VIEWS FROM MY SISTER IN LAW'S HOUSE

Mt Shasta

5000 acres of alfalfa fields.....

GRAND CANYON #2 - PEOPLE PICS

GRAND CANYON #1 - Straight Shots

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?

Barney Smith's Toilet Seat Museum, San Antonio TX

He had traveled to each location Jesus had visited, and collected this pottery from each location as he went. That whitish one second to the left is from Garden of Getheseme

The Geocache Toilet Seats # 2 and #3.

From the palace in Baghdad


This one has a piece of the Berlin Wall, and stones from WWII concentration camps

Amazing man, full of passion. I spent an hour there listening to him go on about each piece.

CREEKSIDE DINING

at The Wines of Colorado
This is where we had lunch on the day of our tenth wedding anniversary. We sat by this creek with a bottle of wine and sampled some good food. We highly recommend the pulled pork. We each tasted five wines before deciding on a Reisling from Plum Creek Cellars. Good times.

Fondue for Two in Manitou at The Mona Lisa

This is where we had dinner that night. We chose the Old World Cheese, the wild game entree, and the Milk Chocolate for dessert. It is very good, very pricey, and an experience worth having at least once. This was my second time here. I went here when Ted and I were first dating with an old boyfriend and we got in a big fight over it. I remembered it as being a little better than it was this time, but I think that is because the wild game was a little too adventurous for me. I find elk meat to be much tougher than beef. We got so full here on food and wine that we were worthless for anything else after this, and curtailed all planned additional activities...

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.

CASCADE, CO

Street Scenes, Manitou Springs

June 14, 2009

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

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.

TEXAS MEMORIAL MUSEUM

ADVENTURES IN CACHING
Austin (Part 2)
It's midday on a Saturday in Austin, and the weather is just right. It is right around seventy five, with a light breeze blowing, slightly overcast. Most importantly, not humid, and that is what makes it perfect Texas weather. The summers are like a warm blanket heavy across your chest, but spring days are lovely.
We've found four caches, which is not a good amount, seeing as how we've been driving around since eight. We also stopped at the Texas Memorial Museum, an Austin tradition of ours. This museum is right along the edge of the campus of the University of Texas. On weekends like this, both parking and museum admission is free, and it has some of the coolest dinosaur bones ever. This is right up the oldest son's alley, who is an amateur paleontologist. We also walk by a statue of galloping mustangs, which appeals to the youngest son and I who share a love for horses.

In between the horse statue and the museum exhibit of glass encased Texas dinosaur footprints from the Jurassic period lies a geocache called Texas Travel Bug University Part Deux. I've actually been to it three or four times now, to exchange traveling items (like this day, when I exchanged one travel bug for antoher). It is a quick trail into a wooded area that is just mere steps from the bone-shaped benches for children. We've been to the museum many times now, but previously had not viewed the Hall of Texas Wildlife. That was interesting.

After this, we had made it over to a gourmet coffeeshop (Jimmy John's) just off MLK near campus. We listened to cellar music as we ate our fancy sandwiches, chips, and lemonade. After lunch, it was time to get serious about caching. We headed straight for the Capitol, where the top picture was shot. There were several virtuals in the area regarding Texas history. We went to various statues and answered questions, such as "How long is the Great Walk?" The boys loved the cannons in the fields around, and in fact little K had a temper tantrum after having to leave one, to go to this statue (which was not a virtual geocache, but simply something that caught my eye):

We also found interesting areas of town, things we had never noticed before. We were headed down Barton Springs towards Zilker Park and found this random piece of art:
The Beer Tree. Go figure.

Finally, we made it into the park, and managed to find the perfect parking spot for our next adventure (which wasn't hard, since it was in the very back of the lot for Barton Springs).We walked about three hundred feet northwest up a little rocky trail across the street from the parking lot, and on the left of the trial, we found a geocache that contained a thermometer, a thermometer which we were going to use to perform the next steps of the earthcache located at Barton Springs, The Limestone Manifold. Centex geocachers voted it the Best Earthcache in 2007.

We had to take the thermometer over to the Barton Springs swimming area and take the temperature of the water. We had to submit photos of us performing that task, and also of the result. In addition, we needed to post photos of us at this plaque about the Springs, and answer a question about the aquifer that required some critical thinking skills.

I was excited to get this cache. I have wanted to get this one for a long time but never had the time or patience. It was a struggle this day nonetheless. AJ was extremely devoted to a "lab" task inside the cave-like "Splash" exhibit attached to the Springs. Kaleb really would rather us have gone to the playground. Basically, though, they were pretty good guys.

Some lady offered to take the picture and then told AJ she was a teacher, and she wanted to tell him he was a wonderful little man who would go on to do great things one day. AJ replied, "I know", in an agreeable tone, and I found it hilarious. Kaleb walked up to a picnic table full of older people and asked them if he could sit with them. They, being mostly grandmotherly types, just thought he was the cutest thing, and we ended up chatting for a bit as Kaleb enjoyed their company.
Finally we got on the move again. After getting turned around and around chasing one cache I haven't been able to find a time or two led to the same fate (darn it! I needed that E, too, for this ABC Challenge they are having in Central Texas. Right now I have 15 of 26, after the 30 finds this weekend. Almost ALL the caches I found on Saturday began with T. Like this cache).Oh man, and then we ended up on the "Lower East Side", and where Sixth Street turns into Pecan Street, with nods to historical interests. We ended up in the Texas State Cemetary, where we have to answer questions regarding the graves and memorials to different heros in Texas History. For instance, we had to name the four adjectives used on the headstone to describe this guy:

Around this time, K fell asleep and A was whining to go back to the hotel room. After a few more random gropings of the wilderness and art objects in the lower east side, we made it back to the hotel.
Our total for the day was 17 caches. This was a pretty good number, although not our highest day. We did have lots of stops and really spent time at each cache.
I considered it a Good Day.
The free margaritas that evening were a nice topping. Next time, day two....