The route this day took us from Twentynine Palms to Laughlin, via the HMD and Route 66 powertrails. Another great (but very hot) day on the road!

Approximate time on road/out caching:  13 hours, 30 minutes
Total miles driven: 195.9 mi / 315,3 km
Total caches found: 385
Total DNF: 2
States visited: California, Nevada
Famous places visited: Roy’s
Most memorable cache: GC1159B Mother Road Plaque
Biggest surprise: Being passed by the Police twice, on the shoulder, without them stopping to ask what we were doing
Weather: Sunny, some clouds
Highest temperature: 113°F / 45°C
Lowest temperature: 79°F / 26,1°C

Early up

As usual, we left the hotel well before 7am – we had a lot of caches to find. We arrived at the first, GC466KV HMD-0758, just a little after 6:30. We’ve been on this road many times before, so we had found some of the caches – but we still had some left to find along the way up to Amboy.

Finishing a long term project

The traffic wasn’t too bad, but it was a lot more than we expected. The shoulder however was a lot better than expected, with only a couple soft spots. After several hours, we finally finished the HMD trail almost exactly at noon. A project that has taken us four years. We’ve really enjoyed this trail, and it’s almost a bit sad that we don’t have anything left of it to find.

Back where we left yesterday

Since we didn’t know how far we would get, we decided to go back and continue where we left yesterday. So after finding some of the HMD «thank you caches», we drove to GC2JZB8 271-Route 66 and continued on the Route 66 trail. We were a lot slower now, for some reason (maybe partly because of the heat?), but we still managed to find a lot of caches.

Expensive, but probably worth it

We continued until we got to GC2K0BJ 412-Route 66, then we decided it was time to head towards the hotel. But we first had to stop to get some really expensive gas. But it was probably worth it – better than running out of gas in the middle of nowhere!

The Mother Road

Before we could head towards the Interstate, we just had to take the short detour to find GC1159B Mother Road Plaque (and some of the caches along the road). The road was partially closed, so we were all alone on the final stretch to this cache. It was awesome!

We also made sure to stop at a couple caches along the way back.

We need a virtual today as well

We only had a quick stop at a I-40 rest area, so when we got closer to the hotel, we had to stop at GC9498 Oops 1873 – Oops 1974. Can’t have a day without a virtual cache 😉 The sign appears to have been changed after the virtual was made, making this a lot harder than we would like this late on the day.

Just one more

We just had one more stop to make along the way to the hotel, and that was GC68Z53 Going RVing, right near the entrance to the hotel parking. Even though we had spent a significant amount of hours on the road, we still had to check out the facilities at the hotel (or resort, as they called it).

Pictures