This summer, I expect to garner another first in my geocaching career. First cache in Oregon found. Not the first one placed, just I’ll have finally found a cache in Oregon. That will make five states that I’ve cached in thus far in the 7+ years of caching. 
I think it’s a little bit harder out west because our states are so big. I would be willing to bet that most cachers who live back east and cache on the average of once a week probably have cached in several states within their first year.
Well…..so have I actually. As noted in the past, I was more of a casual cacher, caching only when I could interest one or both of the boys. Needless to say, I didn’t find many caches the first couple of years until I started going out on my own. But we did find a cache in another state that first year. In fact, West of Work (#4) was my 8th cache found. We’d been camping at Cedar Breaks National Monument which is just east of Cedar City, Utah, and I really wanted to find at least one cache in another state. So we came down out of the mountains and found this cache just west of a large parking lot that, obviously, from the title was placed just west of the hider’s work place. This was way before Pocket Queries, before paperless caching, so 
I had the printout and that was it. I guess you could say we were lucky, since I believe that was the only printout I made for that particular camping trip. But number 8 became our second state.
The next two years, we camped in California, so we didn’t venture anywhere near state boundaries. The third state we ended up caching in was Arizona. Interestingly, we were headed to Cedar Breaks again to camp overnight for a couple of days before heading off to eastern Nevada for some more camping. This time, I came armed with printouts (still not paperless yet) for several caches along the way. I’d planned out our route along I-15 and knew there was a cache just over the border of Nevada into Arizona called Bridge View that looked interesting. That was our only find in Arizona on that trip. We ended up getting another 10 caches in and around Cedar City to up our total in Utah before moving on to Nevada. Last year we really upped our total in Arizona when we camped at the Grand Canyon.
Once we moved into Nevada on that camping trip, the caches were further apart. Our first cache was a virtual cache called Who waxed Mr. Ed? It’s one of those whimsical virtual caches that just tickled my funny bone. I’d been researching caches in the area where we were going to go camping and this was one of the few in the area, so we decided to get it. As you can see from some of the pictures, the entire area has some interesting sculptures placed by someone who has a unique sense of humor. Unfortunately, Who waxed Mr. Ed? was archived with the reason given that the area needed to be opened up for some new caches and the owner wasn’t active in geocaching anymore. Well, the latter reason was ok, but the first reason was kind of lame, in my opinion, because the area is so devoid of caches even today, that it really didn’t matter if that particular cache remained or not. It was right on the edge of a national park, so that it wasn’t going to infringe on another person’s hide. There’s a lot of open space out there. Anyway, it’s gone and there’s nothing that can be done, although you can still go look at the sculptures out there. There’s more than what I’ve posted here.
So this summer, we’ll hopefully add Oregon. 
We’re going to be camping in Redwoods National Park, which is close to the Oregon border and we plan to visit Oregon Caves. I’ve already started looking and there are plenty of opportunities to get at least one cache in our fifth state. That may be our last state for awhile. With gas prices seemingly out of control, our financial ability to make long trips in the future appears to be severely curtailed. So we’re going to enjoy this trip.
Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Bridge View - by V=Brats
Who waxed Mr. Ed? - by fooshfoosh and family
1 comment:
If not for Sharon's Aunt Sylvia, and our older grandson, we'd have no cache Finds outside of California, except for three in Italy and one in Switzerland, despite caching for over seven years. Aunt Sylvia turned 80 a few years ago, and her kids and grandkids threw a big bash for her, with friends and relatives coming to Salem, Oregon from as far away as Texas, the Great Lakes and Florida. While there, we managed to find two caches in the Salem area, plus a virtual at Crater Lake. We were not yet paperless, so I just had a few print-outs, as the trip was for family, not other stuff. And last year, we drove out to Pahrump (accent on the "rump", not the "pah"), Nevada, to pick up our grandson Justin from his other grandparents, where he had been visiting. After we picked him up, we made a point to get one crummy urban micro in a shopping center lamppost, but at least we had another State :-) Guess those skirt-lifters are good for something, huh? When we flew to Europe in 2005, we weren't at Dulles long enough to even think about trying for a cache, but at least I had info on caches in Zurich, Milan and Venice, so we were able to get at least one cache in each. It *is* hard to get out of California, and with over 50,000 caches in the Golden State, there's plenty to keep us busy right here!
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