Desert Geocaching: One big long adventure!!

What an amazing weekend!!

So, early in December, I start emailing a fellow named Mike over in Livermore from http://offroadexperience.com/. After a lot of fun talking about offroading, the Nevada desert, and a few train wrecks, he invites me out to their company party this weekend. Wo am I to turn down such an awesome chance?

Friday night, I join him, Earl, and Bruce for dinner in Fernley and hang out to continue the conversation until way late. I think I was cross-eyed as I was driving home but was in a totally hyper mood. We were going to roughly head north, to a place he called Schoolbus, and then pop over to Eagle Pitcher. Fun thing was there were a few caches along the way, including an FTF.

Saturday morning, I'm loaded up into the Land Rover and we're off down the road up towards Winnemucca Lake. Head out of Nixon onto a road I wasn't even aware of into a mountain range I had yet to play in. We wiggled our way across old flash floods (Mike having been out here so often and for so long that he could tell me when the flood was and what his crew did to get the road back into drivable condition). We then found the FTF cache and continued up to School Bus. Two big old yellow buses from the 40's (?) were sitting there. Formally used as living quarters, then had long been abandoned and some idiots found them and started blowing holes into the entire vehicle. Damn. We stopped for pictures, then off against up a few washes and then to a split, where one road skirted the top of a wash, the other straight into the wash and the "Rock Wall". Of course we went into the wash! I've been with BigTruckCrew and a few others crawling up rocks, even tried my hand at it, but I have to say, that ride up was one of the smoothest I've been on. Then We got out to take pics of the rest on the convoy coming up. First was the red Tacoma with Bruno and his son. Followed by Earl in the white Taco. And last Bruce in his black Cherokee. Afterwards, we continued up a steep long pull from the bottom of the range right up to the ridge. Crossing over the range, we were taking to a hunter's blind where we stopped for lunch. Then down again on the other side of the range, straight into a gully and out into a long flat valley with a sizable dry lake bed. Blasting across that, we stopped at a windmill and played with the three inch thick ice that had formed. Further up into the next mountain range, we stopped at an old site of a bomber crash from the 1940's. We paid our respects, examined the remaining debris, and then continued north to the Velvet Mine and over to Eagle Pitcher, before turning east and dropping down into Lovelock. Dinner was back in Fernley and another long great conversation had that night.

Sunday, after swinging by to say farewell to the guys, I hooked up with Puzzleman who had plans to head out to Yerington and around to Schurz before coming into Fallon. Well, since I was free, we met up, grabbed a puzzle cache we both needed and then opted to switch routes and head into Fallon first. Almost totally cleared out the Carson Sink area for him and I got to enjoy the day bouncing around on the old Pony Express trail down through there. Had dinner at Jerry's and loved hanging out with great company.

Monday, being a holiday, hung out with my Dad and we had plans to head over to Truckee to rescue a travel bug. But I happened to glance at Twitter in the morning and a local Carsonite was mentioning white stuff. Look out the window to see a light coating of snow all over the road. Had to post on Facebook and was promptly harassed by THREE of my so called friends! Course, one accused me one whining, one was my mother (she has the right to harass me) and the third is from Canada where he just LAUGHED over my so called "snow". Sheesh! The drive over the pass was uneventful and beautiful with the snow filling the cracks of the granite boulders throughout the mountain. TB retrieved and we swung up to Tahoe to get pictures before coming back down to go up to Cabela's for lunch. I had an elk burger, yummy!!

Once I got home, I settled in and took a look at the SPOT data I had been sending out all weekend. Then I discovered the Spot Adventures. Well, the results are below. Click on the title above the widget to go to the adventure page itself. But I do love the automatic geotagging of the pictures. I think i will use this page more often, I like the results.

Pictures below.