Well, around 12:30ish, my husband calls and asks if I want to go to squadron PT (physical training) with him. I remembered he'd mentioned something about this earlier. "Sure, I'm game." I love a good workout, and especially since it was Friday. Usually by the end of the week, I am just going through the motions at the gym. Within 30 minutes, we were at the one of the parking areas for the River's Edge Trail.
Initially, it started off as just a walk. There was a large group of people, some on bikes, some with dogs, some with kids, all clogging up this trail not quite wide enough for all of us. After a few minutes of being behind this wall of people, my husband took the initiative and passed them. I was relieved, because I felt trapped. From there on, we picked up our pace, actually we were averaging around 4.1 mph according to my Fitness App on my phone. Besides my phone, I was carrying a water bottle, and the ice was now non-existent in this 68 degree weather. In this climate, this was as spring as it will get, because all us who live here know, we still have a few more days with snow.
Okay, so we'd passed the slow people, walking at a good pace and now our mission was to locate a few geocaches that were along this trail. If you are unfamiliar with geocaching, it is basically using a smart phone or GPS device to find coordinates where a container is hidden with a logbook to sign, and sometimes there might be swag to trade. You also have to have a profile on the geocaching website: www.geocaching.com. At first geocaching was something we wanted to try, now it's who we are.
The geocache was over 3 miles away, and the only way to get there was to hike or bike. At our steady pace, we were making our way off of the paved trail onto the dirt trail. This trail is filled with cacti, uneven at times and also very rocky. It would be easy to roll your ankle if you're not paying attention. Then there's also some mysterious holes made by creatures that I didn't care to see. Those we would practically leap over to avoid contact. The grass was dry, and every so often I had to pluck out a splinter from my sock. We could see people a long ways off, but we had a good lead on them. Bikers were ahead of us, but not by much.
I turned the Geocaching App on my phone to see how much further we had to go, at that point it said .8 miles. We noticed unusual stacks of rocks along the tire tracks that we were now following. Walking in the tire impressions was a little easier to walk on and and also, made it easier to abstain a run-in with a snake. Once we were within 20 feet of the cache (geocache), we set down our water bottles and I read the description and clue. It said we were looking for a small rubber maid container and the clue was "look under rocks." Well, there were rocks everywhere, but the compass was pointing towards this 90+ feet drop-off, with the river below. "Great!" I said, 'cause there's nothing like scaling the edge of a mountain when you're looking down at your phone and not where you're stepping.
My husband was making his way into the danger zone, looking under rocks, I did that for awhile, then went to safer ground. I noticed a pile of flat-looking rocks and underneath it was a plastic container, the geocache! I yelled out that I had found it, and also noticed that some of the other walkers had caught up to us at this point. I pulled the blue Sharpie out of my pocket to sign the log that my husband had took out of the container for me to sign. Unfortunately, there were loose papers inside that the wind caught and of course went straight off the cliff. Neither of us we're going to chase after it. Luckily, there was also a small notebook log. I signed that quickly, logged the "Find" on my phone and we were on our way.
Approximately thirty minutes had passed before we found the 2nd geocache. Again we had to hike up and down rocky, uneven hills while avoiding cacti. A group of bikers were heading back as we were still making our way to our destination. They looked exhausted, like they were regretting taking on this expedition. Yet we continued on our way. The GPS was pointing us in a direction straight ahead, but with an incredibly steep canyon and the river below, made it impossible. The only way, was to continue around on the trail. This was one of those "watch your step or die" type of trails that I was grateful to have such great balance while treading on it. Once again I read the description and clue as we neared 30 feet of the coordinates. My husband made the 'FIND", partially down this steep cliff with a breathtaking view. We both sat down in the dirt, re-hydrated and signed the log. I was extra careful not to lose any of the cache contents and noticed that we were number 9 on the log, meaning not many people ventured out this far.
I debated on whether or not to hunt for one last cache, but the harsh winds made up my mind. It was 2:30, and we were aiming to get back by 4pm. Our mission was accomplished, but we were so far from the starting point it seemed impossible that we could even make the journey back. However, we took the most direct route back following the telephone lines that would eventually lead us back to the trail, only stopping briefly for water, we made it to our vehicle by 3:55pm. My Fitness App logged us as doing 7.12 miles.
In the beginning, I had no intent on hiking for that long. Even the goals of finding the geocaches didn't seem as important until we were deep into our "Geo-Journey." Sometimes I think the greatest adventures come from unplanned events.
