Been Busier Than A One-Armed Paper Hanger.........

We headed to Ocotillo Wells last Thursday to stake out a claim for others to arrive later. Still had some time left Thursday so Becky and I went geocaching with Wayne and Phyllis. Found a few caches and headed back to camp for dinner and a campfire. Altogether I think 10 rigs showed up for the weekend and other Yuma folks stayed at a nearby Motel. Yuma was well represented.

There was still a lot of mud and standing water in places.........a couple of OFs waded through the water to retrieve a cache located on the Warning Sign. Friday night we had a group cookout, we had rib eyes and I cooked them up for JJ and Char...........JJ had truck problems on Friday and didn't arrive until late Friday evening. Got here in time for some more campfire BSing. Later that evening JJ and I took out the RZR and Rhino and two others were dumb enough to ride with us. Found 2 or 3 caches by flashlight and then headed back to camp. Saturday the event started and the placement of temporary caches had us traveling all over the 80,000 square acres. Recent rain really carved out some ditches and made the off-roading pretty nasty in places. Rhino and RZR handled everything quite well. Lots of interesting areas in this California State Park........I found the Pumpkin Patch to be one of my favorites. Guess wind and rain erodes the rocks into various round shapes. With a little imagination you could almost see the pumpkins.

Another interesting area was Devil's Slide and Shell Reef (I think that was it's name). Lots of ATV and side by side were climbing the hills........personally I prefer the sand dunes.......it's softer if you tumble down the hill. The Rangers had little stops here and there with information on the various areas........they also had a display of a Scorpion.........largest one I've ever seen, around here they grow to +5 inches in length. Another stop had a coyote mounted and a game to play........you had to match "poop" with the animal who made it. We did and got a little sticker, unfortunately I lost mine and can't remember what it said...........oh well, we became "poop" experts by matching up the samples. We did climb up on top of one of the little hills. I was following JJ and my gps ses the cache is about 500 feet away, I was going to go around the hill but JJ runs right up the side of it. Once we got on top we decided it was a little too steep the go down the other side. So, down the hill and around it. We found the cache and a bunch of fossils embedded in the rocks.

Very nice weekend and we'll probably add it to our list for next year. The event was the first ever geocaching event to be held in a California State Park...........some of the parks won't even let a geocache be placed in them. I guess it's up to the superintendent who manages the park and we found one where the Boss was geocaching friendly.

We received tickets for the evening raffle/drawings for each cache we found and for completing other requirements. JJ & Char and Becky and I found 52 caches and ended up with 80 raffle tickets each. Unfortunately we didn't win anything although some members of our group won some prizes. That evening the master of ceremonies asked how many caches people had found.....top number was 53. We quit about an hour early or else we could have exceeded 53 caches............so it goes. No prize for most finds...........not even recognition!!

Last three days Becky and I have been moved stuff from one M/H to another. We're pooped and still more things to do.......maybe we'll be done on Friday. Later. W&B