D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
October
2008
High Tech Treasure Hunt
Page: 3Sharing some of his favorite "geocache moments," Johnson says he proposed to his wife at a site at the Catwalk near Glenwood. "I went out the day before and hid a ring box with a note in the cache. I mean, I wasn't going to leave the actual ring for some cachers to find! The next day, Shari and I hiked to the site."
Confused by the ring box, his bride-to-be read the note.
"She just started screaming and crying. Finally I said, 'Well, are you going to answer?' And she says, 'Yes! Yes! Yes!'"
Suddenly he looks up and points out a rock formation vaguely resembling a skull on the mountainside way above us. This is Skeleton Canyon, Johnson says. He checks the GPS: 1.94 miles to go.
We pass another pile of bear scat — this one smaller, but also moister, more recent. We become ever more vigilant.
Clumps of manzanita brush, more creek crossings, more bear scat. By the fifth huge pile of scat, Johnson seems to read the growing fear on my face.
"That one's too old to worry about," he says, then adds with a mischievous smile, "Well, much anyway."
With less than three-quarters of a mile to go, we lose the trail again.
"I don't remember being this far up," Johnson says, as we gaze down into a valley, lush from the recent rains. "Good excuse to take some pictures, though," he says, snapping a few. We pick our way back down and regain the trail.
"This is why I decided to put a cache out here," Johnson says. "Turkey Creek Hot Springs is notoriously hard to find, and I thought this would help people and motivate them to make the trip."
Abruptly we are stopped in our tracks by a wall of rock. Johnson points to a small, tight tunnel under the stone mass.
"You're kidding," I say.
"Well, it's that or walk alllllll the way around it," Johnson replies. I weigh my fear against the fatigue in my legs. Muscles win: I'll do the shortcut.
Johnson takes off his pack and goes first, crawling on his belly at the lowest point. I take a deep breath and follow. As we reach the other side, Johnson says brightly, "Now all we have left is a little rock-hopping!"
We splash through the creek, sometimes up to our knees. The warmish water from the natural springs soothes my tired legs.
I think of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, and the joke about how Ginger did everything Fred did, but she did it backwards and in high heels. I muse that I'm taking at least one and a half steps to each of Johnson's long-legged strides. As I'm thus musing — okay, grumbling — I stumble on a river rock and drop my notepad into the creek.
I catch myself quickly and snatch the pad before it floats out of sight, shaking it frantically, checking the amount of ink-run. I hear John Lennon singing "Instant karma's gonna get you" in my head. I resolve to get myself together, as the next line in the song instructs, and banish my grumbling thoughts.
Johnson calls, "Just 500 more feet!" He's springing ahead now. Buoyed by his enthusiasm, I find a spring returns to my own tired step as well.
We climb up and find ourselves on a bluff. Here the water is so hot that the creek is actually steaming. Johnson points out a dip in the earth, now encircled by river rocks.
"All you have to do is dig a little trench into this low spot and the water mixes, and it becomes a pool you can soak in," he says. This'll be a nice reward, I think, also readying our muscles for the hike back home.
He shows me the GPS, clearly indicating the cache site just up a small hill from where we are. Eager as a kid on Christmas morning, Johnson practically sprints up to a tree on the hillside.
"Here it is," he calls, pulling the cache from its hiding place. He pops the top of the square plastic box and examines the contents.
"Well, we've got a toy car," he says. "Ooh, look! Here's a one-dollar coin from the Mirage!" He holds up the memento from the Las Vegas casino-hotel.
He reads aloud some of the notes from previous cachers, the most recent from just a couple of weeks ago. "Lots of nice comments," he says. "This is actually a lot of traffic for such a remote site."
He decides to take the Mirage coin, a suitable souvenir for his efforts today. I offer some items to enrich the cache's swag: a New York commemorative quarter and a humorous notepad with a 50s-ish housewife smiling on the cover, saying "Make your own damn dinner!" Johnson laughs and puts my offerings in the cache box, then returns it to its hiding place.
We rest a bit at the spring, eat some snacks, then head back. Though it took us three-and-a-half hours from car to cache, we navigate the smoother return trip in two-and-a-half hours.
Our legs are aching in earnest by the time we reach my SUV, and we speedily suck down the two extra bottles of water I've stowed in the vehicle. We've beaten the rain clouds, but our sore muscles and the falling darkness rule out a side trip to a pottery-shard site that Johnson had suggested on our outbound hike.
"Shards!" Johnson hollers humorously as we pass by the turnoff and continue, instead, on the road toward home. "Another trip for another day," he says with a smile, then asks mischievously, "You game?"
Check out www.geocaching.com for sites near you. For info on the State Parks Geocaching Challenge, go to www.emnrd.state.nm.us/PRD, or call (888) 667-2757.
Donna Clayton Lawder is senior editor of Desert Exposure. She still hasn't mastered using a GPS but gets by with a little help from her geocaching friends.
1 | 2 | 3 | ALL