from earlier last century. These were double ticket items, in an attempt to generate more visits to them. At one of the ones like this we stopped at, an elderly German lady who went to school there as a child had some treats out and gave us tours, telling us stories about her days there at the school and what life was like for her growing up in the area.

At our last cache of the day, I ran into some friends of mine from back home who had done the competitive Challenge that morning. They were out hitting casual caches now, but they were very worn out! These women are also my friends on Facebook, which has turned out to be a good vehicle to get to know people better. At this stop, there was also a lady who was videotaping people finding the cache for a documentary she was doing.

By the time we finished eating at Porky's, it was time to turn in our cards at the pavilion near the campsite. It seemed like everyone in my family was ready to take a nap now except for me. I wanted to be there to see what was going to happen next. We put the twenty three tickets we had earned in the raffle. I was hoping to end up with the grand prize, a weekend getaway at a Bed and Breakfast there in Fredericksburg, but my friend Joy won that instead. We ended up with a duffel bag, some kitty cat tiles, and a couple kids toys. I am sure Julie did not plan on spending hours up there on stage giving away prizes, but there were just so many of them! It made everyone feel like a winner to get something.

They actually had to put the raffle on hold to get to the rest of the event, which was announcing winners of the creative cache contest, and then the main event, announcing the winning teams from the competition earlier. To everyone's surprise (most of all, the four people on the team), one of our teams won their division! This team was comprised of three fellas and a girl that actually I met about a couple months ago, right after she moved to the area, and encouraged to come to a local event, where I introduced her to one of the other guys (my attempt at matchmaking), who invited her to come play with them this weekend. It was exciting for me to see them then go on to win the prize together, which was the geocoin minted for the Challenge on a necklace.

The whole weekend, what was so amazing to me is that I didn't hear a single complaint. Not about the scoring, not about the way things were run, about the organization, nothing. Well, maybe the weather. It astounded me and I think was a testament to how well this year's Challenge Team did at planning. There was no regional animosity, and I think that was a benefit of moving to the different format. I hope they keep this format in the future.

As for us, we made it through the weekend without anyone freezing to death. We got about 39 caches for the trip, which was a decent amount. It is actually an amazing number when you consider that my husband who has about a four cache limit was with us, and we got an average of 13 caches for the three days we were doing this. We got another handful of finds on the way back, until we went after one in Sequin that not only was off the beaten path but was a tough micro to boot. We didn't find it but we lost a lot of time, and suddenly all caching was halted so we could make it back home in a timely fashion.

We made it through a weekend camping with a fight or an injury, so I am pretty happy about that. The children all said they had fun and are interested in camping again, which I am also happy about. I think that anyone who didn't go this year because of previous year's experiences really missed out. It was actually a really great time.