Walk of Honor

The Tadpole and I headed up into the high desert again yesterday.  It was the first day of a 9 day vacation for me, and I wanted to get the last couple of quads in the desert that had still eluded me for the Los Angeles County Quadrangle Challenge cache.  We also stopped and found a very nice virtual in the city of Lancaster.  Although, this one wasn't in any quadrangle that I needed, it was a stop well spent.

I'd been here three years ago in the exact same spot with some other caching friends of mine. It was August and I remember it being hot, but that didn't stop us from enjoying the day.  We solved a mystery cache involving the Lancaster Public Library and found that cache.  One of the stops on the virtual we found yesterday is right outside the library entrance.  I'm at a loss as to why we didn't do this virtual back then, but for some strange reason, we didn't.

In actuality, that worked out for the good, since I was able to take my astronomy loving son up here where he could learn about some of the pioneers in the aviation industry as well as the early pioneers of NASA, probably before it was even called NASA.  Monuments to different pioneers line Lancaster Blvd. on both sides of the street, with information about various people who were instrumental in the testing of different aircraft.  Neil Armstrong was highlighted, as was Fred Haise one of the astronauts on Apollo 13.  Chuck Yeager and Jimmy Doolittle were both highlighted with monuments and murals on the sides of buildings along the street.

As we gathered the information needed to qualify for the find of the virtual cache, there was one monument that stood out.  This particular pilot shared our last name.  I pointed it out to the Tadpole and we both got a "Wow, that's cool" moment.  I wondered whether we could have been possibly related to the man, but most of my relatives came from the northern Indiana and Ohio area.  We were the first in my dad's family to move west.

The cache needed 7 specific bits of information.  After we'd walked the entire route, on both sides of the street, we realized that we missed the first bit of information.  Based upon where we'd found the other bits of information, we figured where that information should have been, so we walked back down there to check out the monuments again.

I told the Tadpole that we needed to be systematic on our approach to this one, so we started on one side and read through each monument.  It didn't take long to get the correct information this time.  We found it on the pilot who had the same last name as us.  We'd been both so interested in thinking about that aspect of the pilot, that we hadn't looked close enough at the rest of the information on the monument.  Needless to say, we got a good laugh out of that.

There was a bonus in all of this as well.  Because of our trip to get that last bit of information, we took a slightly different route to get back to the car.  At the base of a building near the entrance of an alley, we found a very nice looking benchmark.  We'd walked by it one other time, but for some reason, I spotted it this time.  That was a nice addition to an already enjoyable day with my son.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Aerospace Walk of Honor - by DoeWalking
Book Worm - by Team Perks