Into Oregon - Day 3 of my August road trip

Once again, this is a continuation of my August road trip from last summer up into Oregon and Washington. I started the day in Redding, California. My first stop was the Turtle Bay Museum area in Redding, along the Sacramento River. I've been here in the past, but there were some new geocaches and so I felt it appropriate to stop and do a little sightseeing and of course, geocaching. This particular bridge is a very interesting one as it's a suspension bridge, but it's also a sundial, rather unique in my opinion. There was a virtual cache located here, so I ended up taking a selfie with the bridge/sundial in the background so I could get credit for that particular virtual cache. Then it was back on the road and into Oregon.

As most of you know, challenge caches are what really drive my geocaching now. Yes, I enjoy geocaching, but the challenge caches give me goals to strive for and this particular day was devoted to working on, or finishing off several challenges that I wanted to complete on this trip. The first stop, once I made it into Oregon was at an off ramp where there were two caches, one located on each side of Interstate 5. The I-5 Interstate Highway Challenge was what I was working on at this point.  The goal was to find a geocache on each side of the interstate, in all three states, California, Oregon and Washington. The catch was that the caches had to be within 10 miles of each other in the three states. I've had this particular challenge one third of the way complete ever since I signed that challenge, but still needed the two caches in Oregon and also in Washington. This particular offramp, with its two caches on each side of the freeway helped me get a little bit closer to completing that challenge. About the time I grabbed the second cache, it started to rain and I was driving through rain through the rest of the day all the say to Salem where I was going to be spending the night.

Another challenge that I worked on during this day was getting caches in every county that I traveled through.  That's more of a personal goal, but over the course of time, it has become more of a geocaching goal which I will explain in a future blog post. I ended up stopping here and there along the way as I passed through new counties and kept my eye on a particular geocache that was located along the side of the interstate. 

Again, I try to find a variety of cache types in each state, because of challenges that I'm working on and so any time there is a unique or rare type of cache, I'm going to try and find it. There was a webcam cache along the side of the road, so I wanted to get my photo taken there, so I could claim that cache. It was located on the south bound side of the freeway, so I had to drive by it, get off on the next off ramp and then head back to the cache and pull off behind a guardrail. Then it was just a matter of accessing the correct Oregon transportation camera, see myself on the screen and then take a screenshot to post later.  Needless to say, the weather did not cooperate and it was raining and the quality of the image is quite poor. But that netted me a new cache type in Oregon, my 6th (the goal is at least 8 in each state). In retrospect, I should have moved closer to the highway sign in the foreground, but because it was raining and because it was rather apparent that someone had taken out the front of that particular guardrail, I didn't want to waste any additional time trying to get a better shot. 

Eventually, I made it to Salem where I would be spending the night. There happened to be an event happening in the town just south of there, so I decided to head down there after dinner and meet some of the locals. That was probably one of the best decisions I made during this entire trip. Because I was attempting to find the three oldest caches in Oregon, I mentioned it at the event and I had several cachers give me all sorts of intel on where to park, etc., for each of these caches. I wouldn't be attempting them that day as it was already getting dark, but one of them was on the agenda for me for the next day. I wrote down information including where to park, what roads to take etc. Several of them gave me excellent coordinates for the parking areas and I just routed Google Maps the next day and it took me right to where I needed to be.

After the event ended, I headed back to my motel for some needed rest, but also to find some other caches.  I ended up finding three different types of caches that I hadn't found previously in Oregon. Those, plus the event that I attended gave me 10 different cache types in Oregon, my third such state behind California and Arizona with 14 each. There are several other states where I have 8 different cache types including Nevada and Utah, plus a couple of others where I'm really close to 8, Colorado and New Mexico with 7 each. Eventually, I'll get back to those two states and others and increase the cache types in each state. It's all about the challenges at this point.

I will be back with another installment of this trip in a couple of days or so, but don't hold me to that. 

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.

Happy Place

It's the end of the month which means it's time for P.J.'s monthly photo blog challenge. I thought about this one, then figured that I have a bunch of happy places, things or actual places that I enjoy immensely, so I thought I could make this more about all of my happy places as opposed to just one happy place. I mean, why limit yourself? And I'm sure if I really tried, I could come up with some more, but these are the ones I've chosen for this month's photos and they are in no particular order of importance.

