Thursday, March 02, 2006

Cache-a-Thon

Whew! We just got back from a fun weekend Geocaching in La Quinta near Palm Springs with Kenny's brother, Eric and his wife Sheree. It was a great weekend full of a few surprises.

On Friday night we left San Diego around 7:30pm hoping to make it to our campground by 10:30pm before it closed. This was not to be... We ended up arriving- after many side streets and u-turns- at our campsite around midnight. Unfortunately for us, the gate to the campground locked at 10:30! We had spent about 15 minutes trying to see if we could drive around the gate or if we could pick the lock, when Sheree simply slid the chain and lock off of the gate and opened it! I guess the last person forgot to make sure the lock was actually fastened to something!

Once we arrived at out campsite, which was nothing more than a piece of dirt with a picnic table, we figured we would just set up the tent quickly and get to bed. Well... the tent was there, but where were the poles?!? After realizing we had left the tent poles at home, we were about ready to call it quits and find a hotel. However, it took all our navigational skills just to get to the campground and no one wanted to get back in the car and drive around for another hour in search of a hotel that would probably run $200+ a night, so we backed the Explorer up to two palm trees and used a bit of strings and ingenuity to create a makeshift shelter for the four of us! It wasn’t pretty, but it worked :)

The next day we awoke ready to begin what we had come to do… Power Cache. La Quinta is a hotspot for Geocaching. I guess there is nothing else to do out there in the desert. After downing some Hot Chocolate and SPAM for breakfast, we loaded into the Explorer and began our cache-a-thon. Long story short, we managed to find 80+ geocaches on Saturday alone!

Because we arrive back to the campsite once again after midnight (this time we had the gate code), we had no time for a campfire or Smores… so, we ate them for breakfast the next morning along with some good old Jiffy Pop. Camping isn’t camping without slightly unpoped popcorn that tastes a bit rubbery with a tin foil aftertaste.

After making sure we got the whole “camping experience,” we loaded our gear up and headed off to do a few more geocaches before we left for home. We found over 20 geocaches in just a few hours and with over 100 caches for the weekend we decided to call it quits and head home.

Check out our pictures… and no comments about our tent :)

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Our 100th Geocache find for the weekend!

"Ranch of the 7th Range"
N 33° 37.626 W 116° 15.839








Eric & Sheree with
"La Quinta Early Man" Cache
N 33° 38.743 W 116° 19.223
"Geo Tax" Cache
N 33° 38.833 W 116° 19.064
That is us way up there :)
Kenny and Eric with a cache!