Desert Geocaching: Some Sand and some Love(lock)

This weekend decided to head out to Sand Mountain and clear out the caches from there. 11 of them, and a Challenge thing (wanna be virtual) was at the beginning. So, we drove out and headed in. Turns out its $40/week to get in and no there is no daily option. So got the little tag and headed up the sand. First cache was an easy grab after a short walk, but the second one further up into the mountain (actual mountain to the east of the dune) was a pain in the butt to get to and once the, the coordinates were off. But I spent way to long looking and gave up in favor of going after ones I could actually find. An Earthcache was next, followed by four along the outer edge of the sand and one up in the dunes themselves. Thankfully, it had rained a few days ago and the mornings were chilly, leave us with a nice hard pack sand playground! Further up into the canyon where the sand is creeping it's way over into Dixie Valley and we found two more, one of which I made WAY to hard! The second got us down into a bowl that the warming sun and loosening sand resulted in us having to find another way out. Thankfully, I spotted a road to the north so we swung around, came up a different direction and headed off to the last cache. Which topped out in being an FTF, Whoo hoo!

On Sunday, met up with Puzzleman and we headed out to grab a bunch of caches around Lovelock. I needed the south end of the town cleared out and we also claimed the one on top of Lovelock Point. A very steep scree covered slope with loose razor sharp boulders. Ah, but what do mine eyes see upon the imagery?? A TRAIL! Though nearly 200 ft in elevation over the 500 foot distance, the trail was hard packed and easy (relatively) to climb up, I found the survey marks at the top while Puzzleman logged us in. Afterwards we hit one of the strings of caches left over from a Rally a few years ago before heading down I-80 and clearing the ones that are along the road but inaccessible from the road. Damn fence! We followed the old emigrant route and found a bunch of history marketers I had never seen before. We found enough to bring Puzzleman up to his 3499th cache, then dropped into Fernley to grab a puzzle for his milestone. Found a really neat area there as we drove along a narrow canal edge overlooking the trail tracks below. Eek. Glad there was a turn around spot up ahead! After dinner, we split off and I returned home to try and get pictures and logs all updated. I checked Churchill County and have 25 remaining to grab. 5 of which I am convinced are not there. Still, county almost cleared!! 5,023 square miles of cache free success!

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