As I said in my last post we had thunder and lightening on the way home last night. Well it turns out it continued throughout the night in the area we wanted to cache – The Route 66 Sign.
It is said only a fool ventures in the desert after a fresh rain even if you are walking.
So what would the plan be then. We discussed this on the way to get Subway buit as we arrived Subway didn’t open till 7 so it was suggested we go visit the Poolside cafe next door at the Tropicana Laughlin as they opened at 6 am. That is what we did. Upon arriving we went inside and ordered a custom made sandwich and waited for them to be made. In the mean time I found that the hotel offers “FREE” WiFi. This WiFi was far better than the wired internet we were paying $12 a night for.
It should be mentioned that the Poolside cafe seals your sandwich in an airtight bag for travel. We all agreed this was the place for food to go, 4 thumbs up!
So after some discussion we decided we would head for the CCX series we were planning to do tomorrow. We would see how that went then head back to finish Route 66.
We were soon off stopping on the way to get a few caches. It didn’t take long before we left Nevada and was driving in California. Lets say I have driven better gravel roads than this paved highway.
It didn’t take long for us to see the result of last nights rain. Mud had been washed onto the road and cleaned up over night. Flooded out areas. There was one cache we planned to stop at called “Flooded” and we gave it a pass because it was exactly that…flooded…
We got down Cadiz and headed down the road and decided we would place 16 caches along this road to help link up Route 66 series with the CCX Series. We placed 10 caches to the top 10 cachers in BC and a couple of Thank You caches to Series CO’s and a Challenge cache which will require the cache finder to do some work.
Once the 16 caches were placed we headed down the road to do the Cadiz CacheX4ing Series (CCX Series).
The gravel road for the most part was in great shape when we started. WE started to rack up some finds and it didn’t take us long to come to our first wash out. Into 4 wheel drive we went and took our time through it.
We continued onto #75 where we decided that between washouts and the condition of the road was getting far more than we wanted to try. We also wanted to finish off Route 66. We had also had some showers on and off and felt that if the heavens did open up we could be spending some time where we didn’t want to.
In the end it turns out this was a good idea because we ran into two cars on the way out who were caching and we gave them a road report. It turns out that they didn’t get much beyond our 75 before they ran into a Grader operator who was very grumpy and didn’t want them on the road.
We headed back onto Route 66 and started at 763 and before long we had completed all 800 Route 66 Caches.
The funny part was one of the caches Rumrunner1 hopped out by a guardrail and lifted the rock and stepped back and went ahh we have a problem. There it was a Tarantula guarding the cache.
Yes in case you want to know Rumrunner1 did retrieve the cache and we signed it.
Tarantula guarding cache
We have completed 800 of Route 66 now! Wifey took the photo because she already had completed it.
Now that we have completed the “Official” Route 66 cache line there are 33 more caches that have been placed beyond the original series. This would mean Wifey would get to cache some more.
We headed home from here and stopped at Aztec to grab a few more caches and then into Arizona to grab a few Virtual caches.
I should add that my Garmin 62S GPS decided to give up today. I was driving and watching and then all of a sudden it decided that the cache was off the coast of Africa. It continued to do this no matter what I tried and when I got home that night it took a few hours before I got it sorted out. I did a factory reset and that didn’t help it. It wasn’t till I did a format of the SD card and installed the maps again did I get it fixed.
The other problem we had today was Wifey (Oregon450) was transferring a cache to Rumrunner (Oregon550) when all of a sudden she lost everything. Yet she plugged it in back at the hotel and it showed everything was there.
We were all tired and tonight we would eat in the Beach Cafe in the Hotel.
No telling what tomorrow would bring at this point.