We were busy last week trying to get some caches hidden and approved for this event. I wanted to have some new ones out when cachers came to town this weekend. We did get 4 new ones out. Skeletal Remains, Eagle Creek, Fire Station Mosiac, & The Gazebo are the new ones.
I contacted Steve Tally at the Chamber of Commerce that was planning the event to see if I could help in anyway. He assured me that everything was done and they didn't need anymore help. He just wanted to make sure that we were coming.
I can't believe they didn't need my help!!LOL
Yesterday morning we all met at the Cedar Creek #3 campground and registered. We had fun meeting new cachers and hearing about their adventures trying to find our caches in town.
Don is talking to Dottie and Howie Eberts(Necki). You will hear more about them later. They are from Alamogordo.
Steve Tally(Skyhook) is the man in the back of this picture in the black shirt.
More meeting and greeting.
Mike Bilbo(BLMBilbo) explaining about the day and the Cache Guide. In the white shirt standing.
Don and Abby listening closely. We decided to take Abby with us. Mainly because I wanted to. It wasn't the best idea because of our adventures. But she made it after eating my sandwich at lunch and drinking lots of water when we got home.
The Travel and Cache Guide had 22 caches listed with their coordinates and some history listed about the cache location. We were to stamp each cache we found with a stamp that was in the cache, to verify that we found it. It was also a CITO(Cache in Trash out) event and there were prizes for the most trash and most unusual trash brought in. Cache coordinates had been verified by a tester the day before but she didn't find a few. Other prizes would be awarded for different accomplishments. We were to keep our mileage for the day, also. They gave us both their phone numbers in case we had any problems. This was important.
Steve Tally also gave me a new little Flip video recorder to document our day. I loved that! But I had to give it back at the end of the day.
Don started loading the cache coordinates as we loaded up in the car and headed out. We were also given a slip of paper with the name of the cache we were to go to first. So everyone wouldn't converge on the same cache at one time.
We had to drive about 20 miles to Lincoln. Turned off on a gravel road and then turned onto a jeep road. After we both questioned the saneness of going on the road, because we thought we were suppose to be able to use a normal car to find the caches, I continued on slowly. After a ways we saw a truck had beat us there and a couple we had met were climbing up the mountain. Don said it was about 1/4 miles over the mountain so we thought maybe we could hike around the other side of the mountain and not involve so much climbing.
We were in the Amazing Race mode!
We also were both surprised that they had a cache that involved this much climbing and distance. These questions should have been a clue.
We started out and I put my butt pack on with 2 bottles of water. Abby was ready to go.
We were in the Amazing Race mode!
We also were both surprised that they had a cache that involved this much climbing and distance. These questions should have been a clue.
We started out and I put my butt pack on with 2 bottles of water. Abby was ready to go.
We were going to win this thing. Nothing was going to stop us.
Since it had taken so long we figured the other couple had logged it and gone. As we were discussing that there was a voice over the hill that said "We're down here. We haven't found it yet." We were glad to see them and we both told stories about climbing up the mountain. They were not in as good of shape as we were and I was surprised she made it up the mountain. They had been looking about 30 minutes and we looked a while longer. We check our coordinates and we both had them right. I decided to call Mike and ask for a hint. We did have reception but it wasn't good and I couldn't figure out what he was saying. We got disconnected and Don said he would call him. His phone worked better.
After talking a while Mike figured out that the coordinates in the booklet were wrong(a typo). They were off a mile. The cache was over on the highway. He told Don that all the caches were no more than 500 ft from parking.
We were not happy cachers! We moaned and groaned and then headed down. I shared my water with them and we made it down but Dottie was not in good shape and neither was Abby. I had to carry her a ways because she wouldn't come out from the shade.
By the time we got back to the car we had wasted 3 hours, were all dehydrated, tired and mad.
We slowly drove out with our tails between our legs and met Howie and Dottie a mile away and signed the log for the 1st cache. They were new cachers and were having problems with their GPS so they followed us the rest of the day to find 14 of the caches around Lincoln County.
We knew that the 3 hrs that we wasted climbing put us out of the race. We blamed them for the mistake and we blamed ourselves for knowing that it wasn't right. I'm just glad it didn't cost us a million dollars and I kept telling Don that we were the only ones that had an adventure story to tell. It was a disappointment for us, we are so competitive.
After getting back to camp and telling our story to whomever would listen we waited for the food by having a coke and beer.
Mike Bilbo was singing an old army song.
Here I am filming the awards ceremony.
Sheriff Pat Garrett came by after dinner and told the story of Billy the Kid.
Even after the extra hike on the 1st cache we had a fun day, met some new friends and got a bottle of wine.
Live, Learn and enjoy the Journey!!!
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