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| Geocaching in Arizona |
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| by Scott Legal |
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| One of Arizona's finest. |
A week with my parents for Thanksgiving.
Turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy, and geocaching? Hey,
Arizona is virgin territory for me, so you bet I had geocaching in mind.
So off we go to Arizona. Not so fast. Work is a bear and I couldn't knock
off until 5:00 PM on Tuesday. We had decided to drive out on Tuesday to
avoid the holiday mad dash on Wednesday. Hmm, seems that a lot of other
people had the same idea. Traffic on the 210 freeway was horrible, even
in the car pool lane, until well past the 57 freeway. We stopped in Colton
for dinner. It took two and a half-hours to travel 100 miles. Aargh! On
we went until we hit a huge accident near Chiriaco Summit. We got to my
parents' house at 2:45 AM Mountain Standard Time. My plans for a full
day of caching on Wednesday were now toast.
On Wednesday my father and I went out to Best Buy to buy some networking
equipment. I convinced him to stop at three caches. He is VERY anti-geocaching,
but agreed because he just bought a new car and wanted to drive it around
a bit. Our first cache was a virtual cache called A Fowled Cache. The cache was located in a botanical garden
near my parents' home. Next we stopped at a small urban cache called A Break in Education II. I give my dad credit for finding
this one. After stopping at Best Buy, we found one more cache called Bush Whacked. This cache would make Team Dakiba proud as it
is just like one of his Shop and Cache caches.
Thanksgiving Day was a beautiful day. Very sunny, no wind and a high of
68° made for perfect caching conditions. So off I went, alone this time,
to find caches in Chandler, Tempe and Mesa. The first stop was a cache
called Oleander Intruder, a fairly easy find with nice camouflage.
Next I found Be A Sport!, an easy find, but with a neat requirement that
you cross a sports legend name off a list in the cache and include that
name in your cache log. Next was Doggy Biscuit #3, which was a simple cache in a series of
caches at dog parks throughout the area. On I went to find Clemente Cache, which was really tough to find in very thick
vegetation. It reminded me of Baby Sparkle's TOTO cache, which I really
struggled with. The next cache, Jail House Cache, was very well hidden. The previous cacher
DNF'd, but I took my chances and found it.
I continued on to a strip shopping mall that had two caches in it, both
hidden by the same person. The first cache, WORLDS EASIEST CACHE, was just as the name said. What surprised
me was that landscaping crews hadn't discovered it and removed it already.
The second cache, EDGE OF INSANITY, was a DNF for me. I received an e-mail with
a spoiler picture after returning home and the cache was indeed very well
hidden, very much like AgouraCharger's Smart & Final cache.
On I went to find Mountain Sunset. It was the middle of the day, so no sunset
for me. Then on to an industrial park with two caches, Rest, Relaxation & Research and World Record: Catch and Release. I found my one and only travel
bug in the first of the two caches. The second of the two caches was in
the smallest cache container I have ever seen. It was an easy find, but
thanks to it, I had an easier time finding a better hidden cache, hidden
by the same cacher, in the same container, at my next stop. Continuing
on I found Sister Cities Garden and World Record: Kept in a beautiful park in Tempe, complete
with a lake with fishing and boating. The second of these two caches was
the other small cache container I mentioned. I then went on to look for
a "Blockbuster" cache, but was asked to leave by a Blockbuster
manager because I looked suspicious. I took my queue and left without
finding the cache.
It was getting late so I started heading back to my parents' house for
Thanksgiving dinner. On my way back I stopped at A Rosy Outlook, which was in a beautiful rose garden. It was
so fragrant that it made me want to sneeze. And the cache container had
about a hundred crickets hopping all over it. Trurokr would have loved
it. Next I found Dobson Lakeside Cache, about 40 feet from where my GPS said
it should be. The cache was about 30 feet from the Mesa Police Department
parking lot. Nothing like looking suspicious around a bunch of police
officers. Lastly, I found Tranquility or Cacophony?, which was a micro in the middle
of a large strip mall. None of the businesses were open, so it was the
perfect day to avoid geomuggles. Shortly afterward I arrived at my parents'
house only to be glared at by my wife and mother for being away for so
long on Thanksgiving Day. It's tough being a geocacher in a family full
of muggles.
