[Az-Geocaching] Our Saturday geocaching!

[Scott Nicol]

What a fun day Saturday was! Enjoyed two of my favorite hobbies- hot air 
ballooning and geocaching! Actually, the balloon flight that morning was a 
money maker! I happen to make a living with my 'hobby'! :)
My geocaching teammate as well as my ballooning crew chief, Brent, joined me 
on this day of caching.

Awoke at 3:30am for a beautiful morning balloon flight. Arrived home and got 
all the equiptment put away and around 9:00am or so, we were off on a day of 
geocaching!

We had about 5 caches we were planning on doing, but, after doing some quick 
internet research, I found out indeed that the Pinal Mnt's area of the Tonto 
NF was closed off due to the high fire dangers. We were planning on doing 
the cache up there. So, we made a quick change of plans and decided on a 
different route which would give us 8 caches to visit!

Off we went! Our first cache of the day was in a place we have visited many 
times. The Mineral Mnt Cache near Florence Jct. For those of you who have 
not yet been to this cache, if you have a good truck with high clearance (or 
a Jeep!) you can continue up the road to the old ghost town of Denoon. Some 
may know of an old ghost town in the area called Reymert. Which is the town 
the dirt road in is named after. Actually, Reymert really has no remains. 
But, down the wash from Reymert is a pretty well preserved ghost town. 
Denoon. Several buildings still standing (at least as of a couple of years 
ago. I havent been back there since and only went as far as the cache this 
time). What a fun cache! Logged in at 10:18am.  Yes, as the previous log 
entry had stated(another team logged in just about 2 hours before us!)... 
the red flags were up. That means DANGER, LIVE WEAPONS/BOMBINGS TAKING 
PLACE! However, the sign did not say 'stay out'. It was just a caution sign, 
I guess!. We also saw several ATV riders and such on the roads in there. The 
area is used a couple weekends a month for National Guard training and such. 
We also heard all the bombs going off! Very cool! We were able to easily 
drive within about 400' of the cache location and made the quick trek to the 
cache. Found it quickly. Both my teammate and myself just kinda looked at it 
at the same time! We pulled the container out and sat on the top of the hill 
and watched the live bombings as we were signing the log. We had really high 
powered binoculars and were able to watch the bombs going off! However, we 
didn't need them to see the action! We could hear a firing and then a small 
poof of smoke from a spot in the distant center of the desert valley. Look 
to the south a few seconds later and we saw a small fireball followed by a 
quick poof of black smoke and followed seconds later by a large dust cloud 
from the desert floor! Those are some mighty big bombs! Fortunately, they 
were off in the distant. The area where the bombs were landing were probably 
5 or 6 miles away or better. We watched several bombs go off and then 
'retreated' to safer grounds!

Those safer grounds would be the Drip's Dry Cache near Pinal Creek west of 
Miami. This was another really fun cache. Have driven by on Hwy. 60 a 
zillion and a half times and on driving by, you can see the old Hwy. 60 from 
time to time. This time, we got to drive on it! Followed the old road in to 
about 100' of the cache. This was to be our 200th cache find! It was also 
not an easy find for us. As I told my teammate, "this cache is gonna mess 
with us because it is our 200th!" Sure nuff' it did! We spent probably a 
half an hour looking for that thing. Turns out we walked right by it several 
times! :) We were bound and determined not to leave until we found it 
because if we did, the next one would just mess with us too! So, found this 
one and moved on to Globe. 200 cache finds!!!!!!!!! YEHAW!!!!!!!!!

Two caches in Globe. One just SE of town and one just on the edge of town in 
a city desert park. Work and Play Cache was first. Followed the dirt road in 
only to find a locked gate for the Tonto NF. Obviously locked due to high 
fire danger. Fortunately, the cache was only 458 feet past this gate. So, we 
made a quick in and out for the cache and moved on! Round Mnt cache is near 
Globe. A really nice desert mountain park that Globe has created. A nice 
hike to the cache and our 4th find of the day so far and working on our next 
100! :)

Next, it was on up to the Sierra Ancha Mnt's area for Workman's Creek cache 
and Awsome Canyon Cache. Workman's Creek is a really cool cache location. 
Several past entries spoke of getting a bit wet on this one. But, the 
waterfall wasnt that wide now. But, still a nice run of water coming down. 
We simply walked around it and kept totally dry! It was so pleasant down 
there with the sound of the water pounding against the rocks below and the 
cool temps in the shaded areas near the falls. Very nice cache. On our way 
out, we saw a group of campers with a big ole' campfire burning! What 
IDIOTS!. I can call them that, right? What are they thinking? Do they not 
have a clue!??!!?? The whole of Tonto NF has obvious fire restrictions and 
parts of it are now closed. This area we not, however, there was high fire 
danger and no fires allowed. Where are the forest rangers to slap these 
dudes huge fines? If cought, they should give them a fine in the amount it 
would likely cost to put out forest fire!!!!!! I cant figure out why they 
would have a campfire anyways? It was only 6pm out and not even dark yet. It 
was also rather warm out. Go figure.

Awsome Canyon Cache was really scenic as well. Nice views from there. I 
think we are going to take the hot air balloon for a flight off that mesa 
some day and out over the lake. Maybe next Fall! Right now, more caching to 
do!

We had done a bit of sightseeing while at some of these previous caches 
today and plus the late start due to business in the morning... time wasnt 
on our side. But, we werent going to let darkness keep us from the other two 
caches we still wanted to get on the way home. We next did Libby's What 
Another Dam Cache near Roosevelt Dam. By the time we got there it was 8:00pm 
(logged in at 8:09pm) and it was totally dark. Fortunately, we had a good 
flashlight and found it no problem and moved on. Actually, the view of the 
dam with some lights on was really impressive. I guess that dam is 
impressive no matter how you look at it! Alot of concrete.

A nice drive along the Apache trail and we arrived at Apache Lake for the 
T697 Apache Dog Cache. It was now nearly 9:30pm when we found a place to 
park to start this hike. Found a spot only .19 mile from the cache and 
headed off into the darkness. Had to walk along a ridge, down into a wash, 
and partially up the other side to a rock ledge where the cache was. Alot of 
rock and a lot of places this cache could be. But, we had two flashlights 
and one was a really high powered one that really made searching for the 
cache pretty easy. Found it quickly. The moonlight also made the hike 
possible without flashlights on and we were able to save batteries a bit. 
Logged in at 9:45pm. Yehaw! Got all 8 we set out to get! Even if it took us 
to 10:00pm at night to do it! Continued on down Apache Trail to Apache 
Junction where we stopped by Cobb's Greasy Spoon on Main St in AJ to meet 
some friends that hang out there around midnight and spent a bit of time 
eatin' and drinkin' (soda that is!). Finally got home around 2am and 
finished logging our finds on Geocaching.com at 3:22am (Sunday morning). 
What a FUN but LONG 24 hours!

A fun day indeed. Cant wait to get out and do it again!

(which I did today! ;)

Scott
Team Ropingthewind

Scotts Adventure Flying Web Page
http://www.safwp.bravepages.com
(very soon to include RTW's Geocaching page!)



_________________________________________________________________
MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: 
http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx