Record Breaking Adventure

We have been to Nevada many times and each time we see something a little different. The fall season has arrived and it brought with it the beautiful yellows--no reds, just yellows. The leaves of the few trees we passed were turning yellow as befitting the fall season, yet we found areas where the sage was in full bloom with yellow flowers as if it were spring. Of course the barren hills didn’t seem to change in color, but they have taken on a new look. The dark clouds that hovered on the first day cast shadows that made some of the hills appear to be darkened by fire and others to change shapes and degrees of brown. The desert, however, was still the desert.

For this trip, we (L3-Geo and Geo-Jeeper) were headed to Tonopah, to attend a geocaching weekend event. The route took us by areas that have been abandoned to time and/or changing importance. We drove through an Indian Reservation with boarded up buildings in various states of disrepair. We drove past abandoned mines and old buildings erected by those who dreamed of making their fortune in gold or silver. We drove through the town of Babbitt that was once a thriving military town supporting a nearby munitions depot. It is now a town of weed covered streets that lead nowhere and slabs of concrete that once held houses and a shopping mall. We drove passed monument after monument erected to memorialize those who fought in the various wars. We drove passed old munitions bunkers outside the town of Hawthorne, NV. And, when we finally arrived in Tonopah, we found a town determined to honor the war heroes, the mining industry, and the gamblers with a mixture of monuments, abandoned mining equipment displayed proudly, and the “required” Nevada casinos sprinkled throughout the town.

Our primary goal as we passed all of these sights was to find the geocaches safely hidden nearby. On our trip to Tonopah we found 30 caches. Once in Tonopah we were told that new caches had been released and instead of the few we were expecting to find, we now had over 60 to seek. Our excursion to find these caches took us on some very interesting back roads. I was recovering from a recent surgery. If my doctor (and I) had known where we would really be going, he might not have released me to go on the trip as willingly as he did. But not to worry; through most of the trip, I remained in the car or stood at the bottom of the rocky mountain watching while Larry, Cynthia & Mike reached the top and found the cache. I was the official photographer but I only managed to take a very few pictures.

We ended up with 58 caches that second day. That was a record breaker for us and for Geo-Jeeper. 22 of those 58 were FTFs (First To Finds). We covered a lot of territory around Tonopah. By late morning, the winds were incredibly strong and it was much colder than we really wanted it to be, but that didn’t stop us. At one point, Mike climbed the side of an old rickety windmill to reach a cache while several geocachers watched. Later in the day, Larry and Mike had to crawl their way down a rocky hill to avoid being blown away. What can I say! We are obsessed geocachers and nothing (almost) keeps us from obtaining our objective.

The event was fun. At dinner that night, we met geocachers from all around Nevada--a great many from the Las Vegas area. The organizers did an excellent job and we would love to put them in charge of the next GBES Rally. From our standpoint, the rally would be so much more fun if the emphasis was on families and geocaching rather than on navigating along narrow jeep trails on steep hillsides!

The event ended after a pancake breakfast cooked by the boy scouts and we headed home. Of course, we had 6 final caches to find as we headed out of Tonopah and a few more to grab along our route. We had to bounce our way on some rough roads for a couple of them, but I held my arms across my stomach and kept a smile on my face the whole way! We even managed to avoid getting stuck in the sand but it was close. I continued to leave the rock climbing to Larry, Mike, & Cynthia. By the time we returned to Reno, we had found 100 caches for the weekend! Wow! That really was a record breaking adventure!