We've spent the last three weeks out west: Arizona,
California, and points in between. It’s
always fun to geocache away from your home base because you see a lot of
different kinds of caches and you learn a lot of new stuff.
Mona wanted to geocache around Sedona, Arizona on her
birthday. We started with an Earthcache
called Red “Rocks” (GC1DBA2). This cache takes you to a location
overlooking the valley and helps you learn to identify some of the beautiful red
rock formations. This is probably the
best view in the valley that you can get to without climbing. (Our climbing days were yet to come!) Another neat cache we found on her birthday
was Sedona Historical Marker (GC36JE1). This is a cemetery cache that takes you to
the grave of Sedona Schnebly, the city’s namesake.
A couple of days later we visited Jerome, Arizona. At a nearby state park we saw a video
depicting the town’s heritage. The video
was narrated by a ghost and a lot of it was set in an unusual cemetery. We decided we wanted to find that
cemetery. We decided to look for caches
that were probably in cemeteries. We saw
Los dias del muerto en Jerome (GCYXD6)and
decided that sounded “cemeteryish”. Sure
enough, it took us down a little dirt road to an abandoned-looking cemetery…the
same one that we saw in the video. The
graves here all around surrounded by iron fences and the graves are covered
with rocks. It’s very different from our
Midwestern cemeteries! (Not to mention
it’s the perfect environment for rattlesnakes!) |
| There's a cache around here somewhere! |
Two caches illustrate the wide variety of caches to be found
in the Coachella Valley. First up is Marilyn’s ASSets (GC3N8KX). Here you are caching in downtown Palm Springs
and trying to not attract the attention of the thousands of Muggles who are
here to see Marilyn. On the opposite
side of the spectrum is Welcome to Palm
Desert (GC331X0) where you’re trying hard to not attract the attention of
the many rattlesnakes in the area. Both
were fun, but for totally different reasons.
We had been carrying a travel coin (Ocean Kami Geocoin) whose goal was to visit oceans. We’ve been carrying the coin for about six
weeks, knowing that we were going to visit Monterey. Finally we got the coin to the Pacific at
Monterey Bay View (GC36HA0). Glad to
have helped!
 |
| No wild horses, but no rattlers, either! |
On the way through Nevada we stopped at a rest area hoping
to find a cache to break up the monotony.
Darn, no signal! We did some
walking around to stretch our legs, read the signs about the wild horses that
were in the area, then got in the car to leave.
Just then we got a signal and found that there was a cache (Break the Monotony of I-80 E1 (GC71BA)) up
the hill 2 tenths above us. Out of the
car we went…hoping that the snakes and scorpions weren’t out because of the
cold. Got to the top of the hill and got
a breathtaking view of the countryside…no wild horses, but we got the smiley!
We found two very interesting caches in Rawlins,
Wyoming. The first was at an old prison
cemetery. The Unclaimed (GCRREQ) takes you to the graves of prisoners whose
families didn’t claim them. All that is
here are some simple stones with just names on them and a board outside showing
their birthdays and the date they died or were executed. At least one had “birthdate unknown”.
At second cache (Wild
West Redux (GCG010) we learned about
Big Nose George Parrot, the Outlaw Who Grew to Be A Shoe. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Nose_George)
It’s amazing what you see/learn from geocaching!
Had lots of fun traveling and geocaching out west. But, now we’re home and hoping to catch up on
some new local caches.
MOGA is soon and can’t wait to meet up with a lot of
geocaching friends. Hope to see you
there!