1. It's all about planning

Right now, I'm in the middle of my second round of immunotherapy for my cancer treatment. This is a maintenance round, primarily meant for preventive care, so that's a very good thing. I had my first treatment on Monday and I have two subsequent treatments on the 5th and 12th of next month and then it appears I'll get another 3 month break. What this means in the long run is I'm planning a road trip to Utah and Colorado.

One of the things that has been really frustrating about my illness is it's not really allowed me to plan any kind of trips because I've had appointments, surgeries, and procedures that have take top priority. I get that, but with more free time, I've been able to start planning for future trips again.

I love planning road trips. I love to look at maps and guidebooks and determine what route I will take in order to fully maximize the time I have for this specific trip. This time, the plan is to head to Grand Junction, Colorado and tour Colorado National Monument and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. 

I've been to Black Canyon of the Gunnison way back when I was around 13. This was actually so far in the past, the park was a national monument at the time and has since been upgraded to national park status by an act of Congress. I've never been to Colorado National Monument, but I intend to spend a day at each park and make Grand Junction my base for the three days and two nights I'm in the region. 

And I will be the first to admit that I started planning this road trip too early. I've pretty much set up my itinerary, have my hotels books and know what I want to do each day and I WANT TO GO NOW! But I can't, because of my upcoming treatments. I should have waited until next week perhaps to start planning, but you'll see later in this post that waiting might not have been a really wise choice either, because next week is going to get busy.

2. Papa and Gaga time

We didn't do this very often last year, but once I got sick, time became a little bit more precious and my daughter and son-in-law started having regular video chats with us so we could see the little one. Usually these happen around dinner time, so in essence we get to eat dinner with our granddaughter on an almost daily basis and we live 300+ miles away from each other. This is just one of the many screenshots I grabbed a couple of weeks ago when we were having dinner together.

Just watching and listening to her babble about her day, what's she's eating, her insistence on seeing our two Pooh bears that she knows are at our house, and seeing her new developments that seemingly happen on a daily basis really takes me to a happy place.

I've heard it said that being a grandparent is the best and I've probably said this more than once on this platform, but it really is. And she's coming to visit in about a week. It will be a short visit, but we are both really looking forward to seeing her and her parents.

3. The Wonders of Nature

I will never be not astounded by the wonders of nature around us. It's probably why I love to travel, to experience new things in nature to me. It also allows me to practice my art of photography and although that's developed and evolved over the years, especially with my reliance more and more with my phone as opposed to my DSLR, I still love going out and hunting down that elusive butterfly, or taking a wonderful landscape photo from some place I've visited. This particular butterfly allowed me to get my phone about two inches away from it, almost as if it knew I wasn't going to try and capture it.

My parents instilled in me a love of nature and I fully want to enjoy it for as long as I possibly can. Already in my mind, I'm planning other trips that I can take in the future. 

4. Hiking

I realize this photo isn't the greatest photo, but it really encapsulates what I enjoy about getting out in nature. I've been asked why I never took up mountain biking as it appears as if I'd be a good candidate for that particular type of exercise and recreation and I think it's mainly because I feel that biking would intrude in some of the other happy places I also like to enjoy, like photography, nature and geocaching. I mean, if you're flying by something at 20 miles per hour, by the time you stop to "smell the roses" or pursue the butterfly, the butterfly has already flown away. And so I walk, and I walk, and I walk.

Before I was retired, I was pretty much limited to hiking on the weekends. Now, I just get up, look outside and if the day looks promising, I'll put on my hiking shoes and head out to a favorite trail and enjoy the day. And what's really funny about all this is, as a school teacher, we're used to loving our summers. Now, I would honestly say that summer is my least favorite season of all. It's so dang hot that unless you get up at the crack of dawn and get out on the trail, it's usually pretty miserable out there. It's so much nicer during the cooler months of fall, winter and spring, when you can go out just about any time of the day and get a good hike in without feeling like you've been on a summer death march. Plus, now that I'm retired, I can hike any day of the week, so I don't have to exclusively go on the weekends when the trails are crowded. Nice quiet trails where I can really enjoy nature take me to a happy place.

5. Geocaching

Did you really think I could get through an entire blog post talking about happy places and not talk, at least a little bit, about geocaching? I didn't think so.

So much of the past 22 years of my life has been intertwined by this silly game that I discovered. As one of my friends, who I later introduced to this game said, "Geocaching. It's hiking with a purpose!" Although I'm not sure I agree with this sentiment entirely, I did see where he was coming from with his explanation.

