Webcams, Memorials and Challenges

This is a continuation of my road trip I took last September to Colorado and Utah. It will probably be the last one I write about this trip since I didn't take any photos on the last day of the trip. As noted in many of my other posts, this one will be entirely about geocaching, so if you're not interested, feel free to stop now. I won't be offended. I mean, how could I even know if you've stopped reading?

After touring around Dinosaur National Monument, I headed over to spend a couple of days in the Salt Lake City area of Utah. One of the goals for this area were the four webcam caches that are strategically placed along Interstate 15 in this area. 

For those of you unaware, a webcam is a cache where you have to place yourself at a certain point in order to get yourself on the webcam that is in that area. Either you call a friend, or use your phone to take a screen shot of yourself on the webcam to get credit for the webcam cache. Because geocaching.com doesn't allow the creation of new webcam caches anymore, webcam caches in general are becoming extremely rare with less than 200 worldwide. With four webcams in this general area, this is a goldmine for cachers seeking out webcam caches.

Because I was here on a Saturday, I started out my morning with a coffee event in the local area. It's always nice to meet the locals because you get some insight into some caches they've hidden or others have hidden. That being said, no one said anything to me about my attempt later in the day of going for those four webcams. As you can see, the first stop which was a couple of miles south of my coffee event was a success as I was able to grab a screen shot of me standing on the corner of State St. and Hwy 89. Unfortunately, that was the only one I was able to score that day.

The second webcam that I attempted was closer to the heart of Salt Lake City, which is where I ended up having a lot of problems. The closer I got to the center of town, the heavier the traffic became. What the heck was going on? As soon as I got to the corner where the webcam had been focused, I realized what was happening. There were massive amounts of people all converging on a spot about 3 blocks away from that corner. The University of Utah was playing U.C.L.A in a football game. No one at the coffee event bothered to tell me that it was football weekend there and so that one ended up being a no go as the nearest parking spot that I was able to see was over 2 miles away. I'll have to remember that the next time I end up in Salt Lake City and make sure I do that one on a non-football weekend.

The next webcam I attempted was virtually impossible to do because the webcam itself had been changed to observe another part of the highway and so getting a shot of me in it was next to impossible, so I concentrated the rest of my day on getting other kinds of caches including working on some Adventure Lab caches and finding some caches that helped me fill out some of the challenge caches I've already signed but haven't qualified for yet.

One of the Adventures that I worked on later in the day took me on a tour of this very nice park. Included in the park was a virtual cache that took me to an exact scale replica of the Vietnam War Memorial found in Washington D.C. I don't have any relatives who are found on the wall, so every time I see one of these, either of the traveling variety or something like this, I always seek out a particular soldier who was killed in the war and take either an etching of his name or take a photograph of his name. I am friends on-line with his sister and I know she appreciates the thought of someone else remembering him when they visit the wall.

The next day, I headed out of town, intending on spending the night in the southwest corner of Utah and geocaching along the way. The last photo was taken at a truck stop rest area in Tooele County, Utah. Why there of all places? Well, it was another county that I'd never cached in in the state of Utah and you already know if you'd been following along that my geocaching tends to revolve around challenges. I've found a cache in every county in California, Arizona, and Nevada, so now I'm working on Utah. I did a significant dent on this trip, but still have to get back there to finish off the state. Anyway, this last shot was a selfie I took at one of the filming locations for the movie Dumb and Dumber. Some of the things that you learn about areas when out geocaching are interesting and some things are just plain weird. I think this one falls into that latter category. Some of you might disagree, but that's what makes the world go round.

After finding this virtual cache, I headed back to Interstate 15 and southward. The next day would be spent driving home, traveling through four states in one day. There's a couple of challenge caches for that as well, but I've already signed and qualified for those challenges, so it was just a standard road trip caching day, which is why I didn't take any photos on that last day. 

Please feel free to comment. As always, I'll try to respond in kind and I promise I won't bite.