50 miles from home.

We were up early and on the road to Colum­bia to meet Donna’s sis­ter Sandy, her hus­band and his mother. They drove up from Florida and came here for the same rea­son we did, to meet with a cousin of theirs from west­ern Canada that they hadn’t ever meet before. The Cana­dian con­tin­gent was in South Car­olina vis­it­ing some of the cousin’s husband’s fam­ily who live in Charleston. There were nine of us at the table for lunch at Cal­i­for­nia Dream­ing. Only Donna, Sandy and cousin Mar­garet were actual blood rel­a­tives (the same great grand­fa­ther), but it was a lively fun group to have lunch with. It was over all too soon and every­one promised to keep in touch and drop in on each other if we were ever any­where near each other.

After lunch Donna, Sandy and I went and tried to grab a cou­ple nearby caches with hopes of drop­ping off a travel bug. Wouldn’t you know it, but we couldn’t find the first one we attempted. It was a reg­u­lar size and in a gar­den by a SCDOT build­ing. After a few minute of look­ing we attracted the atten­tion of an employee. She asked what we were up to and Sandy, who just learned what geo­caching was, gave her a brief­ing. We had just about given up when a women who works at the credit union came out for a smoke break and asked if we were geo­caching. She prob­a­bly knew what we were up to because she is always out grab­bing a smoke when peo­ple come pok­ing around in the plants.

After that we went over to the state capi­tol build­ing to com­plete a sure fire cache, a vir­tual one. With a vir­tual cache there is no hid­den con­tainer to find, it usu­ally entails email­ing the owner a photo of you in the loca­tion or the answer to a ques­tion that can be there.

We had three caches picked out for the Char­lotte area, but spent so much time with fam­ily that we crossed them off the list and headed straight for the hotel. Mark, lunch was also so big and late you dodged a bul­let, that we didn’t have the room for Razzoo’s either.

1365 miles from home.

We have been as far away from Aiken as we will be on this trip and also the far­thest north, both of which occurred today. Now we start to work our way south. Up until this after­noon it has been cloudy or rainy or cold or some com­bi­na­tion of all three, but around mid­day blue sky started to show up, so now we are just down to cold, but just at night the days should be pleas­ant (about like early Feb­ru­ary for Aiken.)

Speed­ing north on I-25 in Wyoming yes­ter­day there was a large quan­tity of black ani­mals off to the west, at first we thought they were cows, but then real­ized they were buf­falo. At the posted speed limit of 70 MPH they were gone from view before my synapses could reg­is­ter that maybe I should take a picture.

Speed­ing east on Wyoming 24 this morn­ing they was a large quan­tity of small black ani­mals not far off the road to our right, at first we thought they were goats, but then real­ized that they were wild turkeys. At the posted speed limit of 65 MPH they were gone from view before my synapses, etc.

The deer up here are fear­less. They stand along the side of the road graz­ing and pretty much ignore us. That ignor­ing thing works both ways though, as there are quite a lot of dead ones along the road too.

So far I am 0 for 2 when ask­ing for Coke in a restau­rant, they have had Pepsi, which I have politely declined.

Dev­ils Tower is awe­some. On the way up the rain was spo­radic and occa­sion­ally the clouds would thin out enough that we would almost need sun­glasses, but mostly the skies were gray. I told Donna that I thought it would be cool if I could get a shot of the thing with the top half shrouded in clouds. She didn’t want that at all, she was hop­ing for a nice blue sky. Turned out we both got our wish.

Three geo­caches today.

1334 miles from home.

We spent break­fast, and an hour after, try­ing to con­vert our B & B hosts into geo­cachers. I don’t think we suc­ceeded, but they instantly grasped the busi­ness end of it. They might try and hide a B & B themed cache in their lit­tle dis­play for the Inn at the end of the road they are on .

We then spent the next three hours geo­caching (found 3 of 4) in Scotts­bluff & nearby Ger­ing, Nebraska and vis­it­ing the Scotts­bluff National Mon­u­ment.

We spent the next 5 hours dri­ving to Col­orado Springs via I-25 and the outer loop around Den­ver. Why we ended up on the Inter­state and not the planned back roads is a good story, one that involves the cor­ners of mul­ti­ple states com­ing together that I hope to all about write later, but as usual there is not enough time in the day to do it now. This vaca­tion­ing is hard work.

