What's with Yuma?

The Southwest Arizona Geocachers put on a big event in Yuma every year. It's grown in size and popularity and now it draws people from around the world. The Yuma area has lots of land available for geocaching (with some restrictions) and a robust group of geocachers which results in a fairly dense population of geocaches.

This is the third year I've attended the Yuma Mega event.

I got the trailer settled in to the RV parking area at the Paradise Casino which is the closest free overnight parking to the event venues. I'd toyed with staying at Mittry Lake again this year but wanted to be closer. With the trailer taken care of, I headed off to the Old Town area for the first event.

I knew some friends were attending, but based on the size I doubted I would run into them. Turns out I crossed paths with lots more people than I anticipated, including a great conversation with our local reviewer.

Once again, I teamed up with a friend to tackle the Yuma Discovery challenge. They had about 20 locations and/or caches this year that had to be located in order to claim a geocoin. The minute I saw the list I realized Mittry Lake would have been a good location for the trailer! Nearly half of the caches were on that side of town with seven of them surrounding the lake itself!

The sign-in board for the main event was quickly filled. I found a spot to sign it vertically.

On Monday, there were a couple more events but I only stuck around for the first one before finally heading for home.

The highlight for me was a new virtual cache. Turns out, I was a pretty good match for the statue, except that my black eye looked better!

The other highlight for me was finally getting to the confluence of the Gila (coming in from the right) and the Colorado rivers. We used to paddle sections of the Gila quite regularly, and still paddle sections of the Colorado annually. Once again, a couple caches got me close to a place I won't have gone otherwise.

As busy as my time was in Yuma, I did find the town essentially deserted if you started as the sun was coming up. Managed to visit three caches that were supposed to be especially good, without any muggles to question what was happening.

All in all, a good time in Yuma, but I'm glad to be home!

You Meet the Nicest People

One of the things I enjoy most about our time in Quartzsite is the wonderful people you meet. Once again, it proved true during our time at the Fiberglas Gathering.

Shirley and Alan visit the southwest for several months during the winter from their home in Canada. During their time in Arizona, Shirley spends much of her time wandering the desert, picking up trash and always on the lookout for human remains. She bags her trash picking and then calls the BLM or Border Patrol who pick them up on their rounds.

As she was describing what she does, the conversation wandered to the sorts of stuff she finds. She's noticed pill bottles and shotgun shells placed at regular intervals along some of the roads. Without checking the contents, these items get dropped in her trash bag with everything else. As we chatted about geocaching, she got a funny look on her face as she realized along with the trash she collected, she was also picking up whole series of geocaches!

Geocaching in Quartzsite is very different from most areas. It's so arid that shotgun shells make a perfectly adequate container, but a container that just looks like waste to someone else. When I showed her this picture, she immediately assumed that the decoration on the saguaro was trash, rather than a host for a geocache. Since she never opened the containers, she never saw the logs - she just saw trash that needed to be picked up.

This super nice, smiling lady spends hundreds of hours every winter picking up bags of trash. Most of it is left in the desert by individuals traveling on foot from points south, but some of it has significance to geocachers. She was a bit embarrassed and is now more aware that one person's trash is another person's treasure.

Solo Scamping is Dangerous - maybe

I moved the trailer from Roadrunner to Dome Rock on Saturday in preparation for the Fiberglass Gathering that would officially start the following Friday. There were over 40 eggs already settled in when I arrived.

The area where we normally center the gathering was still filled with sunblockers so the majority of the folks picked out places on the upper level which didn't look like the upper level when photographed from the back side.

I got all settled in and squared away in preparation for BJ and Turk's return.

Sometimes it seems that nothing changes in Q except that the buildings get older

but that's really not true. Some of the buildings are falling down. One of these buildings had a roof on it when I blogged about it a couple years ago. Now some walls have fallen and both buildings are fenced off.

The sunsets can be good, but the sunrises are better as you look across the wide valley.

Without a drone, there isn't a viewpoint where you can get a view of the whole group. When this picture was taken, BJ and I walked around the area and counted 99 fiberglass trailers, excluding the four other stick-built trailers that joined the group.

Meanwhile, the black eye is getting better. It's too long a story, but it's the Scamp's fault.

It's been fun touching base with lots of friends. Next stop is Yuma for a major geocaching event.