Combat Geocaching?

Those of you who are email subscribers to our blog may have noticed a change last week. The emailed version is now a short summary rather than the full version. To read the rest simply click on the title of the post or the name of our blog right above the title.

Barb has been busy spending hours planning our Alaska adventure this summer. I am amazed at how much planning goes into a journey like this. Route planning, site seeing, fishing, adventure tours as well as meeting with some friends (Trace/Lee, Bill/Kelly) and Barb’s cousin while we are there all must be specifically detailed as not everything is open or fits into the schedule. She has a detailed spreadsheet and all her hours are paying off as our plans are becoming solidified. We will share a high level summary sometime in the coming months.

This past week brought a couple of changes to our RV Dreams community. Steve and Deb, Trace and Lee and Greg and Cori have each moved on. We had a great time with each of them and hope to meet up sometime in the future. New arrivals include Dave and Diane, this is our first time meeting them and have enjoyed getting to know them better. Also arriving this week is our good friends Dino and Lisa. We originally met them in Florida last winter and caught up with them in Moab last spring as well.

Saturday afternoon 19 of us met at Black Pearl Restaurant at Pirates Den RV Resort. With that many of us we had to break up into two tables.  The food was good and the company was great.

Barb and I with new arrivals Lisa and Dino

Red and Pam along with the other new arrivals Dave and Diane

The rest of the gang

Leaving the restaurant we headed across the Parker Dam into California as we heard tell there were some wild burros wandering the roads over there. And burros there were…….. as we were driving down the road we started to see some wild burros. Although some were shy I would not call them wild. When we pulled over they would walk up to see if we brought them any treats. We were actually able to pet them and get some great pictures.

 

Lisa getting ready to get bit!

Mom and baby

No feeding the burros!

The next few days included A LOT of wind (50 mph gusts), some thunder, lightning and rain. Most everybody retreated to their rigs to wait out the weather. Barb and I spent a few hours watching History of the Eagles. It was one of those few shows that actually moved us and reminded us of how music has changed over the years. We both grew up listening to……. The Eagles, Who, Steve Miller Band, Bread, Linda Ronstadt, Joan Baez, Chicago, Crosby Stills Nash, Led Zepplein and of course The Beatles…… I could go on.

Comparatively the groups in the 80’s were crap. I just could not get into AC/DC, Motely Crue, Van Halen and the like. As a result I turned to country, with my musical hero’s being; Waylon, Willie, Merle Haggard, Oak Ridge Brothers…. To this day I still don’t think anything has come close musically than 60’s/70’s rock and that old country. It is sad really….   I would love to hear your thoughts on this…..

Barb along with some of the other ladies in our neighborhood recently went to a line dancing class at the community center in Quartzsite. She said it was an absolute blast boot-scooting and boogieing with people from 50-mid 80's. She said some of them were very good while she and a few others spent most of their time laughing at themselves.  She said she will definitely do that again!

Dino and Lisa recently bought a jeep so first order of business with them was to hit the hills! We took the Diablo Pass trail that we had taken the week before on the 4 wheeler as it looked like a great jeep trail as well. It was a great ride with some very technical areas for a jeep. There were a few areas where we within inches of rock walls and we did bottom out a couple times on some larger rocks. In addition there were a few areas where we had to lock in the 4WD to get up some of the steeper slopes. It is a weird feeling when you come up over a hill and you cannot see where the trail goes as the hood of the jeep blocks your view as you crest the hill.

In one particular spot I stopped at the top of a hill and waited to get a picture of Dino and Lisa as they crested the hill. Although I could not see them I could hear them making their way up the trail behind us. Then I heard their jeep stop, heard a door slam and the jeep grinding up the hill. Soon their jeep crested the hill with Dino but no Lisa! Evidently when they were at the bottom of the hill looking up Lisa said “Oh hell no!” (I may be paraphrasing there) and she got out and walked up the hill. We all had a great time on the trail, survived without doing any damage to our jeeps, found 8 geocaches and ended the adventure with lunch at Grubstake in town.

Dino and Lisa coming up a hill

Lisa is not in the jeep as Dino crested this hill!

 

There are entire golf courses out in the desert....this is a typical "Green"

Speaking of geocaching, Barb and I invented a new way to geocache called “Combat Caching”. On one of the chiller days we had been cooped up most of the day and had to get out. So later in the afternoon we (and Daisy too!) jumped in the jeep to hit a string a caches along a dirt road. We made a contest on which one of us could find the cache first. We would approach the cache area and Barb would look at the GPS and say something like “75 feet that way” then we would tear out of the jeep and run to see who could find the cache first.

I went out to a 3-0 lead then she started to get a little competitive. As we would approach a cache she stopped giving me directions but would instead jump out of the jeep with Daisy and just start running. She found the next three pretty quickly and it was 3-3. So I had to switch it up and run faster than her and find the cache. I got the next two making it 5-3 before she changed her tactics. (What Jim didn't tell you was that while we were making our way out to a geocache, he was concerned that he was behind in the contest so he stepped on my shoelace to make me fall and just kept running laughing like a crazy man......now that is combat caching!). Soon she would be looking at the GPS, say stop and take off running with Daisy. I would jump out and race past her looking for the cache only to look behind me to see her running in an entirely different direction laughing! Daisy did not know what was going on but she was having a blast running through the desert.

The other cars and 4 wheelers must have thought we were nuts. I can only imagine what they thought as they passed our jeep on the side of the road, both doors open and two people and a dog running through the desert in different directions! Using this new tactic I had no idea where to look for the caches and Barb took a commanding lead that I never recovered from.

One thing we did not consider was the fact that there is poisonous snakes and spiders out here and one should probably not run haphazardly through the desert. Good thing it was cold that day or things could have ended up a lot differently.

 

It was crazy windy on top of this hill! See our 4 wheeler? (little dot above Barb's right hand)

Who knew geocaching could be so dangerous!