1389 miles from home.

We were sup­posed to spend a sec­ond night in the Casita in Madrid, but it was a bit more rus­tic than they lead on in the lovely web site for it, so we moved up the road 30 miles to a HIE in Santa Fe, NM.

Donna and I walked through down­town Madrid early this morn­ing and the main drag through town (20 MPH) is lined with artsy type gal­leries and stores. Quite a bit of it is way out there and brief glimpses of the artists/residents leads me to believe we have stum­bled into a LOST like time travel event that dropped us into the late 60’s. The town must put up gates and travel en masse to Burn­ing Man every year.

The photo is of the 1830’s San Fran­cisco Church in Golden and is report­edly the most pho­tographed sites along the Turquoise Trail and I was just try­ing to do my part.

Speak­ing of the Turquoise Trail, we did find 4 caches along NM14 today in between vis­its to see Donna’s brother Scott, his wife Beth and nephew Baby James at the Lone Moun­tain Cat­tle Company’s ranch.

1412 miles from home.

Woke up this morn­ing and there was a light coat­ing of snow over almost every hor­i­zon­tal sur­face. Donna and I left the Inn at around 6:30 for a walk­a­bout. The sun was just clear­ing the east ridge, but the fog was ascend­ing fast. I snapped the above photo of the Blue Horse Inn from the end of the dri­ve­way. By the time we had walked a 1/2 miles vis­i­bil­ity was down under a quar­ter mile, but we kept on. The road went from paved to dirt and still we walked right down the mid­dle of the road. The lack of vis­i­bil­ity didn’t really bother us because we passed very few houses and besides it was so quiet that we would hear a vehi­cle com­ing or miles.

After the walk we drove the 60 miles to the Lone Moun­tain Cat­tle Com­pany ranch to wait in line nearly as long, time wise, as we did for our rental car to get a 100% waygu beef burger. While the burger was tasty, it took almost 6 hours to digest. And it almost seemed a waste of the fine meat after it was placed on a bun, cov­ered in mus­tard and ketchup, lay­ered with let­tuce, tomato and onions, because the sam­ple slices of rib eye meat they gave out while stand­ing in line were fantastic.

It was time for the big fin­ish, the auc­tion. It was fast and furi­ous and inter­est­ing to me for a very short time. After 4 of 72 lots (2 more than Donna) I left the tent for some cold fresh air. We walked back to the bunkhouse with brother Scott, nephew James and 15 month old Logan and said good­bye and mak­ing ten­ta­tive plans to hook up on Mon­day when we pass back through on our way north.

No geo­caching today, but tomor­row on the way to Roswell we’ll prob­a­bly attempt a few.

1530 miles from home.

We started off for Mon­u­ment Val­ley by tak­ing a cool county road west out of town. Got about to the Utah bor­der when I real­ized I wasn’t feel­ing the great­est, so we opted to cut the day short. Donna has had the snif­fles the last few days and I finally caught it.

We did make it to the 4 Cor­ners Mon­u­ment. I walked up to a guy stand­ing in front of the bronze plaque and men­tioned that I had read that the marker is 2–1/2 miles off and he said, “I’ve seen that too. Oh, well.” I replied, “Well, I guess that’s close enough for gov­ern­ment work.” He chuck­led. We ate a Navajo Fry­bread and bought a cou­ple of sou­venirs before head­ing back to the B & B.

Just two caches today, the Vir­tual one at 4 Cor­ners and another just down the road from the B & B.

Didn’t have time to work up a post tonight because I’m busy play­ing with my new toy, a HP iPAQ HX2495b. We bor­rowed a PDA to use on vaca­tion for paper­less geo­caching and liked it so much that I bought on off fleabay. I got one with the big­ger bat­tery, so it should be inter­est­ing to see how long it will run com­pared to the bor­rowed unit. It didn’t come with a sty­lus (through over­sight or on pur­pose by the seller), so right now I’m using a q-tip with the fuzz cut off to nav­i­gate around. I wrote the seller and we’ll see if he drops one in the mail or I have to buy one.

I also started weed­ing out some of the 551 pic­tures we took on vaca­tion to get it down to some sort of man­agable level for post­ing online here and shar­ing with friends and cowork­ers (with­out bor­ing them too much more than it already will just by its mention.)