Amanda, the kids, and I went on our first geocaching trip today. I found about 8 beginnerish sites around Flagstaff, printed them out, and programmed them into the GPS. Since getting out of the house before noon would mean the implosion of all matter and reason within 100 light years of Earth, we shot out the door about 12:05 just for a few minutes of buffer. We headed out toward a couple sites by Marshall Lake:
Marshall Lake (GCG41M) N 35°07.323 W 111°32.288
Crane View Site (GC1F25) N 35°07.233 W 111°32.354
This is up the road to Anderson Mesa where I like to do my dark sky astronomy observing. We took a quick detour to check out the Lowell observatory sites in daylight and throw rocks at the domes. (no.)
We drove out to a parking spot by the lake (marsh), and headed up a trail along the north side. That trail was _loaded_ with coyote dookie, man. And how do I know this? First of all, because I hear multiple packs of them varmunts when I'm observing at Anderson Mesa, and the place has got to be infested with them. And secondly, because it was all the same color as sweet potato casserole, except without the marshmallows. And because your average dog population is not that consistent. And thirdly because they were all loaded with hair and berries. You could tell the alpha coyotes, because they were the ones with the squirrel fur in their reeky sun-bathers, while the wimpy coyotes had berries and bird seed to show for their efforts.
Like you cared.
Because I am a geek, it was really satisfying to watch the bearing on the gps match up with the trail direction, and to see the distance tick down, tenth-of-a-mile by tenth-of-a-mile. Giselle navigated us to the Marshall Lake cache--with a little help where we had to leave the trail--until it read 0.0 ft to go. We fanned out to look for likely hiding spaces, but it turned out to be right next to her, covered up very nicely. The kids...ok, and Mom and Dad too, got a boost out of finding it. The tupperware box was filled with mostly Happy-Meal type plastic toys, along with some other personal effects. Some joker left a used movie stub. Whatever. It was just really cool to find it. The kids picked out a yo-yo and tiny rubbery dinosaur. I left a big silver sharpie pen, because I'm classy that way. Than I had to turn on my little chatty-Kathy motor and write a bunch of blah blah blah in the log book.
A picture is linked here. I'm not showing it directly, in case you ever plan to hit this cache and don't want me spoiling it for you.
Speaking of spoiling...
Just as we were packing it up, another group of like 8 people and a dog suddenly rounded the bend. We had noticed them hanging out around a rock outcropping in the woods a tenth of a mile back. A sinking feeling settled in my gut. It became obvious they were hunting this cache themselves, and we had just spoiled it for them. It hadn't occurred to me that we would run into somebody doing this at the exact same time. I just figured they were picnicking offroad when we passed them. They weren't going anywhere--just hanging around a bunch of rocks. Oy. The less crotchety among them were quietly explaining to their kids that we had already found the cache and so they might as well head back. One guy looked really mad though. Didn't say a word. Just kept glaring at us, like we were passing them in a bus with our bare butts pressed against the windows.
And so, like every other potential for conflict in my life, I'll have to spend the next few days analyzing how I can avoid something like that happening again.
We took a little detour down by the marsh, so that tiny little rocks could hop from kid fingers to wind-rippled water.
Then we looked up the Crane View Site cache on the gps.
Imagine my surprise when it lead us back to where that other party of people had been hanging out. Heh. Fortunately (for us), the area is hidden by trees from the trail, so it wasn't completely spoiled. It took a good deal of poking around to see where it was hidden. Giselle decided at this point that she actually wouldn't mind leaving the yo-yo behind, and that trade let Harrison make away with a second teeny, rubber dinosaur toy. I wrote another short story, and then let Giselle re-hide the wooden box. It was a good hide, but Amanda decided to blend it more perfectly into its surroundings, lest anyone have an easier time finding it than we did. Here is a link to a picture from that site.
So that was really fun. It also got me off my bed-sore-wielding butt for a couple hours. We'll be down in Phoenix in a couple weeks, so it might be nice to catch a few down there.
Also, Mr. Peyton, the topic for the day is Circle-K Hot Dogs, which fueled my 1.5 miles worth of walking.
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