On Friday I didn't cache. It didn't seem like a good idea. We went to
a Christmas event in downtown Phoenix and the kids had a great time. Later
we went to dinner at a very good steak house. Nothing like stuffing yourself
two nights in a row.
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| Superstition Mountains. |
On Saturday we visited an old mine near the
base of the Superstition Mountains. If you are not familiar with the Superstition
Mountains, they are the mountains rumored to hide the Lost Dutchman Mine.
Well our mine is not really a mine, but a tourist attraction. Nevertheless,
it was a fun place to visit and there was a cache at the mine. As I approached
the Ghostly Ride cache I caught another cacher, hcook1 from Oregon,
rehiding the cache. He asked if I was looking for the travel bug because
he had just taken it. He said he had put an Oregon geocoin in and took
the bug. I showed him one of my Conejo Cachers geocoins and he asked if
he could trade me an Oregon geocoin for my geocoin. That ended up being
a fun little pow wow. After leaving the mine I convinced my dad into taking
us to a geocache up the road called Cactus Point Vista. What a beautiful spot that was.
Sunday was supposed to be a big hike day at South Mountain Park. South
Mountain Park is a huge park that is the equivalent of several Wildwood
Parks rolled into one. The big difference is that South Mountain Park
is on a desert mountain, not a lush canyon and there is no running water
anywhere in South Mountain Park, that I know of. Nevertheless, the park
is a hiking mecca. There are loads of rocks to climb and hop and tons
of trails to get lost on. There are also lots of caches. I did not have
a map of the park and only vaguely remembered where the parking lot was
from my last visit several years ago. So I parked at the wrong lot, putting
me several miles from most of the caches. The closest cache to where I
parked was about a mile and a half away. So what does a good geocacher
do when faced with a long hike to the first cache? He hides one along
the way. I hid Camelback Mountain View Cache. Three people have already found
it, although only one of them has logged the find. Next we found the No Gas Cache. Trurokr and Team Dakiba would have been proud
of this camo job. After another three miles of hiking we found only our
second cache, a four star terrain cache called Scout it Out. I really enjoyed getting to this one. We had
to hike over very rocky terrain and hop over numerous cactus to get to
the cache. It wasn't as tough as the typical four star hikes I've done,
but it was certainly a very enjoyable and challenging hike and find. Alas,
we had burned through too much of the day and my wife and mother both
insisted that we head back to the car. So two finds were it. The hike
was about 7 miles, so it was a good hike, even if we didn't find many
caches.
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Monday was our travel day. I had only a few
caches that were I-10 close programmed into my GPS. Because of how long
the drive was and how late we started out, I limited my selection to caches
within a quarter mile of an exit. The first was a cache in a rock garden
called AP's First Cache near Buckeye. It actually took me longer
than I had hoped to find this. The next cache, Miner's Delight, was just outside of Quartzite. This was an
easy find, but what disappointed me about it was that I could have found
my first USA geocoin in it. I didn't check the cache contents closely
enough to realize it was there. The last stop was the General George Patton
museum at Chiriaco Summit. I logged the Steel Ghosts virtual cache. My kids loved the inside part
of the museum, particularly the medals of honor and the various sized
artillery shells. I really enjoyed the outside of the museum, which was
a yard full of old World War II era tanks of various sizes and camouflage
colors. Is it bad of me to have viewed some of those tanks as the worlds
largest geocache containers?
We finally made it home, ending a nice Thanksgiving getaway and a better
than average geocaching adventure. I was disappointed that I didn't find
more and particularly disappointed that I didn't hike more. So it just
increases my desire to go back and do it again. The Phoenix area has quite
a few very dedicated geocachers. Their hiding techniques are quite good
and they have many great places to hike and hide caches.
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