US Trip 2019 – Day 22 – The Sonoran Desert

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The route this day took us from Williams to Tucson, via the southern end of Arizona to grab a county we were missing. Another great day on the road!

Approximate time on road/out caching:  13 hours
Total miles driven: 406.8 mi / 654,7 km
Total caches found: 23
Total DNF: 1
States visited: Arizona
Famous places visited: Phoenix
Most memorable cache: GC8CY6K Road to nowhere
Biggest surprise: The extreme rain
Weather: Sunny, clouds, rain, thunderstorm
Highest temperature: 110°F / 43,3°C
Lowest temperature: 55°F / 12,8°C

Breakfast-FTF

At the event yesterday, we heard rumors about a new cache. So after getting a really early brekafast, right after 6am, we started on the quick detour to GC8CY6K Road to nowhere. Would we make it?

Yes! We were first to find at 6:35am! A nice bonus on top of this, was the other bonus caches along the way back to the interstate.

Montezuma

A couple caches (and a couple hours) later, we arrived at GCZ5F8 Montezuma Well and the virtual in the same spot. A very cool spot! And the friendly rangers here helped us find the last answer we needed – rangers are awesome!

After the well, we continued to the other end and GCF210 The People Next Door at Montezuma Castle.

Arcosanti

From the ancient buildings at Montezuma, we continued to the modern urban laboratory Arcosanti, and the cache GC7A2B future city. A very interesting project!

It’s hot in Phoenix

After a couple stops, and some heavy interstate traffic, we arrived in downtown Phoenix. Strangely enough, there was neither cars nor people here. Once we parked, and got out, we understood why. This place is hot!

We found all the virtuals in the Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza, and one more along the way out of the city. A very hot, but awesome stop!

Thunderstorms ahead

We’re planning to complete the counties we’re missing in Arizona on this trip, so we had to take a quick trip down to Santa Cruz County. Why we just didn’t drive the few miles extra last year, is a questions we don’t know the answer to…. While driving down there, the media center in the car started alerting us about an upcoming thunderstorm. And sure enough, we got some really bad weather a bit further south.

Luckily it didn’t last very long, but it lasted long enough for one of the cars in front of us to lose control, and spin. No major accidents, and we made it to Santa Cruz safely – and found the caches we needed. We also ended up with a DNF, where we found nothing more than a couple mice inside the road sign.

Back north

After grabbing the county, we turned around, and headed back north. A couple stops later, we arrived at our hotel, north of Tucson. And before we parked, we got to enjoy another «light show», with some thunder in the distant.

Pictures

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