US Trip 2014 – And Now for Something Completely Different

In Out caching
Scroll this

After spending about a week in Utah, it was now time for something completely different, Colorado.

Utah is one of my favorite states, but since we’ve never been to Colorado before, Colorado might just end up being a favorite as well. Who knows.

But before leaving Utah, we had a few more caches to find.

The first big stop today was The Hole N” The Rock. We spent some time just walking around the area. We really enjoy places like this! Too bad we don’t have any them in Norway. We took lots of photos, unfortunately not all of them turned out as focused as they should. That’s what happen when you accidentally switch the lens to manual focus. But there’s no problem seeing what’s written on the doors of this outhouse.

Outhouse

After exploring the area, we continued towards the state border. The next stop was Wilson Arch, one of the last arches we visit in Utah (on this trip). The thing that makes this arch so amazing is how close it is to the highway. Everyone is able to see this, and if they do the earthcache, learn about how it was created.

Wilson Arch

We’ve done lots of earthcaches in Utah, and even developed our own, so it made perfect sense to stop at one more before leaving the state. The last earthcache (on this trip) was GC4KYTQ Churck Rock, our 40th earthcache in Utah!

After Churck Rock, we only found a few more traditionals and the last find in Utah on this trip was GC1GCC0 Border Jumpers ~ Telluride. And as in several other logs this day, another team of cachers appeared to be slightly ahead of us on the same route.

Now it was time to leave the red rock country, and head towards new experiences in Colorado.

The first cache we had planned was GCJAK0 Speed Trap Colorado, hopefully without being caught in a speed trap. We almost ended up finding another cache as the first, but had to give it up due to bad road quality.

We did not get caught in any speed trap (main reason being that we obey the law), but we did see lots of police cars nearby. We found the cache within seconds, and can now cross of another state on the list!

We found a lot of easy traditionals (and DNFed a few) along the way to Mesa Verde. We stopped at the Colorado Welcome Center in Cortez, but there was no way we could find the cache there – not even with help from the staff!

When we arrived at the Mesa Verde Visitor Center, we quickly realized that we had not done the proper planning for this park.

To find the only earthcache in the park, we needed tickets and time to join a ranger guided tour. We did know that we had to purchase the tickets, but we did not know how far it was to drive from the entrance to the start of the tour. We got the tickets, but were not sure if we had the time nor the energy.

We arrived in time for the tour, but decided it wasn’t worth it. It was better to see some of the other dwellings, skip the cache and get to the hotel before tomorrow. Maybe we’ll be back some time to do the tour and the earthcache.

We hiked down to Spruce Tree House, and got to see cliff dwellings up close. Clever how they used the landscape to their advantage!

On the way back from Spruce Tree House

We found a few more caches along the road, before ending up in Durango. One of them was located in the garden of a local artist. This is not the first garden full of art we’ve visited on this trip, we’ve really enjoyed them all! I think it’s awesome to see people that live their dream like this, and that they let the world come see it!

I enjoy finding as many cache types as possible in each country we visit, and we’ve been missing a Wherigo in the US. We did find a Wherigo in Seattle, but that wasn’t on our plan. While planning we found the Wherigo in Durango on the map, and I checked with the owner if this was one we should be able to do.

Surprisingly enough, we found a empty parking space only a few feet away from the starting point. The Wherigo itself turned out to bee a bit longer than we had thought, but we got to see a lot of this nice little town! Once we eventually made it to the end, finding the cache itself was easy.

After the Wherigo, we continued towards Pagosa Springs, where we had booked a hotel for the night.

One of the last caches we found were a virtual historical cache, the second stage led us to a nice old bridge. We almost left the place without knowing that we had been only a few feet away from a traditional cache. Luckily I saw it appear on the map after logging the virtual, and ran back to find it.

Me and the bridge

A few caches later, the last one being real close to the hotel, we arrived at the hotel in Pagosa Springs.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments