Haven't been doing much cache-wise as for some reason I've not really been in the caching mood. It's like if I have the choice between caching and "something else", something else usually wins. I even had a whole day and ran a PQ on Fallon since I know John's been busy out there - but staring at the map, the thought of driving out there just did not appeal to me.
So, if you hop over to the One Thousand Footsteps blog, you'll see what I've been doing when I'm not caching.
However, I was invited by GeoJeepers to join them as they ran around the desert picking up the Rally caches. They were in So. Cal during that weekend and I was hanging out with Lynn and Letty, so there were now 50 odd caches waiting to be found. I missed the Saturday run, but was able to join them Sunday.
So, first thing in the morning it's the required stop at Starbucks, followed by a photo-op off all the Jeeps (and one lone Toyota) before we were off. We were heading for the Night Rally caches, those throughout the area between the Minden Airport and Sunrise Pass Rd. There were a few that were non-Rally caches, but of those I needed only one. Jeeper had pre-run the route we were to follow, so we bounced along through the desert, winding our way around the various caches (all of which were "pipe bombs" - white PVC pipes - in a bush). Linda had way to much fun with the predictions about what we would find and where, course no one was about the bet she was wrong.
All told, for me anyway, the day netted 22 caches. Jeepers, Geospyder, and L3-Geo went off to Virginia City for more caching fun and I had to head to work.
That night, however, I learned that I had Monday off. Not a whole lot of time to plan for anything, but Dad was also off for the Independence Day holiday. So, we went after another kind of cache.
A couple weeks ago, Dad spotted a cache in California that was still waiting for the FTF - 8 months after it was published. So, we packed up the truck and headed to Summit City, north of Truckee. We wound our way back into an area dotted with slickrock and a lot of lakes, and finally crawled down into an open meadow with a large lake in the center. Meadow Lake was also home of 5 other caches. We worked our way through a few of them before heading up a very rocky 4x4 trail that began climbing the mountainside.
What awaited us at the site was a breathtaking view of the entire area, no trees up here, just a straight panaramic view. The cache was found, the Jeep toys got to play on the rocks and our Tacoma got to pretend it was a real rock crawler for awhile. Then back down to the ghost town. A few more caches, one up in the cemetary and another in more 4x4 rocks, and then to the final cache in the area. The description read it was on an island in the lake. Wading or swimming was required, and there was a cautionary note that the winter may have swept the cache away into the lake itself. Fun.
We pulled up to the site and walked through the campground to face the island.... and there was none. The water level was so low that the "island" was a sandy penninsula with high and dry ground straight to the cache. I dove into the bush and retrieved it, before replacing it by shoving it back in it's little niche so tightly nothing short of brunt strength is freeing it. But, I was disappointed that I didn't get to get into the water. So, I went out there anyway.
Nice thing about REI hiking pants is they dry super fast - so I took off my boots (the boots are waterproof, but the water was deeper than the cuffs and my socks are anything but waterproof) and walked straight out into the water towards some old tree stumps that were exposed. That was total fun and I went back to grab my boots and then walked in the lake as far as I could before having to come onto ground again to head to the truck.
We drove back out towards Truckee before heading up into Tahoe to drop off the various bugs and coins that we've been carrying around since White Hill. However, the one decent sized cache that's easy to get to was now locked inside a closed Visitor Center - so it was up and over Mt. Rose to go for the caches up there that I knew about. Found two and dropped off everything we had (cept the Red Jeep, not sure yet what I'm going to do with it).
Once back into Reno, we went to go see Rattatoui (sp?) before going home.
Yeah, this was an awesome weekend.
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