OCTOBER 19, 2013 – Beyond Las Vegas

On Friday, the day before Geocoinfest 2013, I took my long anticipated trip 100 miles beyond Las Vegas, to a place near where Nevada, Arizona and Utah meet. My goal was to cache the Kokopelli geoart series.

Exactly 2 years ago I broke off from the SFV ET2 Hwy Group by myself and reached within 0.3 miles. But that was a recon probe in my Prius and I wasn’t equipped for hike caching. This time I had the Forester and full gear. A few feet into Utah I passed this sign.

And 2 miles past that, the easy to miss turnoff for the Kokopelli:

The road was well maintained and I stopped for some easy caches.

A few spots that were REALLY scary in the Prius were no problem for the Forester. I passed Stockade (GC1R7CE) one of my all time favorite locations. It obviously hasn’t been used in years. But I saw some cowpies in the area so cows, or something like them, are still in the area.

I found a wide spot in the road, 0.3 miles N of the Kokopelli’s head and parked.

Immediately I knew that the hike wasn’t going to be easy. There were lots of gullies. It wasn’t hard to cross any single one. But having 1 or 2 or even 3 of them between every cache and the terrain going steadily downhill made me realize that it wasn’t going to be a mega-find day.

The Kokopelli caches are called, “jeeks,” online. They’re absolutely-do-not-make-for-urban-caching “pipe bomb” containers. You’d think that the double layer would keep logs dry but a lot of them were soaking wet from the previous day’s light rain.

Then my Garmin Montana 600, which had problems from day 1, started turning off randomly. It aways restarted when I pushed the power button but I worried about the worst case scenario if it didn’t. I’d hate to be known as the Geocoinfest cacher who got lost in the desert and was airlifted 2 days later. (stoopid stoopid stoopid of me to forget
my Garmin Dakota 20 as backup) So I regretfully hiked back to my car after finding only 10 Kokopelli caches.

The scenery was especially nice on the way out.

Plan B: Two miles South of the Kokopelli, in Arizona, there’s a dirt road driving series of 30+ caches.

At least here, if the Montana died, I could just backtrack on the dirt road, to pavement.

The caches were unevenly spaced and the road became rougher with each mile. The containers were mixed, from rx bottles to huge nut jars to ammo cans and ‘natural’ materials. They were placed from roadside to 200′ out. It was while walking to a 100’er that I stopped in my tracks. A LIVE desert tortoise!! It was only a 6″ baby, but the first live
tortoise I’ve ever seen!! I hope that it lives a very long life, long outliving me. (I’m 52.)

At 3 caches from the end of the series there were just too many jagged looking rocks ahead. It was mid-afternoon and I didn’t want to get stuck with a flat tire. I don’t have a full size spare yet.

On the way back to Las Vegas I pulled off for some easy caches (they weren’t). These geocows stared at me near one of them.
I got back in plenty of time to attend the event pre-registration. Next…Geocoinfest 2013…