Anticipation...

Christmas is just around the corner. I turned on my favorite oldies station this afternoon and they were playing Christmas music and they announced that they planned on playing a lot of it over the next five weeks, thus bringing up the anticipation level even more than it already is I guess. The anticipation level here is a little bit different and it's actually delayed a bit farther into the future.

Part of the fun of anything, whether it be Christmas, your birthday, or a trip of some kind is the anticipation before hand. There's planning to do and things to buy. With a trip, there's the anticipation of seeing new sights, doing new and different things, or possibly visiting places you've been to before and thinking about all the new memories that will happen.

When I went to visit my daughter earlier this month, we broached the subject of me coming up again to visit in February. I have a four day weekend, so I thought it would be a great time to come up and visit, maybe go somewhere and of course, do some caching. We talked about possible day trips we could do that weekend, and we came up with a day trip into San Francisco, with a possible stop at Alcatraz Island, going down Lombard St., touring Pier 39, and maybe visiting Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge.

Once I got home, I started to think about this. Usually I go up through the Big Valley, then come home the same way, getting caches both ways. I thought this trip might be fun if I varied my route, to include heading over to Reno, then coming down Hwy 395 through the Owens Valley. This one is pretty much weather dependent and could get snowed out, but I decided that I might as well start the planning process.

There are several caches that I'd like to find on this trip. I could probably make a list that would go on for several pages, but I'll try to limit it to the ones that have some kind of meaning. I guess you could call this adding to my bucket list.

Mazanar Waterworks Virtual Cache is obviously in Manzanar National Historic Site. The place preserves an era of our history that I'm sure many would like us to forget wen though we shouldn't. I've found another cache already in the park, but I'd like to come back here and check this one out, plus another just outside of the park boundary.

The Monoville "Hunters" Cache was hidden by Snoogans, a friend that I know only through the Geocaching forums. He lives in Texas, but regularly visits this eastern part of the Sierra. This allows him to hide caches that are outside of his normal range, so as to not be a "vacation" type of cache. I think it would be fun to find a cache of someone that I've known for several years. He hasn't found any of my caches yet, but he's found several of my geocoins and travel bugs that have made it to his neck of the woods.

Since I'll be driving by Mono Lake, it would be criminal not to stop and view the Tufa Towers and get the earthcache of the same name. These towers are mineral deposits left over when the lake was at a higher level. The city of Los Angeles bought up the water rights in this area and has siphoned a great part of the water off for its own thirst, but laws are in place that will hopefully prevent the total desecration of this lake. This should be an interesting cache to find. For you cinematic buffs out there, this episode of Los Angeles history is chronicled well in the movie, "Chinatown" staring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.

Since 395 goes into Nevada, I'd have to get at least a couple of caches in that state as well. 12 Resting Trees, is one of many I could choose from, since it's large and apparently in a good spot to find.

If we do get over to Alcatraz, then we'll have to Escape from Alcataz just to say we have.

At the moment, there are 129 caches on that map that can be found. They won't all be found. I know that, but it's still fun to think about it. As I've gone over the maps, I've looked at many of the cache pages and thought that a particular cache looked interesting and I'd like to find it. Many on this list are like that. We'll see. Snow could close the I-80 and I'll have to come back down by way of Hwy 99. That's OK too. It's a journey, no matter which way I go.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
Manzanar Virtual Cache - by GoodDogSD