Northeastern California Here We Come

It's another day and another trip to find caches in various quads in Northeastern California. 7:00 AM was our (Cynthia, Mike, Larry and Me )projected start time. The first time we left it was 6:54 AM. The second and final time we left it was exactly 7:00 AM. I do believe this was the first time we ever actually started one of our trips on time! But, we had to make our first stop at Starbucks for our geocaching coffee fix. We do this every time, but we always forget to record it with a picture. This morning I asked a lady who was already late for something if she would take our picture. She did! And here it is for all to see!

We had a long drive to the first cache. We were following 395 when we came to the Honey Lake rest stop. It was a pretty nice rest stop! We had a beautiful view of Honey Lake, plenty of picnic tables and very nice facilities. Too bad we didn’t get to enjoy much of the surroundings, but, as usual, we were on another mission and had to keep going. Honey Lake is an interesting lake and it is pretty large. At one point I asked Cynthia & Mike if this was a good lake for recreation. Just as they said no, I knew why. There was a cow standing ankle deep quite a ways out in the lake. It may be big, but it certainly isn’t deep!

The first few caches were out in the middle of nowhere, but I guess nowhere is relative. We picked up the cache for Quad 51(GCJZ9P) right near one those infamous shoe trees. Good thing we didn’t have to check in each shoe! Then we headed for Quad 50(GCWVCC). We were driving along this dirt road and suddenly there is a man on a bicycle coming towards us. He must be lost. Where did he come from? Where was he going? I guess we will never know as he didn’t stop and neither did we.

Maybe if we asked one of the cows that approached us eyeball to eyeball along the road she could tell us. A couple of them “spoke” to us as they crossed the road in front of us, but Larry’s cow translating skills were a little rusty. I guess we will never know the answers to any of our questions.

10 minutes. That is how long we were expected to wait, according to the flag lady! There was construction up ahead and we were stopped. These construction people just didn’t realize that we didn’t have time to wait or waste! So ......we sat. Fortunately, not very long. Our forced rest period was only about 5 minutes and then we traveled through the construction area. It looked like they were widening and rerouting the road. 395 will be looking pretty spiffy one of these day--assuming they ever finish the construction.

We were Likely in the Pit at one point and if we had been prepared, we could have golfed along the way to Quad 41(GCP1MX). We passed through the town of Likely and then followed the South Fork of the Pit River for a while. According to signs we passed along the way, there was a golf course around here somewhere. We never did find that, but we saw some pretty countryside on our way to the cache. At the cache location, we were surrounded by swallows. They were building nests under the bridge where the road crossed the river.

We were in Alturas at lunch time so, after finding a couple of caches for quad 40(GCK8GN & GCWBDE), we stopped along the road beside the local cemetery and ate out lunch. How many people do you know that picnic in a cemetery. While we were enjoying our lunch, a robin flew in to have lunch with us. He pulled a juicy worm out of the ground and proceeded to munch it down. For dessert, Mike & Larry feasted on Cynthia’s homemade oatmeal cookies--much better than the robin’s lunch.

The Oregon border was our last stop along Hwy 395. We had two caches to find there. One gave us California Quad 31(GCCB37) and one was supposed to give us an Oregon quad (just in case). As we drove up Hwy 395, we were paralleling Goose Lake. It actually looked kind of muddy as we drove along. The clouds that were forming could have been casting shadows on the lake, but Cynthia said the description of one of the caches indicates the lake is only 8 feet deep. Larry thought the color was from all the goose “poop” while Mike thought it was in the direct flight path of all migrating birds. Since more clouds were forming, Mike was hoping for a thunderstorm, while the rest of us were hoping to find the caches before the thunderstorm started.

We traveled along Stateline Lane to get the Oregon cache. We were actually traveling between/along the Oregon/California border. As we headed to the cache, we were in Oregon. As we returned from the cache, we were in California! Unfortunately, we didn’t find the cache. We all looked carefully. but no luck. The last people who tried didn’t find it either so I guess it really was missing.

You know, we do have such interesting discussions on these trips the four of us take. Today Mike asked Larry what the difference was between a rancher and a farmer. He answered that a farmer raised crops and a rancher raised animals. We all joined the discussion and eventually agreed. A little further down the road, Larry raised the issue again. He said he had been pondering the answer for some time. Maybe we didn’t have the correct answer. After-all, Old MacDonald had a farm and on that farm he had a cow, a chicken, a pig, etc. So we got into a more lengthy discussion. We referred back in history and all our examples supported our theory. Then Mike asked if maybe it was a regional thing. Maybe farmers were more an eastern concept and ranchers were more a western concept. Interesting. We shall have to continue to ponder until we resolve this burning issue. We never lack for fascinating discussions!

Our next stop was Big Sage Reservoir for Quad 30(GC!0F2A)! And, guess what! it started to sprinkle as we headed up the road to the Reservoir. The sky was getting darker! When we walked down the path to the cache we could hear the thunder in the distance. We hadn’t see any lightening yet, but we didn’t stick around too long just in case. We did see lots of virga, but very little rain was actually getting to the ground. It wasn’t until Larry frightened us all when he yelled “WOAHHHHHHH, that one of us actually witnessed a streak of lightening. Mike missed it but we were all eagle eyed after that. I believe Larry saw the lightening just as we were passing the town of Fletcher. We didn’t see much of the town but maybe the lightening was a sign of something!

There it was! The rain came tumbling down! And those were pretty big drops! It was almost over before it began. The wind was blowing and we got bursts of rain at first and then lots of rain--maybe even some hail. The temperature dropped over 20 degrees (from 74º to 55º) in a matter of minutes and the noise level of the rain hitting the windshield was incredible. Mike figured this was the height of the trip. We were hoping it stopped before we had to look for the next cache! We just needed to get one more cache for one more quad and we were done for the day.

The rain stopped just as we arrived in the town of Adin. We pulled over into the parking lot of a park outside the county library and walked just a few feet to pick up the last Quad (39) and the last cache (GCK9WP) of the day. It took us a few minutes of searching before Mike suggested we look there. Sure enough, there it was! Once we had the cache properly logged we had to make the big decision: which road do we take home? We let Mike decide. It wasn’t long before we were on a dirt road connecting the town of Adin with the town of Madeline. We stopped once along the way in Holbrook Canyon to take a picture of the field of yellow flowers, but once we reached Madeline, we found hwy 395 and headed for home and our glass of wine! We saw a lot of distant lightening along the way home. Another fun day!