And yes, part of my next roadtrip will be geocaching related. I'm actually planning on hosting two event caches while out on the trip, one in Grand Junction, Colorado and another one in Salt Lake City, Utah. What better way to meet up with other geocachers in the area than by attending an event. I looked at my itinerary and then searched to see if there were already events planned (there weren't), so I decided to host my own morning coffee events. I usually do this when I'm on a road trip, but this is the first time I've hosted two events while out on a trip. It's kind of ambitious for a 7 day trip, but I'm up to the task.

It's always enjoyable to talk with other geocachers about the game. Who knows, I might end up going caching with one of the people who show up at one of my events.

The other goal of this trip is to get the webcam caches that are in the Salt Lake City area. A webcam cache is where there's a public webcam that you need to stand in front of the webcam and either have a friend back home get a screen shot of you, or you can alternately get a screen shot of yourself off of your phone.

I've signed several challenge caches for finding webcams and since there are four different webcams in this area, it's like a goldmine for cachers working on webcam challenges. To put things in perspective, there are approximately 203 active webcam caches, so they are exceedingly rare. Webcams are no longer recognized as "real" geocaches, so these are the ones that have been grandfathered into the system. They are not getting replaced, so when one gets archived, it's gone and there's not going to be one to replace it. That's why when geocachers see there's a webcam close by, they want to get their photo taken, because you never know if that particular webcam might disappear sometime in the future. Of the 10 that I've taken a photo at, only 4 of them are still active.

And there you have it, my take on the theme Happy Place. Please stop by P.J.'s page and see how other people interpreted the same theme.  And as always, please leave a comment. I won't bite.

Get Out and Play

Once again, it's time for P.J.'s monthly photo blog challenge, and once again, I've been remiss in not writing more here since this is literally the first post in over a month. I missed all of October, but then again, I could argue that I was following the theme of the month, which is Get Out and Play. Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking with it. Needless to say, I went out and played this month, taking my first out of state road trip since before the pandemic hit. I hiked, I camped, I took lots of photos, so it was difficult to whittle down all the photos I took into just five shots, but I tried my best. Here are my five shots for this month.

1. A unique icon

Those of you who have been following along on this wandering that I do, know I love to geocache. One of the things that has kept me interested in the game are challenge caches - a cache that gives you a challenge to fulfill. 

My first stop in Arizona was the Tucson area for two reasons: 1. Saguaro National Park, a place I'd never visited before and 2. The only webcam in the entire state of Arizona. Now, I know what you're probably thinking. "There's only one webcam in the entire state?" Well, there's only one webcam that's also a geocache in the entire state and it's located on the campus of the University of Arizona. So I ended up walking around campus that first day, looking for the webcam. Now usually, you'd just go to the coordinates and find the cache, but this one was a little bit trickier than that. You were told what building you needed to find, but the coordinates weren't at that particular building, but rather near a campus directory. Eventually I made my way over to where the webcam was and took a screenshot on my phone of me looking like I'm having a conversation with a fire hydrant on the university's campus.

On a side note, before smart phones, these were event tougher, because you literally had to phone a friend and have them get a screenshot on their computer. I did that here as a back up in case I wasn't able to get my own shot, but for this blog entry, I'm using my own photo. And this also gave me my 9th different icon, or type of geocache, in the state of Arizona, second only to California.

2 & 3. Saguaros

As noted above, the national park was one of my "must see" stops on my road trip to Arizona. I'm a national park enthusiast and this particular park has been on my bucket list forever. When we used to travel to Arizona to visit my uncle who lived in Scottsdale we never got as far as Tucson, but we could see saguaro cactus pretty much everywhere on the drive over to my uncle's house. They are fascinating and so the park which was a national monument at the time went on my bucket list. 

I never got to take the kids to see the park when they were growing up mainly because there's no car camping in the park, only backcountry camping. And so it sat there on my list until this past month when I decided that it was time.

I had plans to hike to a virtual geocache in the park, but the road leading up to that particular trailhead was closed while I was there, so I spent part of the morning walking a short nature trail in the park and the rest of the morning hiking on a trail in Tucson Mountain Park which is located to the east of the western portion of Saguaro National Park. The National Park is broken into two different sections, one located to the east of Tucson and one located to the west. The black and white photo, which I've entitled "The Clouds Laugh" was taken in Tucson Mountain Park while I was hiking and finding a couple of geocaches.

