Christmas Weekend

What an absolutely amazing adventure I had this weekend!!

So, it all started on Thursday when I had a great conversation with my buddy about some future plots we have in mind. Bwhahaha!

Friday, I went out with my Dad to IHOP. They are FINALLY back open! For those reading this who don't know, back in September, IHOP was the place where tragedy struck our dear precious Carson City. But now, they are open again, proving that the wounds will heal. At least there was a ton of patrons all enjoying breakfast, and I got my blueberry pancakes again! Dad and I then just kicked back and relaxed until it was time for me to head up to Tahoe and hang out with my Mom, Stepdad, and the neighboring friends for Yule dinner! Yum yum yum, oh the ham was delish and the company very enjoyable!!

Saturday had plans kind of going back and forth and ended up just caching along the highways with two great friends. Mostly it was just a chance to grab those caches along the pavement that always get passed because we're heading off somewhere else, and they're so easy and quick that "We'll get them another time!" Today was the day. Over lunch I think I surprised one of my friends by saying something he hadn't heard before. Dear sweet little me came up with that?!? I did love the look on his face though. PRICELESS!

Sunday, being the big Christmas day, had my dad and I going out on our traditional holiday "Go get lost" adventure. We discovered a road that headed south out of Fort Churchill down through Adrian Valley. Never been there before, let's go check it out! We found a valley filled with cottonwoods lining old railroad beds and head high sage brush swallowing the old fenceline that benchmarks were set next to. Several roads took off from there into parts unknown, but our goal today was the valley. Once we escaped out from Wabuska, we headed south to Yerington and a cache set out by the NvNuts ... don't ask, it's a Goobie and Randy thing. But hey, it was an adventure and THAT was the important part of the journey. Dad and I also finally decided we were tired of just looking at the neat tunnel on the side of the highway and we were going to drive through it! So we did. :D Then, headed further south past Smith where a cache called Talking Rocks had caught my eye. Sure enough, petroglyphs!! Happy wolf!! After we got home, I noticed that all of Yerington was clear, except for this one puzzle sitting on the confluence. So, we rented the movie Holes, solved the puzzle, and drove to Reno to claim the find. I like BIG empty areas where there are no unfound caches.

Monday, I hooked up with my buddy again to go cache around Fernley. It was mostly just a numbers run and clear out an area that is filling up again. So I think we got 19 caches in the south east portion of town, with only two we weren't able to find. Not bad, not bad at all.

And now, my laundry is done, a new anime series is sitting in the Netflix queue (Tears to Tiara) and all my pictures are finally uploaded. Take a look back through the last three entries and they all have pictures now.

Hope you had a great weekend as well!!

Christmas Weekend

Christmas Weekend

Share your Adventures with SpotAdventures

Adventures in high places

Winter, the season I usually dread due to the high amounts of annoying white stuff and the low levels of the temperature. Well, for some insanely bizarre reason there is a noticeable LACK of any sort of precipitation and a decidedly LOW average temp. So what am I to do when I am not huddling underneath a heavy blanket while lying in front of the fireplace?

Go caching of course!

Saturday, my Dad and I head out to finally conquer the cache that has been sitting on the south side of Highway 50 for YEARS and I have yet to get. Oh it's not due to lack of trying, I had previously tried twice for this cache. But the first time my car overheated due to the steepness of the road and the second time a spring holdover snow drift covered the road. But now! There is no snow and the road was wide open for the Jeep to climb climb climb all the way to the top of Fairview Peak! Grabbed the cache, the peak register, and the replaced benchmark at the summit! Whoo hoo!! Took some fantastic pictures while up there as well. but the coolest, COOLEST, sight we saw was the herd of 10 bighorn rams! Got LOTS of pictures of them and enjoyed being able to see our beautiful state animal.

Afterwards, we went and finally cleared out the new cache at Wonder, then the two on the road to La Plata. I am stoked in that aside from Mt Augusta and Jobs Peak, the southeast corner of Churchill County is now CLEAR! I have two at the far north end of Dixie Valley yet to get, as well as the peaks, before the entire eastern half of the county is cache free. Slowly, slowly, I am getting the county cleared.

