There was a cache at a cemetery near the inn that we thought we could get
first off and have Kiowa
County but we couldn’t
find it. So we headed east on Highway 96
for about nine miles and then turned north on a gravel road. We found one out in the sage aptly named
“Sage and Yucca” that hadn’t been logged in six months. We turned around and went back crossing
Highway 96 and continuing south on County Road 49 where we found one at a place
where a multitude of very old cars had been seemingly dumped in a ditch. County Road 49 turned into County Road 8 when
we left Kiowa County
and were back in Prowers
County . At Lamar it changed to US 287 where we
traveled south all the way to just past Springfield then turning west on
Highway 160. As it turned out we made a
big mistake in not getting gas in Springfield
but there were a couple of towns ahead well within our range so we didn’t stop.
We stopped at a
fairly good sized cemetery outside of Pritchett for our Baca County
cache. Pritchett would be a good place
to gas up but there was no station there.
The next town was Kim which would be our last chance. I have an app called “Gas Buddy” that gives
the price and location of the nearest gas stations and I was relieved to see
that there was one in Kim. We picked up
another cache a short ways down the road also in Baca County .
Just a few miles
before reaching Kim we crossed the line into Las Animas County and found a
cache at the Highway 109 intersection.
We also noticed a sign that said Highway 160 that we had planned on
taking all the way to Trinidad was closed. If we hadn’t picked up that cache at the intersection
we would have been out of luck for Las Animas County. However, as we did have the cache we saw we
could now take Hwy 109 up to La Junta and actually shorten our journey a
bit.
Lee Ray - the good Samaritan |
But first things
first. We did not have enough gas to
make it to any town except Kim. We
zipped into the tiny town of Kim
and did indeed find one single gas pump.
However, it was closed on the weekend.
Guess what day it was? That’s
right – Saturday. There appeared to be
only two or three businesses in town and the only one open was a kind of tire
shop/garage. We met the owner, Lee Ray
Jackson, who had just depleted his spare gas.
Without even asking he immediately offered to siphon gas from one of his
vehicles, which he did. What a guy!
With gas to go we
headed back to the intersection and turned north toward La Junta. As this was an unplanned route we had no
caches lined up. Nevertheless, it was a
good motorcycling road with little traffic.
At La Junta we were back on the route we had traveled the day before for
about ten or twelve miles. When we got
to Rocky Ford we picked up another cache for Otero County
called “Yippee ki yay!”. It was a micro
on the support of a big metal cowboy attached to the side of a building. I was
looking up telling Yancey I didn’t see anything and it was because he had it in
his hand.
We were back on an
unplanned route heading northwest on Highway 50 which follows the Arkansas River . As
mentioned, this new route was going to shorten our journey a bit. The only problem was that it was going to
bypass all but one of the caches I had lined up for El Paso County . We hit Interstate 25 just north of Pueblo about where that
one cache was supposed to be – only it wasn’t there. iPhones to the rescue. We both have a Geocaching app on our phones
and we located a cache just across the Interstate less than a quarter mile
away.
Climbing to the Final |
There she is |
Victory at last |
Kathy heading down from Final |
Just before we got
back down I heard a horn honking down at my truck. Soon I was there to find a very irate grounds
keeper telling me I was trespassing on private property and that my truck could
not be taken out till that night. I told
him that wasn’t going to happen and he eventually calmed down enough to allow
me to leave. He had never heard of
Geocaching and knew nothing about the cache up the hill. There may have been trails to access it from
the other side of the mountain but we had no knowledge of that. Naturally Kathy was super upset and I wasn’t
exactly sitting on cloud 9 myself. In
our defense, there were no signs or anything to tell us we couldn’t drive on
those roads. The incident did manage to
ruin what should have been a very triumphant moment.
Yancey’s Uncle Bob
Sharp was arriving at noon so we stayed to see him before leaving a little
after lunch. We drove to Rock Springs arriving in
the late afternoon. We had dinner at
Dickie’s BBQ, one of my favorite places to eat.
Our motel was very old and kind of a dump. There was a good place to exercise the dogs
nearby so it wasn’t all bad. We had
breakfast at a Subway the next morning and drove all the way home which was
about 760 miles. It was a long day but
not too bad, probably because we stopped a few times to walk around. The motorcycle part of the trip covered 2,200
miles with a couple of days over 400.
They were all long days (over 12 hours) because of stopping to get the
required caches. Another state crossed
off the list and a lot of good memories doing it. M/W
Well, I guess you're all done with geocaching now that you have them all. ;P
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