US Trip 2018 – Day 15 – A Golden Day

In Out caching
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The route this day took us from Lava Hot Springs to Layton, via a lot of GeoTour caches, and a lot of virtual caches. A long day, with lots to see and so many great places visited! This day is what geocaching is really about. So much fun!

Approximate time on road/out caching:  14 hours
Total miles driven: 276.6 mi / 445,14 km
Total cahes found: 40
Total DNF: 3
States visited: Idaho, Utah
Famous places visited: Golden Spike National Historic Site, Antelope Island
Most memorable cache: GC6FD7 Golden Spike (lots of other very memorable finds as well)
Biggest surprise: The perfect timing at Golden Spike NHS
Weather: Sunny, cloudy
Highest temperature: 29,4°C / 85°F
Lowest temperature: 11,7°C / 53°F

Hmm, not sure this is the fastest way

We have pre-programmed route files for the Garmin Nüvicam (produced by cachetur.no), so after being started, the Nüvicam just takes us from cache to cache. It is however free to calculate the best route between… And we’re a bit unsure if it really did that this morning… Instead of bringing us back to the main road, it took us on a dirt road that we just had to hope would eventually lead us to the interstate.

Luckily for us, it did 😛 And it also gave us a reason to stop for a bonus cache 😀

Norwegian explorers

On the second bonus cache, GC2A6R9 J.O.E. 36 Virginia, we noticed something familiar in the log. It was Viking Princess that had been there just a couple days before us! Not often we are this close to other Norwegian geocachers, this far from home!

Our kind of garden

We only had a couple more stops before we arrived at GCCD59 BOYD MARBLE PARK. And this is really our kind of garden! So much fun, and so much to see! We love it when people not only are cool enough to make something like this, but is also nice enough to allow the public to come enjoy it.

A garden full of rockets

The next garden, GC6QYM3 Utah GeoTour-Box Elder – Rocket Garden, wasn’t bad either! This is the kind of quirky tourist attraction we enjoy visiting. And to make it even better, we found three caches and didn’t spot a single muggle.

The spike that was golden

The day was already as great as it could be, or so we thought. When we arrived at GC6FD7 Golden Spike, our intention was to find the information we needed, take some photos, and leave.

But sometimes, the stars align and everything is on your side. And exactly that happened now. We arrived just in time for the show, and we got to hear the full story from the very knowledgeable ranger. We haven’t done very much ranger led activities, yet. But this experience definitely make us want to do more of them!

There’s something fascinating about listening to people talk about things they are passionate for, and things they know a lot about. So we got sucked into this, and couldn’t even think about leaving until this whole thing was over. The smiles on our faces simply wouldn’t let us.

Seeing the two trains approach and park right next to each other, while listening to the stories, was so much better than anything we could have expected when we went to find this cache. We definitely arrived at the right place to the right time!

Golden Spike NHS is much fun, and highly recommended!

Oh no, closed!

We usually have very good control, and have all the information we need on our plan. But somehow we managed to miss the opening hours at GC5QZRA Utah GeoTour-Box Elder – It’s for the Birds!. So when we got here, the gate was closed 🙁 Luckily for us, we still had enough GeoTour caches in Box Elder on the plan.

The next was a lot easier

The next two was a lot easier, GC5HP0W Utah GeoTour-Box Elder – Young at Heart! didn’t have any closing hours, and GC5QZTM Utah GeoTour-Box Elder – Goin’ fishing at W Bay was still open.

Hunting virtuals

After finding a couple other caches, we had some virtual caches on our list. We don’t (okay, we have some now) have so many virtuals back home in Norway, so we try to find as many as we can when out traveling. So we managed to visit three in a row in and around Ogden.

To the top!

Then we took a quick detour to GC64CDT Utah GeoTour-Weber – Thank You Dr. Cobabe!!. The road up here was steep, so steep that the car decided to turn off the cruise control. It actually said “Road too steep” (or something like that). But once we got up, the detour was so worth it! Awesome view from up here.

Old places

We got the next two GeoTour caches we needed in Weber on the way back down, GC64C02 Utah GeoTour-Weber – Eden Old Town and GC64BZG Utah GeoTour-Weber – The Oldest Saloon in Utah.

The scenic city

After a couple more virtuals in Ogden, we arrived in downtown. We parked the car, and did the next caches on foot. GC6QH6H Utah GeoTour-Weber – Historic 25th Street took us up and down 25th street, where we also found GCFB32 Ogden Union Depot.

Finally!

GCQJQB Eye on Riverdale has been on our plan several times before, but it has always pointed the wrong way, or we have arrived here too late (after dark). Today was different, it pointed the right way! So we parked in the same spot as last time, and walked as fast as we could up to GZ. Once we got there, the camera updated, and we got the picture! That was actually kinda crazy, because the camera didn’t update at all since we checked it on the parking lot in Ogden. So we could have had to stand here a long time, but we didn’t. This day is awesome.

The ranch

We needed some GeoTour caches in Davis county as well, so we had to take the long way out to GC689AR Utah GeoTour-Davis – Fielding Garr Ranch.  But we couldn’t do that without stopping at some other caches along the way out 😉

The ranch was closed, but we could still look around outside. And, we could still find the cache 😀

The locals

Along the way back, we got to almost say hello to one of the locals. But we kept a safe distance, ant let him cross without being disturbed.

We did stop for another cache on the way out, but had to give up since it was almost impossible to cope with the extremely bad smell at GC73RNN speed limit.

Just one more

We still needed one more GeoTour cache, GC68HX2 Utah GeoTour-Davis – Great Salt Lake Shorelands. We made it here just in time for sunset, and barely managed to find the numbers we needed. But we did, and with that we completed the requirement for Davis county as well.

We stopped at the two other caches along the way back to the car, and then it was time to get to the hotel. After a long day like this, we deserved some rest. But wow, what a day this was!

Pictures

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