MOVIN' ON -- COMPANY'S COMIN'

The Mile High Warnocks are coming to visit in July, giving us a whole weekend to play with granddaughter Emmy at the farm. I can hardly say that she will experience life as it was back in the day because we are modernized and “connected” here (sort of), but it’s rural and we just don’t “run to town” for everything we might want or need.

Speaking of memories, as I plan for our summer celebrations, I thought about the extended family camping trip my parents sponsored in late July 1960. The original plan had been to rent cabins at Yellow Pine in the central Idaho wilderness, which Mother reserved well in advance. However, the owner refunded her money with the excuse that a large party had trumped her reservation by renting all of the cabins for several weeks. So much for reserving in advanced.

3-year-old Becky at Yellow Pine

My parents were disappointed but undaunted. They decided we would tent camp at a campground in the same area. This was a big production. Besides my parents, Grandpa Portfors, and myself, the party included my four married siblings and their children (a total of five at that time) – 17 in all. I don’t know how long we stayed – seems like it went on forever! And we never did it again. Mother said that my dad made too big a production out of camping – that he was unwilling to go without his creature comforts. I do remember that he actually considered how he might take a refrigerator.

Anyway, speaking of Daddy’s elaborate efforts, I happened to think of Mother baking for that camping trip. Did she make batches of traditional favorites like chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies? No! She made filled cookies – dozens of them. I couldn’t recall that she had ever made these before, so I asked why she would make them now. She said they were a favorite of my brother Charles. (Hmmm. I wonder if he knows that.)

If you’ve never made filled cookies, let me tell you, they’re trouble! First you cook your filling, and I think Mother made raisin and/or date and also a brown sugar filling. Then you mix sugar cookie dough, which you roll and cut into circles and place on your baking sheet. Place a tablespoon or so of your filling on the bottom and then roll dough for the tops. Mother cut a little star shape out of the center of each top before carefully placing it over a prepared bottom and sealing it. Then you bake it.

Can you imagine that?! And she didn’t make just a few either. There were plenty. But even at the tender age of nearly 11, I thought they were rich for casual eating.

Here’s the recipe for filled cookies that I found in her old recipe box:

1 c sugar

¼ c butter

1 egg

1 t vanilla

Salt

½ c milk

3 ½ c flour

1 t soda

2 t cream of tartar

Cream butter, add sugar, then well-beaten egg. Add milk, then sift in flour which has been sifted with cream of tartar. Roll and cut with cutter. Place filling between two cookies and bake.

Filling: 1 c chopped raisins, ½ c sugar, ½ c water, 1 T flour. Cook ‘til thickened.

 

I also found a recipe for filled cookies in Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book, 1950. I didn’t look further. KW

Big Bend & The Land of Enchantment - 8

Nevada Sky

Pony Express Cache - NV Rest Area

The next morning we gassed up and headed north on Hwy 18 before turning west on Hwy 56 toward Panaca, NV. We picked up a geocache before entering Nevada and then another just after turning north at Panaca on Hwy 93. At Ely I continued north and Sam took Hwy 50 west. His wife was hosting some ladies from the state PEO convention and he preferred to arrive home after it was over. I would have gone with him but my tooth was hurting so bad I did not want to take an extra day getting back. I continued north to Jackpot picking up a few cache along the way. I again stayed at Cactus Pete’s having traveled 425 miles and logging 6 caches for the day.

Hagerman Fosil Museum

Just as a week and a half before there was ice on my saddle in the morning. It was a beautiful sunny day although rain was forecast up north. Preparing for that eventuality, the night before I had fashioned rain gear out of a garbage bag and the remaining sleeves from my backless raincoat to wear under my mesh jacket.

I followed the reverse route I had taken previously stopping for caches at Hollister and just past Buhl before reaching Hagerman. I stopped at the Hagerman Fosil Museum for a cache and took a short tour of the museum. It was really interesting and there was a skeleton of the Hagerman Horse among other things. Son, Clint, had lived in Hagerman and thinking I wouldn’t be interested never mentioned the museum. I wish I had had more time to spend there.

Hagerman Horse

Having seen the weather forecast I thought I might encounter less rain going north from Boise up Hwy 95 through Weiser rather than the way I had come on Hwy 55 through McCall. As I proceeded up Hwy 95 the clouds began building past Weiser. I stopped at the Rest Area on the hilltop north of Weiser and donned my rain gear. The rain held off until I reached the little mill town of Tamarack. I can happily report that my make shift rain gear passed the test. I was in and out of rain until just past the Rest Area at Sheep Creek south of Riggins.

Counties Map

I arrived home around 4:30 having traveled 472 miles and logging just 3 caches with 1 DNF. Totals for the whole eleven day trip were 4,731 miles, an even 100 geocaches along with 15 DNF’’s. I am hoping that son, Yancey will accompany me next year to finish the counties of New Mexico. This trip certainly had its challenges but we rode some great roads and had interesting adventures. I couldn’t have had a better traveling partner than Sam. He was knowledgeable, thoughtful and always upbeat (an important quality on a trip such as this). That’s all folks. M/W  

Big Bend & The Land of Enchantment - 7

Our preferred plan was to loop southwest from Springer to Taos and than angle north for the Colorado mountains. However, the weather forecast was for 4” of snow in Ouray where we had planned to stay. The alternate route I had selected a little farther west was almost as bad. There was no way to make either route by motorcycle. So we decided to travel as planned as far as Chama, NM, and they head west to Farmington, NM.

The next morning dawned clear and cool with no hint of bad weather. We had a beautiful mountain ride down to Taos where we went into town and found a Walmart with the help of Sam’s new GPS. In spite of the present good weather we knew it would not hold and I needed some rain gear to replace my lost jacket liner. I got a $10 rain suit and we were on our way again.

From where Hwy 64 crossed Hwy 285 about 30 miles northwest of Taos we had some of the most fantastic riding of the whole trip. This was beautiful National Forest with twisting roads going over a high mountain pass. This great stretch extended for almost 50 miles to Tierra Amanilla. We picked up caches along the way for Taos and Rio Arriba counties.

Lonesome Sam

Where's the key?

Probably the funniest incident of the trip occurred near the end of this stretch of road. We were going through a town and I was ahead of Sam with some traffic in between us. After making a left turn on the highway I didn’t see Sam anymore. I didn’t think much of it because I knew I’d be stopping soon for a cache. So I stopped for the cache which was on a fence to a gated field. Afterwords I just waited there as it was usually only a minute or two until Sam would arrive. After about fifteen minutes when I was unable to reach him by phone I was just about to head back to look for him. Then I saw this motorcycle coming across the field on the dirt road. I thought, “Boy, that looks like Sam’s bike”. Well, it seems Sam’s GPS had indeed taken him on the shortest route to the cache. He was gracious enough to laugh along with me. Of course, he had to go all the way back because there was no way to get by the gate and fence.

We got into Farmington earlier than anticipated so after gassing up we decided to go on to Blanding, UT. We chose a bock roads route which was Hwy 41 in NM and Hwy 262 in UT. We soon got into high winds and threatening skys. I put my raincoat on and Sam 

 put on his heated vest as it was getting colder. Not long after we got into Utah we encountered about the most miserable motorcycling weather I’ve ever encountered. The high wind turned to blowing rain and then blowing snow. By the time we approached Blanding it was almost impossible to keep my helmet visor free of ice. We finally made the Quality Inn in Blanding and we were so frozen the motel employees felt sorry for us and helped us carry in our gear. The wind had torn the back completely out of my rain coat. The motel had a hot tub that was extremely welcome. Thus ended a 428 mile day with 7 geocache finds.

Quality Inn - ice on windshield

Back Blown Out

Our way north was still blocked by snow so we decided to swing south into AZ through Monument Valley and then head west over to Ivins, UT, just west of St. George, where my brother-in-law lives. For this trip I had purchased a tablet sized laptop computer so that I could upload my caches to the geocaching website each day. That also allowed me to download new caches to my GPS which came in handy in this situation where we were taking an unplanned route.

About three days before a tooth had begun hurting. I had had this same problem a few weeks before and the dentist had not been able to find the problem. He prescribed an antibiotic and after a few days the problem dissipated. At this point it was absolutely killing me. Sam said one hurt should cancel out the other which I thought as well but that wasn’t the case. At least my tendon only hurt when I walked. I contacted Kathy who in turn arranged for a prescription to be sent to my brother-in-law’s pharmacy of choice in Ivins. Meanwhile it was Motrin to keep the throb somewhat under control.

Sam had described Monument Valley as similar to the ship shaped rock near Shiprock, NM, except there was a whole fleet. It was a good description. Had my tooth not been hurting so much I would have enjoyed it much more. It is quite a sight.

We arrived in Ivins late afternoon having logged 357 miles, 6 caches and 1 DNF. My brother-in-law, Chuck, took us to an Arctic Circle for dinner as his wife, Joann was out. We had a good dinner topped off with ice cream.  To be continued.

Big Bend & The Land of Enchantment - 6

Ye ha!

The clear sunny morning found us heading northwest toward Pecos, TX, which is in Reeves County. If we didn’t find “Home of the World’s First Rodeo” in Pecos which quite a few others had not found we would have to make a detour in order to get a cache in that county. The cache was at a big cutout sign with the cache name (which I see I didn’t quite get in my picture). We looked quite a while before Sam came up with it. That was good news that would save us some time and miles which we soon blew.

Sam wanted to stop at the Walmart to pick up some items so I left him there with plans to meet at the next cache no too far away in Ward County. This was an out and back cache and after I found it and he hadn’t shown up I headed back to town. However, I traveled all the way back to Walmart and never saw Sam. Luckily I was able to reach him on the phone where he was at the cache site. How could I have missed him? Turns out his GPS took him to the Interstate rather than the back road I had taken. After this little fiasco Sam adjusted his GPS for shorter distance rather than quickest time so it would match mine.

Loving County Court House

New we headed north to pick up Loving County. We stopped at the courthouse for a cache and learned that Loving is the least populated county in the continental US with a population of 80. That was a real surprise to me because I would have thought that distinction might go to a Montana county such as Petroleum with a population of less than 500. It wasn’t even close. I can tell you one thing, however, there are many counties with a lot less traffic. I had pictured in my mind little traffic in this area but that certainly wasn’t the case. The highway was extremely busy, mostly big trucks. We guessed it was due to oil activity.

Now we had to jog east to Winkler to pick up our last Texas county by that same name. We found a couple of caches at the library and adjoining little park and enjoyed the shade.

Hwy 18 took us north back into NM and Lea County where our first cache was at the Jal Cemetery. We stopped to get gas in Jal and I joked with one of the ladies there asking her if you pronounced that town as “Why’d jal do that?” She said no it was like “Why’d they put you in jal?”

From Jal we proceeded northwest toward Carlsbad and Eddy County. This is hot desolate country. We stopped for a couple of roadside caches along the way and had our lunch at a Subway in Carlsbad. While there I struck up a conversation with a couple of highway patrolmen asking what folks did for recreation there because I thought it was about the most God forsaken place I’d seen. (I didn’t say that second part to them.) I didn’t really get a good answer which I guess proves my point. At least poverty stricken northeastern AZ has some nice scenery.

The Trail Boss

From the other side

From Carlsbad we traveled north to Artesia where I saw the most outstanding non-natural cache of the whole trip. It was a huge larger than life sculpture of a cowboy pushing through a herd of cattle at full gallop called “The Trail Boss”. It was located at a major intersection in town.

Meanwhile Sam had decided to take another route to Roswell hoping for a less traveled road. While stopped at “The Trail Boss” I asked a backhoe worker about a road I could take. I headed north out of town but I must have misunderstood his directions because I soon realized I was traveling in the wrong direction. At a four way stop I pulled up beside this Mexican lady with several kids in the car and asked her how to get where I wanted. She tried to explain and then said, “Just follow me.” So she turned around to the opposite direction she was headed and led me for at least a mile to the road I wanted. Now that’s what I call a random act of kindness. As it turned out part of my route was the same one taken by Sam.

Roswell was one of the nicest places we stayed. The motel had a pool which was very refreshing. One of the caches I got in Roswell (Chaves County) was very interesting. It was a whole store devoted to alien related items. You may recall in 1947 personnel at the Roswell Air Force Base discovered remains of an unidentified flying object and since then there has been speculation about alien space travel in the area.

While I was motoring around Roswell picking up a couple of caches Sam was walking around and his hat blew off and landed in the middle of a busy street. He said there was no way he was going to risk life and limb to get that hat. He went into a sports bar nearby and shortly this well dressed black man complete with gold chains came in and presented him with his hat – another random act of kindness in the same day. Our totals for the day were 307 miles, 14 caches and 1 DNF.

The next morning found us heading north before angling northeast toward Ft. Sumner. My GPS had been giving me problems with increasing frequency. It would either just turn off or hang up and I would have to stop and sometimes even remove the batteries to get it to function again. I tried my fallback GPS which seemed to stay on okay but the map color was so dark it was hard to see unless the sun was shining directly on it. After discussing the possibilities we thought maybe there was a loose connection where the cord plugged into the GPS unit. So we took a rubber band and looped it around the plug and GPS and problem solved.

Billie the Punk

We were in Billy the Kid country now and one cache was at a Billy the Kid themed museum in Ft. Sumner. That one along with a couple more took care of DeBaca County. We also had a couple of DNF’s. At Ft. Sumner we turned east and I was a little concerned about Roosevelt County because if we couldn’t find the one cache on our route we would have to turn south at Melrose opposite our intended route in order to get one for the county. Fortunately we found this one which was hanging on a fence even though the coordinates were off about 40’. This was mostly grazing country and considerably greener than the southeast corner of the state.

From Melrose we headed north toward Tucumcari to pick up Curry County. From there we turned northeast for Quay County. We stopped for lunch at a well named Rest Area cache called “A Windy Break on Highway 54”. Many Rest Area caches are placed by truck drivers or RVer’s as was this one.

Just before reaching Logan we again changed directions heading northwest toward the little town of Roy for Harding County. One of our more enjoyable caches was another well named one called “A Road Alone”. It was on a meandering back road with absolutely no traffic. It was a bit windy but you can’t have everything. Nearby we had to ride a couple of miles on dirt roads to find one at a cemetery. It was near what had been the thriving community of Roy but it never completely recovered from the Dust Bowl.

We eventually hit Hwy 412 and turned west toward our evening destination of Springer. Along the way we picked up two caches for Union County. Springer is a small town that didn’t even have a restaurant. After we checked in to an old motel I motored around town and got a couple of caches for Colfax County along with one DNF. We had to make an out and back trip down the highway to find a place to eat dinner. It was an interesting place with three main themes – old 50’s GM cars, Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. There were actually a half dozen restored Chevys, Olds and Pontiacs in the place. Our totals for the day were 366 miles, 13 caches and 4 DNF’s.  To be continued.

Big Bend & The Land of Enchantment - 5

Closed Canyon

Barton Warnock

We headed east the next morning on Hwy 170 with Sam leading aiming for the Big Bend Country. It was good riding with a rolling twisting and scenic road and little traffic. Our first stop was a fantastic cache called “Closed Canyon” with 36 Favorite points. However, it turned into a disaster for me. It was a beautiful narrow canyon with steep sides. Unfortunately I reinjured an Achilles tendon initially hurt hunting last fall. It had taken about 5 months to heal so I was pretty bummed out. Then, when we left I inadvertently didn’t completely close the top of my tail bag and my jacket liner and hat blew out. I didn’t discover the loss until later – the jacket liner much later because we were getting into triple digit temperatures and I wasn’t about to need it.

Our next stop was at the Barton Warnock Visitor Center in the Big Bend Ranch State Park.  Barton was a renowned botanist and professor at Sul Ross State University in Ft. Stockton for 50 years. He was an expert in the flora of the west Texas region. I suppose all of us Warnocks are related if you go back far enough but I don’t know of any close family connection. The center had a lot of interesting exhibits and I wish we had had more time to spend there. We found a cache there and I bought a hat replacing the one I lost.

Rio Grande Canyon

We continued east and entered the Big Bend National Park. We took a side road that led down to the Rio Grande. It was a twisty pretty much all downhill road to the river. Down at the river was the most spectacular part of the park we saw. There was a huge towering wall with an opening through which the river flowed. We enjoyed some lunch there at a shaded picnic table.

I decided to head toward Ft. Stockton while Sam stopped at the National Park Visitor Center. He always buys a hat to commemorate his trip and he wanted to get one there. It was extremely hot (have I mentioned that?) and I stopped for a couple more caches before reaching Ft. Stockton. One was another Warnock cache. This one was in honor of Roland rather than Barton. He was the Texas State Road Maintenance Supervisor from 1927 to 1981 and was responsible for creating many of the road side picnic areas where this cache was located.

I decided to get a couple of caches in Ft. Stockton before going to the motel to get Pecos County out of the way. Two caches I had logged in the park took care of Brewster County. The first Ft. Stockton cache was at a Scout hut. The next was at the Ft. Stockton military cemetery. It was enclosed by a stone wall about 4’ high. I had parked my bike just off the street next to the wall. It was parked in a slight depression making the bike a little more upright that it would ordinarily be with the kickstand down. It was really windy and after retrieving the cache and returning to my bike a big gust of wind blew it right over before I could get on it. While I was trying to figure what to do a big burly kid in a pickup stopped, jumped out, grabbed the front of the bike while I had the back and lifted it right up. Just some slight damage to a windshield mount which cost less than $15.

Sam and I arrived at the same time at the Deluxe Inn. It was an old motel being remodeled. The outside didn’t look like much but the rooms were very nice. A thunderstorm hit just after we checked in and the motel clerk came over and invited us to park our bikes under the walkway roof as well as giving us some rags. She was very thoughtful. We pooled all our quarters and did our laundry here. This was our shortest day with 280 miles, 6 caches and 1 DNF. To be continued.

Big Bend & The Land of Enchantment - 4

Cache at Franklin Arms

The next morning we headed east toward Las Cruces and Dona Ana County, the last one in New Mexico before our return trip from Texas. We skirted the western edge of Las Cruces and found a well camoed cache at an old building that used to be Franklin Arms, a gun shop. The owners had been killed by a couple of customers around 1980. This part of town was a bit run down because it was beneath the flood plain and no new buildings were allowed.

Franklin Arms

After picking up one more NM cache we entered the El Paso area and the traffic was really intense. One of my goals was to get a cache in Mexico and I had one picked out on the other side of the bridge across the Rio Grande. I did not want to ride across because that involved a lot of red tape including buying an insurance policy. Sam said “no thanks” to this adventure (he has pretty good judgment) and agreed to meet me down the road at another cache. From where we parted the only way I could get close to the border crossing was to enter an area that said “No Thru Traffic”. This route put me in a Government parking lot right at the border. A sign said any unauthorized vehicles would be towed away. There was plenty of parking there, however. So I made my way walking/dodging across four lanes of traffic and started toward the bridge. Suddenly an unusual wave of better judgment got the best of me and I decided the prize wasn’t worth the risk of returning to find my bike gone. Shortly after turning around I was accosted by a border agent telling me I couldn’t go back that way. I explained what had happened but he said the problem was that he hadn’t seem me attempt the crossing in the first place only as I was heading back. He advised me to cross four lanes of bumper to bumper traffic to get to the US entry. I said, “Do you mean right here?” He said, “Sure, you’ll be OK. Just be careful. These people are used to that”. So I make it across and with a sigh of relief saw my bike was still there. As my family would say, “Just another Mickey Warnock adventure.”

I made my way to the Interstate and headed south. I pulled off to get gas and met an Indian who said he was an ancestor of the people who had lived in the Canyon de Chelle. He was so talkative I had trouble politely leaving. While I was off the Interstate I made a little detour to pick up a cache for El Paso County, my first one for Texas on this trip. It was in a cemetery across the street from an old mission. It was a camoed pill bottle in a thick juniper bush and I was just about to give up when I spotted it.

Sam and I had agreed to meet near a cache called “Screwbean”. As I approached the cache site I could see his bike parked at a small store about a block away. This was fairly open country and that was the only thing around. “Screwbean” was a clever cache consisting of a short length of old rope lying casually on the ground with one end extending down into a 4” pipe. It had a ring on the end to prevent it from falling down the hole. The end in the hole was attached to a smaller line which in turn was attached to a small container housing the geocache.

Culberson County Cashe

It was getting really hot and Sam doesn’t do heat well. He decided he would press on toward our evening destination of Presidio and leave the geocaching to me. I encouraged that decision because it was just too hot for anyone without an urgent interest to be stopping and searching for caches.

I stopped in the small town of Sierra Blanca and picked up a couple of caches for Hubspeth County. One was at the court house and the other at an ald depot. There were two more caches in Van Horn which took care of Culberson County.

There was only one cache in Jeff Davis County anywhere near where I’d be traveling and it had an incredible 80 Favorite points. Even more astounding was that it was literally in the middle of nowhere. The highway to get there which went through Valentine and Marfa was under construction and one lane was blocked. The one lane open was what would have been my lane and what was left was the broken gravel shoulder. I just rode in the wrong lane until I met oncoming traffic which was fairly infrequently and then I would move over and ride the shoulder.

