Route 66

Well today marked a day of Route 66 and caching. We would start at Newberry Springs at the Red and Lellow cache. Once we grabbed this one we headed to the Chevron Station and the Subway in it and grabbed a foot long today after what we learned yesterday.
We started with XM 5 (50’s music) today on the radio and later switched to XM 6.

There was a stop at the Historic Cliff House which is now a plumbing store. We ran into the owner and had a nice chat with her. She thinks we are nuts coming from Vancouver all the way to there to find caches.

After a few more caches we did another cache called French Connection which is at the Bagdad Cafe on Route 66.
The cache page doesn’t say anything about having to go inside to get the cache. If someone had not come outside and told us to come in for the cache we would have had a DNF (did not find). I pointed this out in my log and the Cache Owner sent me an email saying he was removing my log. In cases like this when a cache is placed on Private Property the cache is suppose to say placed with Permission or you have to go inside.
I edited my log and so far it hasn’t been removed despite the Cache Owners email.

We were soon off to start on Route 66 and the caches along the way.

I will explain Power caching as we did along Route 66. You see you are allowed to have a cache container (35 mm film container) with a pre-stamped log. We stamped ours The Canadian Caching Crew. You arrive at the first cache remove the cache and replace it with the pre-stamped cache. AS one drives to the next cache you stamp the log and swap it out with the next cache. We had two pre-stamped logs which made things much easier and quicker. We manged at one point to do a cache every 50 seconds. I drove while Rumrunner1 and Sweet Marie swapped jobs of stamping and retrieving.

We cached for a couple of hours before we saw our first car. I was then sitting there waiting for the return of the retriever and noticed a van in my mirror. I said to the other 2 we have a van coming our way I will wait till it passes. I watched in the mirror and said to the others you are not going to believe this but there appears to be a motorcycle on the roof. The van got closer and I said there appears to be a guy on the cycle. The van passed us and sure enough there was motor cycle on it with a guy on it. It would turn out we run into this van later in the day at the last cache of the day.

It should be noted that Route 66 is in very poor shape for the first part. It is better to drive part on the shoulder and part on the road because it is so rough. The dirt roads we drove yesterday were much better than the paved road today.

At a few points along the way we managed to average 73 caches an hour. In the end we managed about 470 caches. We had to stop due to darkness. The last of the day were done well into the dark and it was getting tough. We stopped in Amboy.

Now arriving Amboy at the last cache which was Route 66 – Message in a Bottle we see the van from earlier in the day.

We noticed the guy on the motor cycle is stuffed, we sort of figured that.

The van is from Juan Polo. The owner of Juan Polo is Albert Okura.The Juan Polo site says this:
The town of Amboy, California was founded in 1858. From 1925 to 1971, Amboy was a vital stop in the Mojave Dessert on Route 66. During this time, everyone traveling to Southern California from the East traveled through Amboy. Interstate 40 replaced Route 66 in 1971 and Amboy became a ghost town.

Albert Okura, founder of Juan Pollo restaurants, purchased Amboy for $425,000 from Bessie Burris with the promise that he would gradually restore the town. Albert is in the process of restoring Amboy. Roy’s Gas is open selling 87 octane, 91 octane, and diesel. The Amboy post office is open 6 days a week, the public restrooms are open, and a well with filtered, certified water has been installed.