It's been a little while since my family last went camping. Actually, we haven't gone camping this year yet. So it was about time we got our act together and went for a weekend camping trip. I picked a small campground on the upper boundary of the Pecos wilderness, the Santa Barbara campground, as our destination. It was not too far away, only two hours, so we could leave Friday after my wife got back from work. It looked to be fairly remote though, and far enough off the beaten path that hopefully it would not be too crowded. I was pretty worried that it would be full since it was the July 4th weekend, but when we finally drove into the campground, there were several vacant sites, and one choice one right by the river. Primo!
Our camping days were pretty relaxed. We tried our hand at fishing on the Rio Santa Barbara, ate all the traditional camp food, swung in hammocks, and more or less dithered away large chunks of the day. The perfect kind of get away. There were, of course,
a few geocaches that I wanted to find as well. The first one,
GC3MFQ0, was about a mile up a trail that started at the campground and plunged south deep into the Pecos wilderness. The trail followed the river and we brought along our small fishing rod to cast for trout in as many places as we could. At one spot, 1/4 mile from the cache, I hooked a really nice sized trout, which thrilled everybody. The cache location was a perfect turn-around spot, where the canyon walls on either side closed in with rocky bluffs, and the river made nice trout pools. Alas, I searched and searched for the very lonely cache, but could not turn it up. We did manage to catch another trout though, so I consider the hike a smashing success. I would have liked to explore deeper into the Pecos along this trail, but the kids were ready to head back and make more camp-food, so that is what we did.
On our last day, my son and I were up early and I took him on a cache run down towards the town of Penasco. There were a handful of caches there that had yet to be found, including one that looked especially interesting,
GC6VWHD, a multi cache with the promise of a large toy filled final. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find one of the stages of this multi, and ended up returning to camp with only half the coords for the final. While everyone else relaxed at camp, I made myself busy trying to guess where the final might be and plotting a search. After we packed up camp and struck for home, I detoured us back down to the stage my son and I couldn't find in the morning. this time, something caught my eye, the edge of a small plastic baggie tucked in the crevice behind a wooden plank. Aha! No need for a difficult guess-and-search hunt for the final. I plugged in the complete set of coords, and seeing the final was not far away, we all went together to make the find. It did not disappoint! The kids were thrilled, and I was happy to nab another FTF as well.
Our camping days were pretty relaxed. We tried our hand at fishing on the Rio Santa Barbara, ate all the traditional camp food, swung in hammocks, and more or less dithered away large chunks of the day. The perfect kind of get away. There were, of course, a few geocaches that I wanted to find as well. The first one, GC3MFQ0, was about a mile up a trail that started at the campground and plunged south deep into the Pecos wilderness. The trail followed the river and we brought along our small fishing rod to cast for trout in as many places as we could. At one spot, 1/4 mile from the cache, I hooked a really nice sized trout, which thrilled everybody. The cache location was a perfect turn-around spot, where the canyon walls on either side closed in with rocky bluffs, and the river made nice trout pools. Alas, I searched and searched for the very lonely cache, but could not turn it up. We did manage to catch another trout though, so I consider the hike a smashing success. I would have liked to explore deeper into the Pecos along this trail, but the kids were ready to head back and make more camp-food, so that is what we did.
On our last day, my son and I were up early and I took him on a cache run down towards the town of Penasco. There were a handful of caches there that had yet to be found, including one that looked especially interesting, GC6VWHD, a multi cache with the promise of a large toy filled final. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find one of the stages of this multi, and ended up returning to camp with only half the coords for the final. While everyone else relaxed at camp, I made myself busy trying to guess where the final might be and plotting a search. After we packed up camp and struck for home, I detoured us back down to the stage my son and I couldn't find in the morning. this time, something caught my eye, the edge of a small plastic baggie tucked in the crevice behind a wooden plank. Aha! No need for a difficult guess-and-search hunt for the final. I plugged in the complete set of coords, and seeing the final was not far away, we all went together to make the find. It did not disappoint! The kids were thrilled, and I was happy to nab another FTF as well.
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