What a day it was! I awoke at 4:00am for business (balloon flight). My crew cheif (and geocaching teammate), Brent, met me at my place at 5am and we headed out the door for a wonderful morning flight over the Gold Canyon area. We launched from our usual launch site out near El Camino Viejo Rd/Hwy 60. As I was setting up the equiptment and was flipping my GPS on, I noticed the new Rennessiance Cache was only 527 feet away! Oh well. Cant go for it now. Even thought it was only 500 feet away! We took off (kinda hoping I could find a wind to take me to the cache site!) and headed away from the cache. Oh well. Get it another day! Arrived home from the flight and got everything unloaded and we headed out the door caching at around 11:30am. We were planning on heading up to get the long standing 'not found' cache Verde Hot Springs Cache. This is really a day trip that we were going to do in a half day! We left at 11:30am and arrived at the turnoff from Hwy. 87 at around 1:30pm or so. The road in was awsome with some really spectacular scenery. The road follows the edge of a canyon wall and drops very steeply into the canyon. Then, at the bottom near Fossil Creek, it climbs once again and over another ridge before decending into the Verde River valley. We parked near the campground and made the one mile hike to the cache site. We got as close as about 100 feet before finding the Verde River seperating us and the cache! Well, the cache description states that you can cross where the river narrows and it is only knee deep. Well, we walked up and down the river a bit and couldnt find anywhere that looked any better. Did see a crossing with alot of rock and probably not more than getting wet knee deep, however, it was very swift flowing water. I stepped into it and could feel the current! So, we walked up river a bit and found a calmer area of water that wasnt too bad. It required crossing twice, as there was an island in the middle. No problem. The first crossing there was alot of small rocks, and didnt barely get knee deep. The second crossing... Well, fairly swift flowing water and soaked from our hips down! That is freakin' cold water too!!!!!!!! But, we were determined to get to that cache come 'hell or HIGH WATER!! :) Once soaked and on the other side... we made the very short trek to the cache site. It is no fun hiking in soaking wet Wrangler jeans and sneakers! Fortunately, it was warm enough out that it wasnt too bad. However, the cache side of the river was all shadows now and it felt a bit cool out! It was around 2:30pm or later upon arrival at the cache location. We quickly found the '0' spot and made our search. Nothing. Not a whole lot of places to look. A couple really obvious spots. But, still no cache. One place that was really obvious was right near the trail, but, I suspect it may be gone. Also, right where the GPS '0'ed out, there was a rock slide. I also suspect the cache may be under all that rock! After searching well within a 100' radius of the 0 spot, still no dice. We even searched below and slightly above the ridge area we were on. Nothing. After nearly 2 hours of searching, we finally decided to take a stab at the rock slide and removed a good bit of rocks and still couldnt get to the bottom of it to see if a cache container was in there. The description doesnt even tell what kind of a cache container we were looking for. So, really didnt have a clue. Just searched. After well over 2 hours, we called it quites. It was now nearly 5:00pm and we needed to be getting back as it would be getting dark soon. We made the short hike to the Hot Springs to check them out. Interesting. Lots of hippies and well... other people there. Kinda cool though. There are a couple of caves with springs in them. Neat little piece of AZ history. Didnt look like a place this redneck should be hanging around.. unless, we were to join them! Nope. This was a long ways to come without a find. So, we were gonna try to find another cache before heading home! This was a long day and a long ways to come to not make a find. We also had to make a 2 mile hike and cross hip deep in the cold Verde River, only to not make a find. Oh well. All was not lost. This was our first time in this very secluded and hidden spot of Arizona. An area we were very glad to have visited. Very scenic. Absolutely beautiful. There is a new cache about 2 miles on the other side of the river, but, our vehicle probably wouldnt make it across the river.. didnt even try though and took the steep and rocky road back out to Hwy. 87 to Strawberry. We made it back out to the highway well after dark and proceeded to the first cache along the way. There are about 5 or 6 caches along Hwy. 87 form Pine south to around Rye or so. We checked them all out. Most were a few tenths of a mile or more off the road and didnt sound like anything we could hike in the dark. It is pitch black dark in the pine forests at night! There were a couple of Multi-caches as well and didnt even consider them. We first stopped at the Pioneer's Remembered Cache outside of Pine, AZ. We parked in a pull out along the highway about 295 feet from the cache. We made the very dark and very eerie trek down to the cache site. My teammate has a high powered flashlight that really aided in lighting the dark forest up at night. I was just amazed at how many stars were in the sky. The light pollution of PHX just doesnt allow for this kind of sky viewing. Very cool. We quickly arrived at the cache location and made a quick scan with the bright flashlight and found the clue and thus the cache. We logged in at 7:42pm and made our trade and headed back to the truck. Fortunately, we marked the truck, as well as a spot half way, as a waypoint on our GPS just in case! Of course, the highway was right there and didnt even need the GPS to get back to the truck. Headed to Payson for dinner at Macey's Grill/Restraunt. This is a really nice little cowboy cafe on the south side of Payson (really cute waitress too!). We downed some mighty fine BBQ burgers (read: some durn good vittles!) and headed back toward PHX. We check out a few more caches along the way. Most seemed too far off the highway to attempt at night. Also, it was getting late and nearly 9:00pm. But, we pulled off the highway at the Trailhead for Deer Creek and decided to make a run at the Deer Creek cache. We have read many no find logs on this one and the thinking that this cache may be gone. However, as of late... there are several find logs, so, we felt confident we could get this one in the dark of night. Parked at the trailhead and hiked the .5 miles to the cache site via the trail. The high powered flashlight really lit up the trail and we were able to make out the trail rather easily. However, the flashlight's batteries were fading quickly and no more fresh ones to put in there! We posted the truck as a waypoint as well as the spot were we left the trail for the cache. We arrived at the cache location and found the cache very quickly after a quick scan with the flashlight (which was just about dead by now!). We found the cache and logged our visit and traded out a soldering tool kit for a .. wouldnt ya' know it (!)... a FLASHLIGHT! It was a small flashlight and not very bright... but, it was a flashlight! Just when we thought we were going to have to hike back in the dark. I cannot tell you how pitch black dark it was out there without a light. Seeing the trail would have been a chore in itself (probably not too bad on a moon lit night, but, no moon tonight!). It was so quite and peaceful out there and only the occasional sound of a passing car on the hwy about a .25 mile away or so. Found the trail back and made it back to the truck. Lots of cactus along the route, but, no scratches! Came out unscathed. What an awsome caching experience. Certainly ups the degree of difficulty. I think we are hooked on night wilderness caches! This was it for the night. We logged our visit at around 9:42pm or so and made it back to the truck around 10:00pm and was on the road for home. We made one more stop on the way home... the Snow on the Highway cache. This was nearly impossible. We had only a cheap little flashlight that would only lite the ground directly in front of you. But, gave it a shot anyways. We had to look for an ADOT marker to start our search, as per the cache clues. We found it. However, walking a straight line on the heading indicated was impossible as it would take us thru trees and such. Also, we didnt have much of any light. So, if we were off with our paces and heading.. we would not be able to scan far enough around to have a good look at the cache. We quickly said "forget this one" and headed for home. Try that one again someday. Got home around midnight. What a long day. A fun day though. A beautiful morning ballooning and then off to do some caching. Great views of Arizona we had never seen before and.. what can I say.. nighttime caching in the wilderness is an awsome experience. Could this be the future of Extreme Geocaching!? :) Although we didnt come up with a find on the Verde Hot Springs Cache.. it was a day well spent and enjoyed. We cant wait to get up to the high country and do some caching again sometime soon! Scott Team Ropingthewind _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx