A little cross country cachin'

Moving from Tennessee to New Mexico offers all sorts of geocaching possibilities, not to mention a chance to see all sorts of new sites and attractions. But for me, the move was going to be a grueling 2 1/2 day slog with little time for fun stops. Unlike our last move, where I planned a few geocache stops along the way, I had nothing planned for this trip. We were just going to drive straight on the I-40, leaving Wednesday around noon and trying to arrive in Santa Fe early Friday afternoon. It would be a lot fo driving, with my dog and our 5 birds in the car with us. We'd stop when we got tired, and that was about it for planning. But since I now own a smartphone, I couldn't resist looking up a few caches where ever we stopped. And in this way geocaching provided a little bit of relief from the long-haul drive.

Our first stop was at a rest-station in Tennessee, near Carthage. As we sat and munched snacks, I checked the geocaching app and sure enough, there was a traditional cache and virtual right in the rest stop. I went and visited the Virtual, but decided not to hunt the traditional, a micro placed right in front of the visitor information center and swarming with people. The Virtual cache, Saddler's Rest, was at a small cemetery, and just far enough away from the rest area that no one seemed to bother visiting it. It took the dog over and we made the find.

Saddler's Rest

Our big Yellow Penske at the Rest stop

From Carthage we booked it across the state and ended up near Memphis in the evening. While stopped for gas, I looked up pet-friendly hotels and found one nearby, A Days Inn on Elvis Rd. I booked us a room and we made our way over, only to find out that we were in a seriously Elvis themed hotel, only two blocks from Graceland. It was gaudy and ridiculous, but it was a room, and we slept of the day's miles.

Before leaving the next morning, I made a little geocaching expedition down across the Mississippi border. Finding a geocache in each state is one of those things that geocachers can't seem to help themselves from doing, myself included. We weer only 2 miles from the border anyways. We ended up finding two geocaches, although one was still in Tennessee. Rock-N-Roll Ghosttown and one just over the border in Southhaven. The excursion took about a half an hour, but it was nice and cool in the early morning, and we were back on the road soon enough.

Hamming it up at GC2TVNP

Sasha looks on at the Southhaven cache. 

Just some of the kitsch at our hotel in Graceland.

We scooted through Arkansas with barely a stop, and I didn't find any geocaches there. Some geocachers might think this weird of me, to pass through the whole state and not try to find at least one cache, but since I had found an Arkansas cache when we moved to Tennessee two years ago, I didn't feel any strong urge to make a find this time through. We did make one pit-stop in Arkansas, but there weren't any geocaches nearby. Pretty soon we found ourselves in Oklahoma, which is a big big state to cross. We ate lunch at one of the highway rest-stops and once again there happenend to be a geocache nearby. Actually there were three geocaches at this one rest-stop, but I only went on a walk to find one. The dog needed to go for a bathroom break so off we went in search of fertilized ground and a geocache. I found the geocache, GCRQG4, and much to my surprise, it had been found only the day before by one of my friends from Oak Ridge TN, Geoboater! I couldn't help but call him up and see if he was still in Oklahoma. He wasn't, he was already in Dallas, but it was still surreal that we made the same stop on our respective road trips only a day apart. especially weird since I had seen him in Knoxville just 5 days earlier at a geocaching event.

All the pets got out at this rest stop in Oklahoma

We made it as far as Elk City Oklahoma before calling it a day. There weren't any geocaches near our hotel, and nothing in town that seemed all that interesting to go find, so I didn't make a find in Elk City. The next day put us through Texas and into New Mexico. Just an hour into our drive that morning, my dad, who was in the other car, got really drowsy, so we pulled off at a gas station about 20 miles east of Amarillo. After filling up gas, my dad took a quick cat nap and I checked the geocaching app to see if there was something nearby to pass the time. There was a geocache across the interstate called the Bug Ranch so I put the dog on a leash and we walked over. I don't know what I was expecting, but the row of half-buried on-end VW bugs, spray-painted a rainbow of colors was not it. This just is one of those nice surprises, a neat little local attraction that I would have missed entirely if not for seeking out a geocache here. The other funny thing is that the rest of my family was visiting the Cadillac Ranch on the west side of Amarillo at about the same time.

The logbook is the VWs. here's my sig

And that was it for geocaching. We caught up with the rest of my family at the Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, NM. There is an awesome earthcache here, but we found it a few years ago. That didn't stop us from jumping into the icy waters once again. The Blue hole left us feeling clean and refreshed as we finished the last hour of our trip to Santa Fe. All said, I found 5 geocaches over 1000 miles of driving and 5 states. Nothing to boast about, but each cache was a nice little diversion from the monotony of driving, and well worth the effort. Geocaching earns its keep once again!

Jumping into New Mexico, Head First!