Saturday, September 10, 2016

Labor Day Weekend Geocaching Adventure.

I had a mission this weekend, to finish my DeLorme Map Book Challenge, which would also complete the Wyoming County Challenge. I knew that I wanted to finish both challenges by the end of this year, and with winter quickly approaching, this might be one of my last opportunities.

I set off Friday morning along the bottom edge of Wyoming, heading West. I needed to find one cache in each of the seven pages I had not yet completed. I had been studying the map and Geocaching.com for weeks, because on some of the pages, there were only a few caches total, so I pre-planned ones that were good bets. Several had not been found in years, or the last few attempts logged they were not able to be found. I wasn't going to waste my time on those.

I headed off with my map book, print outs of my route blown up to show side roads that I had to take, and estimated times of travel for each section. There were a few caches that I did not find, but I got one in each of the three sections on my way to my hotel in Rock Springs. I checked in, and then drove a loop to Fort Bridger, up to Kemmerer, and back to Rock Springs, finding a cache in each of those four pages. I was exhausted when I hit the bed for the night, and Georgia and I slept well.


Saturday morning we got up and headed up to Pinedale. There is a physical cache associated with the Wyoming DeLorme Map Book Challenge, and of course when I drove through Pinedale in November on my way back from Jackson, I completely forgot to get it until I was almost all the way back to Laramie. Today I went and found it. There was nothing else that I needed to do up this way, so I backtracked to Farson, where I got the largest scoop of ice cream I've ever gotten, and it was the "baby" scoop. I ate on that for about 20 minutes before giving the rest to Georgia, and she struggled with it, so I had to throw the last of it away. If you're ever in the area, stop here for sure.


I continued up to Lander and to the Sinks Canyon State Park. The Park itself is quite small, though lovely, and I sat for a while at The Sinks and then I fed the fish at The Rise. The trout are huge there! It's a protected area, with no fishing, and they don't stock the fish. I was talking with a guy there and he thinks the biggest ones could have been 24-36 inches long. It was hard to tell from the height we had to view them from. Georgia got petted by three different groups of little kids, and this was definitely the highlight of the trip for her.



I have always loved mammoths.
I made the unfortunate decision to drive the 24 mile loop out of Sinks Canyon State Park. Instead of being a scenic drive, it was a frustrating one lane track of bumps and near head on collisions by the other vehicles, four wheelers, and motorbikes coming at me from the other direction at speeds way to fast for the curvy road. I did, however, see my first wild moose in the US. I had seen some in Sweden, but I still had them on my list in the US, and this one was quite close.

After finally emerging back on the main road, I headed to South Pass City. For a tourist destination, it sure is hard to find, in my opinion. And the gravel roads, though there is no option to turn off, is long enough that you start doubting you're going the correct way. I finally got there in time to walk around and see the buildings, and do a little gold mining. There was a young boy there with his family, that walked me through what to do. I had just started to get the hang of it, when it was closing time, but the lady in the shop let me stay after they locked up the buildings and she left. I found some gold flecks, and while they are difficult to see, it's cool that it's actual gold, and I discovered it myself.





I didn't us a filter on this, it just turned out old timey looking.

My gold flecks in a jar, and a rock. I apparently collect rocks now. Rocks are cool.
I left South Pass City as a storm brewed up, and headed back to Rock Springs.


Sunday morning I was up early, checking out of my hotel at 6am. I headed straight up to see Boar's Tusk. Due to the rain storm the night before, I only got a short ways in on the dirt road turn off to the Boar's Tusk. I have taken my vehicle many places that it's not designed to go, however I was not willing to try it on this particular road. If it had been dry, and not soft sand/mud filled tracks, I would have gone for it. I could see it, but had really wanted to stand at the base and look up.

I continued on to the Killpecker Sand Dunes. Reading about them, they were supposed to be very impressive. Compared to the dunes I saw in Idaho, I was disappointed that I'd driven nearly an hour down a gravel road to see them.


I stopped at the Petroglyphs on the way back to the main road. Unfortunately, another disappointment. There was more graffiti than there were petroglyphs, though I did get a geocache while I was there.


Due to the slow going on the first half of my adventures, I was later getting started on my Wild Horse Loop drive, where my goal was also to get all 55 geocaches in the Run Wild Horses Run power trail. I was taking my time getting the first 10 or so, I saw three different groups of horses, and sat and watched them as they meandered past me.



If you've never heard of the film Unbranded, you should check it out. Four men take 16 wild caught mustangs from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. It is an epic film, and well worth the watch. These horses are pretty amazing.



At one of the caches, I found these memorial grave sites for two beloved canines.
 I had started at cache 55, and at about 40, a storm started brewing. There was massive thunder, and cloud to ground lightening, and I was on top of a mountain ridge, with nothing but sagebrush and me. I sped up for the next 20 caches, anticipating getting drenched at any moment, but thankfully the storm dissipated and I was free to take on the last 20 or so caches at a more relaxed pace.

You don't want to see this coming up behind you.

Are we done yet?
At this point, I could tell that Georgia was over this trip. She normally loves to sleep in the car, but for the better part of six hours, we'd been bumping along one dirt or gravel road or another, and she was done. We finished up the last cache, 02 Run Wild Horses  (there was no 01!), got gas, and headed home. As soon as we were on paved road Georgia fell asleep.