Saturday, June 06, 2009
Challenging Weekend - Day One
Day one of a whirlwind weekend through central and southern oregon trying to make progress on several challenge caches with Rod of Family Explorer:
Oregon DeLorme Challenge
Counting Counties in Oregon
Oregon History Challenge
As it turned out, the most challenging part of the whole trip was resisting the temptation to stop for all the caches we were bypassing and staying focused on the task at hand - specific caches meeting the various challenge requirements!
We departed Coos Bay at 0500 and didn’t stop for a cache until 0800 (and 174 miles) at Trail Bridge Reservoir. We had hoped to pull off a FTF on the 720 to Yuma cache here but we missed it by one day! This was the first leg of our journey completing three DeLorme pages and one county.
The next leg took us north and east of Redmond where we found caches at an old German cemetery, the Crooked River Gorge and the rural area between Redmond and Prineville. Two more DeLorme pages and another county!
Crooked River Gorge
By mid-afternoon we were heading east on Highway 20 to to get another DeLorme page. We picked up three caches between Bend and the tiny “community” of Millican. We thought about taking a side trip up to Pine Mountain for one of the history challenge caches but decided that would take too much time. A fun way to do the caches on Pine Mountain would be to attend the annual Pine Mountain Geo-Star event hosted by local cacher PMOGUY.
The final leg of today’s travels was on Highway 97 south towards La Pine where we found the history challenge cache Quarry Glory. Before pitching the tent at La Pine State Park, we ventured out Highway 31 in order to find caches in the vicinity of the famous explosion crater Hole-in-the-Ground. Especially satisfying was finding nearby Big Hole cache because previous cachers were having difficulty finding it - but Rod’s eagle eye spotted it quickly! Love making quick work of a tough hide! Very interesting geology out there - wish we could have spent more time exploring! This excursion netted us another DeLorme page and Lake county. No more caching - time to find a campsite and get some dinner!
We set up camp then drove into La Pine to get some dinner at Gordy’s Truck Stop. Also got online here and logged our finds for the day and checked email.
Twittered this message before going to bed….....“End of day one Geocaching report: 9 DeLorme pages, 4 counties, 1 history challenge and 22 caches. Camping at LaPine. Stay tuned for day two”.
Hole-in-the-Ground