High Country Geocaches

While we were in Flagstaff, we often used geocaches to lead us to things we hadn't seen or at least noticed before (including the street art.)

BJ had never visited the Sunset Crater or Wupatki National Monuments, so one day we headed out to do the loop through the two Monuments. We visited a Fumarole,

and enjoyed the peek-a-boo view of Mt. Humphreys from the border of the Strawberry Crater Wilderness Area.

We checked out some real estate options in the Wupatki Monument. The stone work here was MUCH better than the stone work in Quartzsite, but the building was just as unavailable.

Another day, we headed out to visit Winona, Arizona, made famous (I use the term very loosely) by Bobby Troup's Route 66 song. The town didn't amount to much, but a nearby cache induced us to climb to the top of a nearby cinder cone for the view.

On the way back to town from Winona, we visited another section of the Arizona Trail. I was surprised to see a very good water boot hanging on a tree - it must have fallen off someones pack and been hung up by another hiker.

A bit further on was a gallon of water. If this was in southern Arizona, I would have assumed that it was intended for folks illegally crossing the desert, but here, it must have been intended to resupply a hiker.

Since there was very little snow, we headed up towards Snowbowl, hoping to visit a very old cache, but the north side shadows and the altitude conspired against us. We threw in the towel before we even got to it, not wanting to dig through snow to find a cache. In doing so, we added a bit more clarity to our growing definition (and attachment to) the term "weather wimp."

We did get to check out all the declarations of love carved into the aspens.

Perhaps the best part of geocaching in Flagstaff was the potsherds discovered while searching for a cache. And, no, I'm not going to tell you where.

Like elsewhere, geocaching led us to some very interesting places that we wouldn't have seen otherwise and we kept BJ's Fitbit happy.