Geocaching with VegasScotty

I was looking over my networks and realized I’d forgotten all about this site.

Well, I’m still here and still geocaching. Since my last post in Aug 2020 I’ve found about 2,100 more geocaches. Also since then my wife retired too, we sold our house and moved to Washington where we lived in a camp trailer for over a year until we bought a house in Yelm.

We’re out in the country so the geocaching is pretty slim. My goal was to average a find a day (really 7 or so per week) with 350 for the year but I don’t think I’m going to make it. Thus far in 2025 I’ve found only 84 caches.

I just returned from a nearly 4 month trip from NV, up thru Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Washington, Oregon and back to Nevada.

I geocached in every state of course, and picked up probably 40 new counties. (Since I’ve cached in each of those states before, I’m working towards getting all of the counties in them.)

A highlight of the trip was when I got to stop at GC12 and GC17, both are in Oregon and close enough together that a short 8.5 mile walk got them both!

Ugh. Short? 8.5 miles with 1,600′ of it uphill. Ugh.
But I’m thrilled to have made it to both caches.

This summer I picked up 900 geocaches, which included 22 EarthCaches, 60 Unknown caches, 16 Virtual caches, and 8 Multis.

I did the Oregon State Star and the Washington State Star!

I was FTF on 32 geocaches in 4 states! LOL

Tons of fun. My wife and I got to see our first GrandBaby who was born in April, and then I got to see my father who turned 80 in June. Happy Birthday to both of them!

Of course traveling during a Pandemic was a little scary. Our first plan was to visit my folks but when the shutdowns started and all of our reservations along the way were cancelled we didn’t know what we were going to do. Finally in June we took off but at the time Utah was doing checkpoints at all the borders so we decided to just stay in Nevada for a while before we finally decided it was ok to head East to see the kids and their new baby.

I was never worried geocaching. I did safe things like carry hand sanitizer and wash my hands after each cache, mostly. I tried to be smart… I found dozens of caches that I was FTF in 2020 and those didn’t bother me. Anything in or near a city often meant they were found more frequently and those I was super cautious!

Other than that the biggest impact of Covid was people! Believe it or not I feel like there were more people out camping, hiking, visiting parks and geocaching, than ever before. Again face masks and distance were the words of the day, but not everyone followed that guidance.

One trailer parts store in Montana, I stopped to pick something up and wore a mask of course. The guy working there waved and said I didn’t have to wear ‘that damn thing in here’. LOL, I left it on. 🙂

(So Far) in 2018 I’ve finished 5 geoarts. I really enjoy doing the arts… mostly it’s the walking. I love to spend time in, and walk in the desert. But also it’s the image itself. When I pull up a map of caches I can SEE where I’ve been.
Very cool!

Here are the geoart series’ that I’ve done in 2018:

The Fire Dancer is north of Yuma AZ. It’s a driving series with 116 caches.

The Bison series is in the Black Hill region of South Dakota. This was a driving series with 47 caches.

USMC, 421 Caches, 70 walking miles over 4 months. It’s near Kramer Junction, CA

The Geocacher is west of Cedar City, UT. It has 130 geocaches and I walked about 18 miles.

The Female Symbol has 35 caches. It’s in North Las Vegas, NV.

So I’m in Yuma for the annual Mega event.  This year like my previous visit was great.  The weather this morning was windy buy it died down before noon and they day was a perfect 72 and sunny.  Gotta hate that in Feb, huh?

Today I decided to do nothing but the event.  In years past I’ve skipped out after the morning and gone to do some geocaching or whatever, but today I chose to stay.  

I’m glad I did.  I got to say hi to some friends from Vegas and I met cachers from all over the country (and other countries!)  I visited the booths, did some lab caches (17 in total!!!!) and basically just chilled.  One of the events is the “closest to the spot” things.  It’s where they give you coordinates and you take your GPSr out and put a little flat at the spot that your deviced thinks is GZ (ground zero).

So anyway, I get up there and my GPSr (Garmin 64st) says the coords are here….. and by here I mean a good 15 feet from the other 100 or so flags that other people have marked as GZ.  GRRRRRRRRR……  my GPS SUCKS!   I’ve struggled with this since I bought it and I’m tired of it.  It’s clear that the coords are wrong.   I event went back to do it a second time and this time my GPSr said the location was 30′ THE OTHER DIRECTION!!!   WTF?

So I’m enjoying the day, chatting with neighbors and about 2pm as the event is ending they held final raffles and drawings and gave away the 50/50 prize and the kids’ prizes and did some other drawings and finally it was the end of the day and they did the main grand prize drawing…. a brand new in the box, Garmin 64 GPSr.   I looked at my ticket and glanced over at the field with all the flags and my lonely flag sitting on the outskirts, and said to myself ‘I could sure use a new GPS’.

OH HELL YES!   I WON THE FUCKING GRAND PRIZE DRAWING.   I went home with a brand new in the box $250 Garmin 64 handheld GPSr unit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Man I love this game.

Tira asked me if I was going to use it or try and sell it.  I looked at the crappy Garmin 64st in my hand and I was like, OH HELL YES, I’m going to use it.  🙂

I’m in Yuma AZ for the annual mega geocaching event.  The first and main priority of the trip was to finish the fire dancer series.  It’s a geoart in the shape of well, a fire dancer.  It’s the cover art from the Dave Matthews band’s 6th album, “Stand Up”.

I started this geoart 3 years ago when I attended the Yuma event in 2015 but I was unable to finish the series back then.  So for 3 years it’s been haunting me.  When I decided to come back, this is the first thing I did.  🙂

2 days and 400 geocaches.  Lots of dust, lots of beer, lots of whining puppy dog who hates to sit in the truck on rough dirt roads, but I’m done.  Outstanding!

I’m heading to Yuma AZ for their annual SWAG (Southwest AZ Geocachers) Mega Geocaching event.  This is the third time I’ve gone, but the last time was in 2015.   I really enjoy the trip and the time in the desert.  The last two times I was working so I had to do the trip quickly, up and back.

But now that I’m unemployed I thought I’d take some time and do it up right.  Tira and I were comparing calendars and we realized that the day after I get back from Yuma, Tira was heading for CA with some teacher friends for a Disney Spring Break.  What the hell….  why go home? 

So I got a sub for bowling, called my dad and told him I’ll visit him in AZ for a couple of days, grabbed the dog, the truck and the trailer and took off.

The first stop was for the CC4X series just west of Vidal Junction off of CA62.  I picked a place in the desert to park the trailer and for 2 days my plan was to do the 401 geocache power trail. 

After that I head to Yuma for 3 days, then visit my folks for 2 or 3 days, and after that I don’t know…. but I’ll bet it involves geocaching!

Stayed near town and grabbed a geocache just north of me in the desert.

Saw RoadRunner in the area, it’s always nice to meet another geocacher!

MooseMob!!

I got new tires on the jeep, finally.  Went with the recently improved BFGoodrich All Terrain A/T KO2s.  33″ tall and a foot wide these should be stout enough to drive me across the desert for year to come.

Assuming of course I don’t do something stupid!  Check out the pictures, I had these tires put on 2 days ago.  🙁

Headed up to a geocache NE of Nellis AFB, https://coord.info/GC6EB5Z …..Boy those are great looking NEW tires!!!

And this is what I meant when I said, “so long as I don’t do something stupid…”