.: Under The Sea :.

February has been an exciting month for us. To date we have managed to maintain our ‘days never cached’ find challenge and starting January 29th we began our new cache streak attempt to break 15 days in a row. In the midst of all of this, we have planned a trip to Death Valley which could prove to make or break our goals for the year.

On February 9th, we began our journey south first to Las Vegas where we planned to meet up with Tatterhood’s parents, Joe Teton and Anyatoo. Both of them are tour guides for Road Scholar and do frequent trips to the nearby national parks. It being winter, their focus has been on Death Valley.



To ensure we found our cache for the day, we stopped off at an off ramp not far from home. I scrambled up a good sized hill and discovered a cache near a memorial for a CAT operator. Seemed like an odd place for a monument but just proved once again how Geocaching helps bring notice to things you never knew existed.

The rest of the trip to Las Vegas was fairly uneventful, however on our way through we landed ourselves in the midst of a multiple car crash. Fortunately we remained spectators and not participants in the carnage. As I looked in the rear view mirror, I witnesses a car skidding across all lanes of traffic, parts flying off in all directions. At the same time, Tatterhood exclaimed as she saw a set of cars plow into each other in front of us. Somehow we managed to get through this troublesome area without any issues of our own. We decided to call it a night once we reached our hotel room.

The next day we headed toward Death Valley. I wanted to see if there were any nearby caches along our route. So I pulled out the GPS and fired it up… it froze so I tried again. Same results. Time after time I tried getting the GPS to work but every time it would freeze. The only time I have had that happen was when there were too many points on it and I had fixed it by plugging it into a computer and removing some waypoints. However, we were literally in the middle of nowhere and I didn't have a computer or the cable.

At our next stop I explained the situation to Joe Teton. He had a laptop but we still needed a cable to connect the two devices. We looked through his computer bag for a cable that might work. Needless to say, Joe Teton is always prepared… he has every cable known to man in that bag, including the one we needed. Unfortunately, the bus had to leave so I was unable to do the hookup. We decided we might have to use the cell phones and try out offline maps.

The issue is the fact that Death Valley has little to no cell service, so using the cell phones would probably not work either. Quickly, we downloaded the offline data to the phones as that might be our only option.

We continued down the road and found the nearest cache as to ensure the streak remained and the ‘days never cached’ challenge could be accomplished. We were fortunate to find one more cache before entering the National Park, that's when we lost all cell service. We're not entirely sure why the offline maps didn't work for us, but needless to say we were blind to any external references.

This meant we only had one last option to find the caches we had planned for that day, me. A week before leaving on our trip, I had studied every single cache along the route to the hotel. In combination with the fact that I have a photographic memory and that the only caches allowed in the Park were virtuals and Earthcaches, we were able to travel along the road to Bad Water and eventually the place we were staying using my memory to know where the features were that we needed and take pictures of the information we needed to gather. It proved to be successful despite our slight setback.

Our first stop was at the ruins of an old mill. No cache here, but a nice place to get out of the truck and stretch our legs. The landscape was amazing. Much different then what we had expected. Continuing down the road, we stopped at a couple of side spots and then at Bad Water. At this point, and having gotten the information for the two virtuals, we noticed a few people staring up at the nearby valley wall and pointing. I was confused and looked up to see what they were all intrigued with. Sure enough was a sign that indicated where sea level was… we were about 250 under that sign which meant we had broken our record for lowest place we have been. Literally, we were under the sea. *Insert song from The Little Mermaid here.

After meeting up with Joe Teton, Anyatoo and their tour group, we headed out onto the salt flats for a little hike. The temperature was perfect as was the natural beauty of this area. We then all headed up to Natural Bridge which our little Lando loved to explore. He loves rocks and especially jumping off them. The bridge offered another view of how glorious the natural world can be. It makes you wonder how it's possible that something like this can be created naturally.

Our next stop was the Devil's Golf Course. This location is again out on the salt flats, but looked much different than the salt flats we had hiked out on at Bad Water. All around the ground reminded me of the freshly plowed earth from back in Alberta with a spring frost glazing each hunk of soil. In realty the hunks of earth were in fact hunks of crystallized minerals. Each piece having the weight of a solid rock.

A few of the tourists on the tour pretended to golf with their hiking poles while getting their pictures taken. I can truly see why this would be one heck of a golf course and no way would you want to trip. The crystallized rocks here were razor sharp. Even picking one up felt like holding a ball of spines and needles.

The last stop of the day was the Artist's Palette which consisted of an array of Technicolor stone on the side of a mountain. Another amazing natural wonder. Death Valley is not short on them as we have discovered.

We will have to continue our adventure another day. Thanks for following us around our tour of this amazing world of wonder.

Until next time, remember that life is what you make it, so make it a journey to remember.