Cleaned up California

I left home early on June 2nd, headed for Taft, California. I routed via Palmdale in order to avoid LA traffic. I was hoping to spend more time checking out the Blackbirds on display but the museum was not open.

I needed to route through San Francisco, but I'd already decided to NOT try to get down to the iconic Fisherman's Wharf. Instead, I found a cache highlighting some of the murals. There were some very talented painters represented.

I hadn't been through wine country in decades. The architecture of wineries was varied and interesting, but the rusty truck statue in Calistoga caught my eye.

I think one of my favorite caches in Northern California was one dedicated to the Unknown Stage Robber. It was tough to find with terrible coordinates, but it left lots of thoughts about times past.

The last county I needed to finish California was Siskiyou County. The cache at the Hayden Hotel was nondescript, but the history it highlighted was interesting. The road was slow and the trees were beautiful.

The 58 California counties have now been officially visited! The chasing counties concept worked - I enjoyed lots of back roads that I wouldn't have visited otherwise.

Thanks to the temperatures, I sprung for a hotel for the two nights in Taft, but was able to find comfortable, safe locations to boondock the other 4 nights in California. Silver Subie for the win.

Clean Up on Aisle 5

About 18 months ago, I stated playing with a trip plan, hoping to intentionally visit some counties that I'd never visited with my GPS in hand, and even more important, attend a couple major events in Seattle and Abbotsford, BC. Of course, we all know how that went. 

For the past couple years, I've picked away at California counties, including a bunch in Eastern California from my quick trip last summer and a small handful more just last month. Most of what is left is up the central corridor, the area that's typically our third choice for travel. That white area is enough to bug me into trying to clean them up.

In normal years, Oregon gets visited, but you can see the spots that have been ignored, primarily in the corners. There would have been another blank in the SE if it hadn't been for last year's quick trip.

As a Washington native with family ties to the state, I was a bit surprised to see how many counties I was still missing. I'm especially looking forward to getting some caches in San Juan county since I haven't been to the islands for years. Thanks to some other very interesting caches, I'm going to end up with a very circuitous route.

By the time I get finished cleaning up these three states, I should head directly home, but I have two more states where I've found caches in more than half the counties. There's certainly no straight route to getting the remaining 24 counties in Idaho, but I'll get to see lots of backroads and beautiful country in the process.

On last summer's trip I visited all the counties on the west side in Colorado. This summer, I'm hoping to finish up with the east side counties that I'm missing. With BJ's blessing, I'll take a couple extra days to visit the Colby, Kansas area as well, to drop some ink on the world's oldest existing geocache.

Eighteen months of planning and dreaming. There are nearly 1400 caches loaded in the GPS. The route totals about 8500 miles and I expect it to take 36 days. It will certainly be a great test of the Silver Subie's boondocking capabilities. I won't find all the caches I've loaded, but I expect to clean up the white spots in all five states.

Wheels should be rolling June 1st.

Sunny San Diego

With the Scamp tucked into its spot in the garage, we packed suitcases, tossed them in the Subaru, and headed for San Diego. We stopped to do an earth cache in Holtsville at a hot spring that I didn't know existed. Once again, geocaching took us to an interesting place.

Thankfully, we finished up with our Holtsville stop before the rain started. This is the first trip to California that I've ever had where the traffic was running less than the speed limit!

The whole reason for the trip was to watch our grandson in a hockey tournament. His team flew down from Alaska to take part in a tournament. BJ wore his white jersey for the first game since the team was wearing their dark uniforms that day.

He's one of the larger guys on his team and doesn't shy away from going right up the middle if the chance presents itself.

I noticed that BJ declined the opportunity to wear his dark jersey the next day. Sometime about eau de locker room.

We had some very heavy rain one day, but the sun was shining the next day and the game wasn't until late afternoon so we headed to Ramona to see what has changed since we lived there in the mid '70s. The highlight event when we lived there was when they got their first stoplight. Folks would park and watch it change color. Now there are at least six major intersections.

In spite of the additional traffic and signals, downtown still looks the same but the apartment definitely looked worse for wear.

We were making a big loop of this drive, and stopped along the way at a county park. It was pretty obvious where the rain from the day before ended up.

For years, we've heard about the Escapees Jojoba Hills RV park hidden in the hills east of Temecula. With a bit of time on our hands, we arranged for a quick windshield tour but didn't stop to visit any of our friends there.

All in all, it was a nice trip down memory lane.

I've Got Gas

One of the things we learned in Death Valley was that it's BIG. While the truck has a big tank, it's always easier to burn off the top half when you don't know where you're going. We paid $2.20 in Bullhead City on our way to Death Valley, and $4.25 in Baker, California figuring gas would be more expensive in the park.

There was a gas station at Furnace Creek posted at $5.05 but we ignored it.

We went to Beatty, in part for fuel, but also because of some ghost towns around the area. Gas in Beatty was posted at $3.25 but it cost more than that because there was a candy store in the station...

Another day, we drove out to the west side of the park, where we could see the snow covered peak of Mt. Whitney in the distance. Apparently there are places in the park where on a clear day you can see both the highest and the lowest points in the continental U.S.

Coming back towards Stovepipe Wells, we made a note of the gas price in Panamint Springs but did not partake. Instead, we fueled at Stovepipe Wells ($3.58/gallon) before hooking up the trailer for our southbound departure.

