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Must do geocaches


lordsamiam

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I am planning a cross country roadtrip. It is including must see museums, historical sights, state/national parks and geocaches. What are some of your favorite caches? Bonus points if there are mutiple within the same area. Please include cache name(s) and the location optionally what makes it so great. Cheers!

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What states are you planing to hit?

All of the continental 48. I want random suggestions. Bring on the random caches. If it is in a series great, if its not great! As long as I can connect it somehow on the giant dot dot I am planning I will include it!

It's a hard question. What do you enjoy? How long are you traveling? How much time do you have to spend in any one area? What vehicle will you be driving? What time of the year will you be in particular areas? Do you like to hike, kayak, or bike?

 

I plan my trips for particular locations and experiences and let the caches follow. I have taken only one trip because of a cache (the now archived APE cache in Washington) but have found more than enough caches wherever we have gone. In Utah, we drove near a cache that some have made a destination because of its age but did not stop since there were amazing petroglyphs panels (with fun caches) that we did not want to miss. In Nevada we skipped all the repetitive cache trails, but found nice caches at the little Al'ien Inn, Lunar Crater, the Valley of Fire, a Boot Hill in Pioche, and a trilobite fossil cache. In Arizona, we ended up 60 miles from the nearest polygamist to visit a single virtual and had a bucket list experience at the Toroweap Overlook - but you need to have the right vehicle with the right road conditions or make alternative arrangements.

 

Many of favorites are in my favorite list, profile, photo gallery - or my Aura Raines and Flickr page elsewhere - but generally the cache was not the reason to stop and some of the best "finds" not be listed. If I was taking an extensive road trip I would include:

 

California - the northern coast, redwoods, Lassen, Monterey to Big Sur and Morro Rock (my favorite kayak cache is in the Elkhorn Slough), Yosemite, Tahoe and the high country lakes, Mono Lake (tufas and fissures), the Eastern Sierra (including the Alabama Hills, Manzanar, mountain lakes, high desert, travertine springs, and a UniRoyal Girl cache. I have some leads on a semi-secret petroglyph panel near Bishop so I am trying to figure out how to get back there, but there is a more public glyph tour cache nearby.), Joshua Tree, Death Valley. Around where I live, there are places to explore on Tamalpais, Angel Island, Alcatraz, Pt. Reyes, and north to the Mendocino Coast, including some of my own caches in Marin - follow the trail of Bigfoot or find the lost treasure of an old character on a short but beautiful trail. Caches will take you to the hub cap ranch, an albino redwood, a quirky museum/collection in Los Angeles, and just about any place you can imagine. Remember that G is for Ghost Town if you are coming up the Central Valley.

 

Arizona - the Northern Rim, Antelope Canyon, red rocks, ruins, glyphs, vortexes, and other wonders in Sedona, a corner in Winslow, Canyon de Chelly, Wupatki, a fun cache at a lookout tower North of the Grand Canyon, Rock Art Ranch, Monument Valley, the Superstitions, Tonto National Monument.

 

Utah - a lifetime might not be enough with Zion and an unforgettable wet walk up the narrows, Bryce (and the Wall St Avalanche earthcache), slot canyons of the Escalante near magical rock garden formations (we found a guide helpful), Sega Canyon, Goblin state park (wow!), Arches, the Great Gallery of Horseshoe Canyon (my own earthcache), Canyonlands, Fremont State Park, Helper (with a nice cafe where we found a great work of art), Capitol Reef, a nice and easy slot/narrow not too far from Kodachrome with a cache at the end, the Gunsmoke ghost town and real ghost towns, Nine Mile Canyon, Rochester, and other petroglyph sites, and a hundred areas in between with some of my favorite roadside attraction/caches (Gigal, UFO Landing Site, and more). Maybe two lifetimes would be enough. I am hoping to return this fall.

 

Nevada - from the Pioneer Saloon to the Special Memory wedding chapel caches, there are some fun places around Vegas, but Red Rock Canyon (meet the Flintstones there), the Valley of Fire, Mt. Charleston, Rhyolite (ruins, art, and a few caches), ghost towns, traces of the Old Spanish Trail, and other locations are better than the casinos. Bring water. During one visit we rescued someone who started to run the Red Rock loop in 113 degree heat and had run out of water. If you head up toward ET decide if you want to look down or up- I recommend the latter, but stop to talk to the folks at the Inn. Don't rush - you could even find a cache if you head out to "meet" the cammo dudes near the Area 51 border. And did I mention some caches near Alamo near a unique petroglyph site? Or the cache near ruins of a brothel on the other side of Tonopah, which has a great cemetery cache in itself?

 

Wyoming - Yellowstone and the Tetons. But I am now looking at places east of there that are on my must do list for our next visit.

 

New Mexico - from Carlsbad and the Roswell museum to the cache at the Aztec Crash site, the old town Albuquerque ghost tour has a cache that is nearby a fun shoe tree cache (on the Roadside America list) and not too far from petroglyph national monument), Billy the Kid country, Bandolier, Jemez, Acoma, Malpais, Gila Cliff dwellings, some interesting things around Santa Fe and Taos, the Bisti Badlands, the Ojito back country.

 

Somehow, this got me thinking about the Cahokia Mounds near St Louis and a place in the city that has the most amazing museum/collection/art/slide you might find - absolutely unique - with a nondescript cache nearby (next to a very good brewery). I could go on - for the southwest, northwest, New England, and other regions, but there is no need.

 

In each of these areas, I could have found more caches, but what we found kept us busy and the locations will give us better memories than a container. When traveling, I might look for a cache to record our visit to the site or post a picture, but we do not want to spend so much time looking that we miss the main attraction. I can always get a smiley, but may not return to particular locations.

 

In planning, I will look at this site, Roadside America, petroglyph locations, places that interest me. But my interests are probably not yours. My interests are not even my wife's - I have been trying to convince her of the merits of Carhenge in Nebraska or the San Antonio toilet lid folk art - both of which have caches.

 

I am hoping in a couple of years we can take a mega road trip - my to do list is already getting full for that - so I envy you. Have fun!

Edited by geodarts
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