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.

California is Challenging

Day three started with a beautiful sunrise after a night that approached freezing. The overnight air temperature didn't matter - my down sleeping bag was warm! The weather forecast was for high winds and low daytime temperatures.

I was glad that I'd thrown the sweatshirt in at the last minute. It was definitely a three layer morning. Thankfully the wind held off, leaving a beautiful, clear day. 

There was a line of about thirty challenge caches about 20 miles east of my overnight boondock. The open desert made the short walks to the caches easy.

I ended up skipping one by mistake, and not finding another. I also skipped a few that I didn't qualify for, and doubted that I ever would! I managed to pick up the vast majority of that series much quicker than Cachetur.no or I expected. 

With that series done, it was time to let the trip planner point me in the shortest direction to Palm Springs for the next cluster of caches. I had to stop at this corner for a picture. The area looked sort of abandoned, but it left me with questions about what the owner had hoped to do with this.

The Palm Spring series was quick and easy, except for this one. My GPS says three feet, leaving me wondering if the gardner got it??

The original plan had been to overnight again just south of Joshua Tree, but I was running well ahead of schedule so I kept going. I knew I wanted to remove and archive 7 of my remaining caches in Quartzsite, but even then it was too early to stop.

I finished the day about 500 miles and 37 challenge caches after I started it, with the Silver Subie parked in the driveway. With those three counties turned green on the map, it makes my trip planning for a major road trip this summer much easier.

Did I say how much I love the flexibility the Silver Subie provides??