We stopped in Shoshone at the famous Crowbar Cafe and Saloon for lunch with friends who have been volunteering at a nearby wildlife area. Good food and good conversation!

The gas pump next door to the cafe said 44 cents but it was dry. The pump across the street said $5.05, but we didn't partake.

We continued south from Baker through the Mohave Nature Preserve to check out the restored railroad depot in Kelso. It is now used as the visitor center for the Preserve but was closed due to the shutdown. We found a boondock (thanks, Campendium!) with a view before we got to the intersection with I-40 which made a nice overnight stop.

We had plenty of fuel to reach Parker, Arizona where we took on 24 gallons at $2.19. It pays to shop around!

Back Roads - Part Way

Our second full day at Stovepipe Wells had us heading to Nevada, not only in the hopes of cheaper gas and the start of a one-way back road,

but I wanted to check out a place with a geocache called Geocacher's Heaven. When we spotted this outfit that deals in used ammo cans, we could understand the name.

The other planned stop before we started our back road jaunt was a visit to Rhyolite. The site is now managed by BLM and has a paved road,

but that hasn't stopped vandals over the years.

Rhyolite was a going concern for a few years in the early 1900's but was totally deserted within 15 years or so. Portions of several large buildings remain but many of the smaller ones were moved to Beatty years ago.

Immediately adjacent to Rhyolite is a small piece of private land that hosts a museum and several pieces of large art

including "The Last Supper" by Polish-Belgian artist Albert Szukalski.

On our way out of town we stopped to visit the cemetery. Some graves are still obvious, but many of the wooden markers are long gone and the wood ones that remain are unreadable.

After our visit to Rhyolite, we headed out on the 27 mile road to Leadfield and Titus Canyon. Turns out, this is Death Valley National Park's most popular back road trip. We saw a few other vehicles, but often had the place to ourselves. The road was steep in places and occasionally had large potholes that required high clearance or avoidance.

I discovered that rough roads are great for conning the Fitbit that I was actually working. The road was such that if you wanted to consider the view, it was essential to stop first. We spotted this small mine shortly before we reached Leadfield.

Leadfield was created in the 1920s. According to Wikipedia, "The product of extensive and fraudulent advertising by the Western Lead Mine Company and C.C. Julian, the town boomed in 1925. His advertising posters showed steamboats navigating the Amargosa River to Leadfield, ignoring the fact that the Amargosa River is dry much of the time and does not run within 20 miles of Leadfield."

As a fan of history, rust, and ghost towns, I was looking forward to Leadfield. Turns out, the best part of the trip was the drive out of town through Titus Canyon. The rock, and the road were twisted!

It's times like these I wish I'd taken a geology class somewhere along the line.

I understand now why the park operates this as a one way road!

While Rhyolite and Leadfield were interesting, the drive was the highlight of the day!

Rolling the Dice

For several years, we've talked about visiting Death Valley, but it always seemed the conversations revolved around the late May northbound, or August southbound time frames. Apparently August is Death Valley National Park's busiest month which just goes to show how many people are lacking sanity.

With the government 'partial' shutdown in place, we knew the experience would be impacted but we decided to go anyway. After rain most of the way, we parked for the night at the Riverside in Laughlin and enjoyed dinner with one of our dear river rat friends.

We headed from Searchlight to Baker, avoiding Las Vegas traffic, and approached the park from the south. Baker is "interesting" but I wouldn't want to live there! We'd fueled in Bullhead City at $2.20 but wanted to top off the tank because of the long distances in the park. Fuel in Baker varied between $4.25 and $4.50.

I spent some time before departure looking for places where we could get off the road with the truck and trailer so that BJ could stretch. My planning was good enough that there just happened to be a geocache at almost all of the stretch breaks.

We didn't have any rain, but it sure looked like it on the second day.

We arrived at the park boundary west of Death Valley Junction, and saw slivers of blue sky ahead of us.

Nearly all of the NPS campgrounds were closed except for Stovepipe Wells, 30 miles north of Furnace Creek. The concessionaire operated campgrounds were open, but why pay their price when there was no charge for the NPS campgrounds since they can't charge during shutdowns. (What was that about sanity?)

The sunrise the next morning through a very dirty window, looked very inviting. After breakfast, we headed back to explore the central portion of the park.

Some roads were gated off. This one had been open the day before when we went up to Stovepipe Wells, but now our first stop of the day had equipment blocking the road to the parking lot. While you couldn't drive, you could walk to visit the mill. Turk couldn't walk on the path, but he could walk on the road.

I'm old enough to remember 20 Mule Team Borax advertised on the radio so I was really looking forward to this stop. The most interesting tidbit was that they couldn't process borax during the summer since it won't crystallize at temps above 120 degrees.

We stopped at Furnace Creek and wandered a bit. These facilities were built to attract tourists by the railroad and the borax company when the borax business slowed down. Still very nice!

The museum was closed, but the yard full of equipment displays was open. This steam tractor replaced the 20 Mule teams before the railroad replaced the steam tractor. The mules pulled 30 ton wagon trains 163 miles from Death Valley.

We went as far south as Badwater Basin, just so we could say we've been to the lowest spot in the U.S. How low can you go??

After checking out the salt growth in the basin we headed back to view the Badlands. If we hadn't had Turk along, we could have been enticed into a hike through this area. Turned out the weather was perfect for hiking - highs in the mid 60's.

I'm glad we visited in the winter, and it's on my list to return. There's LOTS that we won't have time to see (or opportunity due to locked gates) this time.