Tucson, Again

I headed south at 7 a.m., headed first for the U of A campus in Tucson. I found a spot to park not far from the Arizona State Museum (that I should visit some day) and dropped my last two quarters in the meter to buy me 30 minutes. I'd intended to bring a handful of quarters with me but totally forgot until I was standing in front of the parking meter.

My reason for the visit to campus was to log the only webcam cache in the state. BJ and I have logged four others during our travels, but I needed one more to qualify for a challenge cache that was still waiting for a First to Find. With challenge caches, you not only need to find it and sign the log, but you have to meet the challenge qualifications before you can officially log it as found.

Unfortunately, when I got to the published coordinates near the south door of Old Main, I discovered the cache had been moved to a different location another half mile to the east.

After repositioning the car and feeding another meter with the credit card, I waved at Lute Olson

and ignored the felines as I walked by.

I finally ended up where I needed to be to successfully log the webcam cache, and immediately thereafter claimed the FTF on the challenge cache that I'd signed 10 days before.

With that out of the way, I wandered around the desert for the rest of the morning as the temperatures climbed into the triple digits.

Both figuratively and actually - it was the end of the road for my desert wanderings and time to start chasing some

'neon' multi caches. These were done by the same cacher that did the neon related caches along Main Street in Mesa. The advantage of saving these for the afternoon was that much of the work could be done from the delightful air conditioning in the car.

Some of the neon was getting very worn,

but it brought me to this appropriate piece of Americana - Paul Bunyan flying the flag for the 4th of July holiday instead of holding his normal axe.

The real reason I went to Tucson was that there was a geocaching gathering late that afternoon. I have one more challenge cache to be placed in a series that I've put out, but the final cache can't be published until I meet the qualifications. I need five more event caches to meet the quals, and events are rare enough that it was worth the drive.

The sun was setting as I headed home after a long, but very enjoyable day.