Motocaching the Counties Finale - Part 2

We had a good motel breakfast to start the next day and were on the road again around 6:30 am although we made a stop at Walmart for Sam to pick up some lunch fixings.  Thankfully, this was a gorgeous day unlike the two previous ones. We headed east on I-80 and then turned south toward Baggs, WY, on highway 789.  This was a nice two lane highway with very little traffic and a 70 mph speed limit.  We stopped for an Oregon Trail cache about 15 miles after we turned off the interstate and another one about halfway between Baggs and Craig, CO.  We didn’t stop again until lunch at a cache in the Hot Sulfur Springs Wildlife Area which is on US 40 east of Kremmling.  US 40 past Winter Park has some really twisty downhill road which was a lot of fun.  We stayed on it until it intersected I-70 and then on to Denver.  As you may imagine the traffic was bad, especially as we got into Denver.  With all the traffic Sam and I got separated and I arrived at Yancey’s 10 or 15 minutes ahead of Sam.  We finished the day with just 3 caches and 400 miles.  Yancey grilled some hamburgers for us and we had a good visit with the family.


The next morning we were up about 5:30 for breakfast.  We soon departed with Sam going north and Yancey and I going south.  Yancey had a beautiful new white Honda Interceptor 800.  I named it “Mr. White” but Yancey said I could just call him “Walter”.  Yancey led me through the maze of traffic in the Denver metropolitan area which took quite a while.  Eventually we somewhat broke free and were heading southwest on US 285.  This was a beautiful ride, scenic and twisty.  Our first stop was at a cache featuring a huge statue on the mountainside out in the distance.  Unfortunately we didn’t find the actual cache.  Someone had changed oil there and left a container of used oil and the filter.

Marring a beautiful ride were two construction stops with a combined wait of at least an hour.  To make it worse we could see no evidence of any work actually being done.  Ironically we later passed through yet another construction project where they were actually working but we didn’t have to stop.  We weren’t concerned so much with caches this day other than to take breaks.  We did stop at a couple of cemetery caches that were close together. The last cache we found this day was one called “Alien Cache” located on a long stretch of rather desolate road at the entrance of some kind of alien attraction.  I had thought about taking a little side trip east to take in The Great Sand Dunes National Park but Yancey had been there years before and said the roads were sand which could be a real problem for our bikes.  

This one was on the fence

The Alien Cache

Instead we headed on down to Chama, NM, where we had motel reservations.  It was not the best motel experience although it could have been worse.  The motel had a prominent “For Sale” sign displayed which was not a good omen.  It was located on a creek with an adjacent park or campground also owned by the motel.  Chama is a small town that seems to close early but we did find a decent Mexican restaurant.  After our dinner we took a stroll down to the creek to give the mosquitoes theirs.  This was a short travel day since we passed on The Great Sand Dunes with just 312 miles and 3 caches along with a couple of DNF’s.
[To be continued] M/W