Future trips

My last road trip was a three day affair back in February to visit my daughter at her school. I’m heading back up there for another shorter road trip in 10 days time, to pick her up from school. I tell you it’s not fair. She started school the same day I did back in August and she’s going to be done a whole month before me, and she had a longer Christmas vacation too. Where’s the justice here? My older son keeps shaking his head when he found out she’s coming home next weekend. He keeps repeating the mantra, “One more year.” Yeah, well, then there’s four years of college and then all that free time ends.

But anyway, the road trip back then, took me into Gold Country in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, with some pretty nice caching. I don’t expect to find nearly as many caches as I found on that last trip, but the focus isn’t entirely on caching anymore. There are several dashpoints that I’ll be passing on the way and several GeoVexillum as well. Time is also a factor, since I'm not taking as many days as last time either.

The route I’m planning on taking this time is similar to one that I was going to go with last time. If you recall, I was a little behind on the front end and truncated my trip through San Benito County. This time, the intended route is going to be through San Benito County, then through Santa Clara, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties on the east bay side before heading due east to Stockton. I have found two caches in Santa Clara County, but the other three are virgin territory for me. If I do find caches in those three counties, I’ll be over the halfway mark to logging the 58 California County Challenge cache. I’m fortunate that the final for that one is down near where I live, so it won’t require an extra trip to log it. But I’m getting ahead of myself as to when I’ll log that cache, because it’s probably going to be at least another year or two before I get all of the northern counties of California.

It’s too bad that Geocaching didn’t happen sooner in my lifetime. I’ve now been to every county in the state, but many of them were before the advent of Geocaching. Ah, well, I guess that just means I’m going to have to make return visits. This summer will afford some more revisits when my son and I go camping along the northern coast of the state. I have no idea how many new counties I’ll add to my caching total with that trip. The return trip hasn’t been cemented in stone, so I’m not sure which ones we’ll be traveling through yet.

Anyway, this trip should be fun, but it’s going to be a little bit of a whirlwind. I’m planning on taking off on the 17^th early in the morning, getting to Stockton sometime in the evening hours. Then we’ll pack the car with all of her stuff in her dorm room and come home on Sunday the 18^th. We usually take Hwy 99 coming home, mainly because the view is much nicer than going down Interstate 5. About the only exciting thing along the I-5 is the Coalinga stockyards and I’ll have seen those on the trip up and I’m pretty sure my daughter, being the vegetarian that she is, won't want to see them either. Besides, there are more caching opportunities along the 99 as well. Having traversed the 5 several times, I’ve pretty much found all of the major caches along that stretch of road, but the 99 still has many areas that I haven't even come close to denting the surface yet.

I’ve got the route planned, and have already set up the Route PQs for the trip up. I’m not sure if I’ll do a route PQ, or just a couple of spot PQs for the return trip. I know I won’t be spending nearly as much time caching coming down, mainly because my daughter isn’t much of a cacher. She’ll tolerate it, but more than a couple of stops for a couple of caches and she’s done. And that’s ok, because I’ll probably want to be getting home sooner as opposed to later since I’ll have work to go to the next day anyway.

I just hope that I can get some good pictures on this trip. The last road trip, I got some pretty interesting shots, some of which I’ve posted here. I would imagine that San Benito County will probably make for some better picture taking spots than any of the other counties that I listed above, mainly because most of that route will be more urban and suburban as opposed to rural, although one never can tell. Something might surprise me. I guess I’m just going to have to wait until that time.

Pictures were taken near the following geocaches:
Carson Hill: A Very Historical Place - by tmkbk & olympicwannabe
Beam Me Up - by Ktquilt
Mariposa History - by halfdome and shortcircuit
Mr. Mother Lode - by Uncle Al from Sacramento