Also had some fun getting a seasonally appropriate picture to send out as a Holiday greeting come Sunday. Of course, with the lack of snow anyway, I had to get creative. Dad came up with a great idea. Hehehe

On Sunday, Puzzleman and I decided to head south and clear out a few remote caches he needed and I knew how to get to. Since we were heading that way, I checked to see if BrazAm wanted to go with and she jumped at the chance. So the three of us headed up into Sunrise Pass and grabbed one of the more remote ones deep in the mountains, before turning back and heading down El Dorado Canyon. This is the canyon that separates Carson and Lyon county. I hiked down the canyon on my big spring break hike-a-thon and then Dad and I jeeped down it with the Reno 4x4 folks. So, as Puzzleman navigated his Jeep north through the canyon, I was relating where the modified rigs went down in the creek. Soon, we came to a spot where the creek had washed away the road, so the trail went down into the creek before coming back up on the other side of the washout. Normally not a problem, just drop down, splash around a bit, and then crawl back out. But wait, this is December, and it has been ungodly cold...

What is it about me navigating Puzzleman to the brink of an ice filled zone??

Thankfully he had learned his lesson about listening to me, and we parked to investigate. Not wanting to risk it this time, I asked how far away from the cache we were. 1 mile. Hey, it's a road the whole way, let's hike! So off we go, sliding across the ice when the trail crossed the creek, and just enjoying the chilly but sunny day. I love lithe cache down in the canyon because of the archway that it is hidden in. Lots of pictures were taken, and I got to play a bit with BrazAm's new 3D camera. Ohhhh spiffy pictures!! The hike back was uneventful and we headed back out to civilization.

All in all a great weekend spent adventuring with my Dad and my friends. Whoo hoo!!

Fairview to El Dorado

Minor cosmic event

Oh, yeah, forgot about the lunar eclipse. Guess I got so wrapped up in my trip to SoCal I forgot to link the pictures. Oops.

Enjoy!!

Lunar Eclipse

Desert Pinstriping

This weekend really wasn't that much of an adventure overall, though Sunday did make up for it. Friday and Saturday spent time hanging out with friends and generally doing not much. So we'll just skip those days.

Sunday had me and my dad heading out to the Desatoyas again. There was an FTF up the to grab we had previously tried for, but the snow kept us out with only one rig. So, we returned with two! I led in my 4Runner and he followed behind in the Tacoma. Yes, we're a Toyota family, though dad now has a Jeep for the serious stuff. Anyway!

The cache is called OMFG and the author goes on about how this is ATV accessible, serious Pinstriping guarenteed, etc. sounded like standard remote Nevada to us. Rated a 1*/5* it looked like a good adventure. So off we went! The canyon was one I had previously explored, but I didn't get too deep into it due to a large boulder that nearly filled the road and the overgrown willows on the other side. But we we went, squeezing past the boulder and diving nose first into the thick groves of willow and aspen. Pinstripe is an understatement, I think the whole outer coat of my paint was steady scraped off! Narrow snow covered road, a couple tight washed out areas, and a stream crossing for good measure.

We got up to the saddle and noticed the ground cover was very sparse, and just a lot of rocks. So, we continued up and parked at the summit of the hill with the cache a mere 300 feet away. Score! FTF was ours!

Then, we went back down to the saddle and eyed the road going to the second cache of the day. But it was way down in the gully, the snow was thick on the road, and there was no way we'd be coming back up that road in that condition (see I did learn something from ice hell road, look before going over the edge). So I hiked down and followed the road. The GPS showed a fork about half way, but when I got there, the road clearly went to the left, and the "fork" was a barely visible game trail that may or may not have been there sometime within the last decade. Someone was on drugs when they digitized that road! Gah!! But, I was on foot and my boots can go anywhere! Got to ground zero where there was an old cabin just there, and a pine tree with a huge ammo can under it. Cache found and I was heading back up the road.

Now the funny thing about this cache was it was placed on June 10th, 2010 per the log book. There is a signature from June 19th, 2010 that was their name and the names of the owners. The cache was published on June 22nd, 2010. I think that made up the FTF after publication and the first to log it in over a calendar year! Go us!

Back up near the top, I was really struggling. I was sweating up a storm, but it was so freaking cold (23* when I checked) that any time I opened my coat to cool off the sweat would freeze. I was getting nauseous and light headed and ugh, need heat NOW! I forced myself up that last 300 feet and collapsed into the truck shivering like mad. Ugh, I hate cold.

But we got those two, and after a quick bit of research, we're able to log the two Lonely cache challenges in Reno on Monday. One required 20 caches with less than 20 finds on them, the other was looking for a cache that hadn't been found in over a year. Done and done!

Pinstripes