4 & 5. Chiricahua National Monument

My second stop on this trip was in Chiricahua National Monument in southeastern Arizona. The backstory for this park comes from a student I had probably 18 years ago. When I was teaching, my school room was always plastered with posters from various parks that I had visited or wanted to visit in the future. One day in class, this student came up to me and asked if I'd ever been to Chiricahua National Monument before. When I answered in the negative, he proceeded to tell me how beautiful the park was and what a neat place it was and he spent the better part of several class periods extolling the virtues of this park. When a 13 year old kid is that excited about something in nature, you pay attention and so this park went on my bucket list as well.

My plan was to camp here for two nights and enjoy a full day of hiking and sightseeing in the park, before heading back to Phoenix where I'd spent one more night before coming home. As I was setting up my tent at my campsite, I was interrupted by a couple of coatimundis wandering through the campground. I'd seen photos of them, but have never seen them in the wild, so this was really a thrill for me. 

These two were very skittish and took off as soon as I walked a little bit closer, so I didn't get a photos of them, but my luck definitely changed the next day as I had an entire troop of around 15 coatis wander through the river bed behind my campsite.

The troop, composed of females and youngsters wandered in the river bed and fortunately, I had my camera ready, just in case. They'd send the younger coatis up the juniper trees to pick berries and while feeding themselves up in the tree, they'd also drop berries down to the others waiting below.

Once they left, I packed up my gear and headed up to the top of the park where I'd take my hike in the Heart of the Rocks loop. My goal was to see some of the geological features of the park up close and to also get the Heart of the Rocks virtual cache there. The last photo posted here is the Pinnacle Balanced Rock and is pretty typical of the types of formations you can see in this park. 

Most of the formations are created by freeze and thaw cycles, so eventually, this particular formation will fail, but others will eventually also be created through this cycle as well. I did a second hike into an area called the grottos where the rock pillars are very close to the trail and several of the pillars have collapsed against each other. There is one point in the grotto where you can sit directly underneath a very large (garage sized) boulder being held in place by two neighboring pillars. Yeah, I sat there for a little bit.

And there you have my five photos of when I got out and played last month. Please stop by P.J.'s site and see how others got out and played last month. Please feel free to comment here. I will respond back and I don't bite. As always, thanks for dropping by.

Webcams

This is another geocaching post, so if you're not into it, you can skip this one. One of the overlooked geocaches that are out there in the world are webcam caches. The premise behind a webcam cache is you go to the posted coordinates and there's a webcam nearby. You either get a friend from home to go on the webcam's website and grab a screenshot with you in the photo, or you grab one yourself using your smartphone.

Webcams aren't allowed anymore, mainly because there's no container involved. The ones that are still around have been grandfathered into the system and they are few and far between. After doing a search on the geocaching website, there are 255 active webcam cache around. I have logged 8 webcam caches, with two that have been archived, so I have the possibility of finding another 249 more. 

I used to own one, but had to archive that one, because the owner of the actual cam kept moving it to new locations and finally disabled it. That tends to be the big reason why webcam caches get archived; the actual camera becomes obsolete.

Finding webcam caches would take me all over the planet and would keep me busy for years. According to the map, you can find webcams on 5 of the seven continents, with none being found in Asia or Africa. Yes, there's a webcam down in Antarctica. 

I've signed a challenge cache challenging me to find and log 25 webcam caches. When I signed it, I'd only found 6, so I'm two closer than I was when I signed the challenge back in December of last year. The photos from the last two are the ones on this page. The first one was taken on the central coast north of Morro Bay, CA. It's very hard to make me out, but I'm that vertical figure right in front of the dark car in the parking lot on the right. If you look close enough, you can a small white dot just to the left of me in the photo. That's an actual seagull that I could have reached out and touched. It didn't want to move, so I just had the photo taken with it.

The second photo I had help from a friend of mine in taking the photo, since the webcam can be remotely controlled from the website. I texted a friend and she took over the controls of the webcam and there I am standing on the corner in Pocatello, Idaho. It doesn't have the same ring as standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona, but the shot was taken and I was able to log the cache.

I just need to find 17 more webcams so I can log that challenge cache. I guess I need to get down to Balboa and get that one. There's also one in Tucson, Arizona where I'll be passing through in a couple of weeks, so that one's on the list too. This challenge is going to take me a little bit longer to finish than some of the others.