Classes are going great, got a 100% in my math class and I'm having a blast in GIS (midterms are next week). Been daydreaming more about my nomadic life. I think it'd be awesome to buy a travel trailer, get a seasonal job with the BLM, USFS, or various camps, and live that lifestyle, just moving from place to place. The RV dealer showed me a little Shadow Cruiser (?) that was absolutely darling and seemed big enough for one person and a cat.
Yesterday was the REI garage sale and while browsing, I happened upon the biggest score! One guy was looking at a Garmin eTrex Venture HC - he put it down, I snatched it up. "Won't turn on." Hurm, new batteries and it powered on to the Garmin splash screen then died. Software issue, maybe? I put that down and spotted a guy with a DeLorme PN-40. He put that down, I grabbed it. Tag said: "turns off by itself." Um, okay, new batteries in, let's see.
While testing that, I bumped into LeakySpoon and swapped them coins (I now have a RoadRunner/MooseMob double headed geocoin), then just sat around waiting for the mysterious "turn off" of the DeLorme. While waiting, a guy walked up and asked if I was looking for a new GPS. I thought he'd found the eTrex so wasn't to eager for what he had to show. But he handed me a bag with (no joke) a Garmin Oregon 400T, $99.83.
:jaw drops:
Apparently the previous owner had installed additional maps onto the internal memory, wiping the preinstalled topo and base maps for the unit. So, the unit had NO maps whatsoever. The tag read "???may not work???". I thanked the guy and promptly sent out emails, texts, calls, tweets, ANYTHING, to let the cachers of Carson/Reno know about this steal. A friend in Carson took up the offer (or the "dreaded text" as he called it), showed up at REI and installed his 24k topo SD card. Worked like a charm!
And my DeLorme still hadn't "turned off". I say "my" because I walked out of the store with it. New toy!
Sunday morning, I met up with Puzzleman and DragonflyNV (new cacher) for a hike up the V&T hill. She scored her first 6 caches, Puzzleman picked up his remaining two, and I got a 3 mile hike out of the morning. Not bad at all.
But boy did I crash afterwards. Came home, slept, then was called by Dad to go look at high-density SD cards. After that it was a trip down south, and we picked up a few caches along the way.
Then a new one published, very near the road we were already on. I pull it up on Google and... it's in a backyard? Fiddle with the numbers a bit to match where we guessed it to be, and after an intensive search in a tree, were about to give up. We saw a few 4-wheelers pull int to fix their rigs, so stood and watched and listened to them long enough that the cache owner came out to double check his coords. Had a very nice chat, enjoyed the FTF find, admired the stars in the dark desert, then headed back in for food.
This was a good weekend.
3/6/2010 NevadaWolf grabbed Moose or Roadrunner? (Moose Mob Geocoin)
3/6/2010 NevadaWolf grabbed RoadRunner or Moose? (RoadRunner Geocoin)
3/7/2010 For Chicks Who Quilt
3/7/2010 Carson Valley Travel Bug Hotel
3/7/2010 Enter the Desert
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