I had decided this past week that I was going to head south to Rachel for the CITO event and to meet old friends and do some caching with them.
I left headed for Kennewick Washington where I would cache for a day or two when I got there. From here it would be o0nto Twin falls and south to Rachel after that. The new caches were to be released about 4 days prior to the event.
I arrived in Kennewick about 10:30 AM and headed to Costco to pick up some for items to eat along the way and fill with gas.
After I left Costco I headed for a series of caches along Bofer Canyon Road parallel to I-82. While this road is for the most part seldom used it is how many of the caches are placed. One of the first caches I did was Bofer Road -25. This part of Bofer is a dead end so there is likely no vehicles along here except farm vehicles.
I quickly knocked off the south end of Bofer Road and then started on a series on Cofin Road. The series along coffin had it’s own problems with caches being blown around by the wind. Once I finished the last cache I noticed a truck on a road nearby with people jumping out and going to ground. I thought either new caches being placed or they are caching. A quick look at the GPS showed no caches along that road and I had done my pocket query late last night. I just left things for now as I would be back near this road later.
I then headed back to Bofer Road to continue on along there.
Now here is what bugs me the most about caching. There are power trails and then there are power trails. In this case this power trail has some severe problems. The CO (cache owner) placed caches along this road on guard rails for the most part. They tried to place them mostly at the either end but many were also in the middle. In some cases there was places to pull off the road and in places there were not and one had to park on the road for the middle of the guard rails.
Guard Rails on both sides
So the question is where does one park? As you can see above it is on the road.
Now it doesn’t look too bad along this stretch of road but this was on the dead end part of the road. As I moved along the road we had guard rails about 100 m beyond the crest of a hill. There was no sight line and while there might be somewhere to pull off, it was the pulling out onto the road that created problems. If one doesn’t get up[ to speed right away they run the risk of getting rear ended if someone comes over the hill at speed. In my case I pulled out was getting up to the speed 0f 50 mph (80 kph) when a Japanese crotch rocket crested the hill at high speed and had to swerve to avoid me. I know I was surprised to see him and he was likely surprised to see me. If I had been pulling out I am sure the reaction time would have not been there and we would have had a bad situation.
Now placing a cache takes some thought. Placing them 161 m apart just because you can doesn’t make it safe. Placing just over the crest of a hill with no thought to speed on the road places cachers in unsafe situations. Suggesting that they can stop beside a guard rail so a cacher can get the cache is bad as guard rails are placed for unsafe road conditions.
There was a cacher from Idaho last summer that fell to his death in BC crossing a guard rail.
There are many in BC that would like to see guard rail caches banned. BC Highways would like to see Groundspeak take up the issue.
Coffin Road – This shows how hilly it is in this area. I ran into many caches just over the hill at the bottom.
Once I got to Beck Road and started the Triple H series I soon ran into the theme for this series. It was called replace caches as they were blown away or destroyed. Interesting since only two farm vehicles pasted me and a couple of cachers are in front of me by an hour or so. I came to destroyed film containers, logs ripped up and strewn on the road. I replace about a dozen caches and logs.
During this series I was eating beef jerky and low and behold I bit down and chipped a new crown. The gum and tooth were rather painful now.
At the end of this road was another series called Kirk Road series. I started it but the wind took over and so did the pain.
I decided to turn around and head for home. There was no point in heading farther south with a sore tooth and having to get it fixed going south.
AS I was coming back I noticed another truck pulling off near signs on a road I said earlier i had seen another truck doing the same. I had one cache to get at the end and stopped to talk to the cacher. It turns around midnight last night a whole new series was released. That is why they were not on my GPS.
I decided to get the cache at the end and then follow the tracks in the gravel and stop where they pulled over to see if I could find the cache. I managed to do this for 9/10 caches I tried. No Gps just tracks.
I ended up with 113 caches today in 4 hours.
In the end I headed home and put Rachel off for another day. I just didn’t want to chance the tooth.