Boyd Elder

Prada Y'all

Not long after leaving the construction I came to this cache called “Prada Y’all”. It was this elaborate store (except it really wasn’t a real store) like you would see downtown in some big city. It had plate glass windows with fancy women’s shoes and purses displayed. Back from the building about 30’ was a wire fence where folks had hung all kinds of things with their names and hometowns. The cache was on the fence too. Shortly after I pulled up an old fellow in a pickup pulled up and was very interested in my motorcycle and helmet which has a design on the back. He got out of his truck and started taking closeup pictures of the helmet and bike while I searched for the cache. He said he was an artist and had just sold a piece for $90,000. I thought, “Yeah, right”. I asked him his name and he replied “Boyd Elder”. If you want to know about Boyd Elder, look him up. He is, in fact, a renowned artist who lives in the tiny town of Valentine, TX, and specializes in painting on animal skulls. Now I understand why he was so interested in the design on my “skull like” helmet. I can tell you, he’s quite a character. While I was there several cars arrived and stopped to look at the display. They weren’t geocachers. As it turns out, Boyd hat a lot to do with constructing the display although he didn’t tell me that.

I found 3 more caches, all in Presidio County before reaching Presidio where Sam had already arrived. It was about 98 degrees at the motel and I made good use of their pool. A Mexican family was having a family barbecue at the pool. We found that although Presidio is in TX, English is a second language. In fact, Sam asked a question to one old man who couldn’t speak English at all. As far as we could tell The Three Palms motel was the only one in town. It was old but clean and certainly adequate for us. Totals for this day was 367 miles, 12 finds and 1 DNF.  To be continued.

Big Bend & The Land of Enchantment - 3

After a good motel breakfast the next morning we headed south on Hwy 602 which eventually changed to Hwy 36. I had pictured this route as desolate desert country but it was really quite picturesque with rolling hills, junipers and pine trees. The next county was Cibola and there were only 2 geocaches anywhere near our route. I was worried about the first one because it hadn’t been found in five months and it had new coordinates. We looked for some time with no luck. The only other cache near our route was “Moreno Hill Overlook” which was about nine miles off our route on a gravel road. There was nothing else to do but go after it. Sam went just a little ways and then turned back because his bike did not handle those roads well. I eventually made it out to the cache site and looked a long time before finding it. It was a bison tube in a tree which is always tough for me to find. Finding that one was a big relief.

Now on to Catron County. We turned east and then south riding in similar country and picking up two more caches for that county. The first one was at the little town of Quemado where we stopped for gas. The next one was in the little town of Reserve appropriately named “Reserve Cache”. It was hot and I rested here in the shade while Sam made a stop at a nearby convenience store.

Next was Grant County and our the first stop was at a Rest Area a little ways off the highway. While Sam was preparing his lunch (the usual tuna and beans) I took a hike to find the cache. It was a good distance behind the Rest Area in rough terrain. I finally found it in a bush on the other side of a little wash. After hiking all the way back I discovered I had lost my stamp which is my brand that I use to sign the cache log books. I retraced my steps back with Sam along to help find it and find it he did just a short distance from the cache. Even though I had an extra one along I was extremely relieved to find it.

Lunch at Rest Area

Now Sam and I had the very workable agreement that even though we were traveling together either one of us could diverge and do our own thing so long as we met at the end of the day. Sam had a new Zumi GPS made specifically for motorcycle travel but I had loaded in all the geocaches as well as the motels. That way if we parted we could agree to meet at a certain cache or the motel. I had to go south to Lordsburg in Hidalgo County but Sam found a more scenic route to the east that looked good to him. It turned out to be an excellent decision for him because he said it was fantastic riding as well as beautiful scenery.

Meanwhile I headed south. My first stop was for a regular sized cache called “Big Oak” located about 30’ off the road. After finding it I was peeling off some layers as it was really hot when Sam passed by. I didn’t see him again until that afternoon at the motel in Deming.

"What Service"

One cache in Lordsburg was called “Overpass Park” located next to a sort of cloverleaf alongside the Interstate. I had a little trouble figuring how to enter the park and ended up parking on a side adjoining a rather down and out looking neighborhood. I couldn’t locate a gate so I hopped the fence and found the cache on the other side of the little park. As I started to leave I spotted the gate in the corner under a tree. Same old story – geocaches are often much harder to get to than to leave.

One of the more interesting caches of the day was a DNF. It was called “What service?” and was an old graffiti covered long since abandoned gas station just off the Interstate.

Sam had already checked in when I reached Deming. As usual, after unloading I went out to get some caches for Luna County. I found two out of three very uninspiring caches before returning to the motel. I believe Sam and I then made one of our many Subway stops for dinner. This one was in a Walmart and was memorable in that the one employee was extremely slow and they were out of several items. Totals for the day were 397 miles, 9 finds and 2 DNF’s. To be continued.