Goodbye-Hello
As we look to the new year in awe and wonderment, one can't help but reflect on the past year. Most of the time our thoughts linger on the past with things that we should have done, or could have done but never did. For myself, I prefer to look at the things we did accomplish and though it might not have been what we envisioned at the start of the previous year there are still many golden nuggets that we can glean.
In January, Tatterhood and I celebrated our 13th anniversary with a trip to Las Vegas. We took TNT_Lando along and he had a blast seeing a big city. Naturally, we found a few geocaches along the way.
In February, we took an epic trip to Yuma to attend our first Mega geocaching event. It was an amazing adventure. You can check it out here. Needless to say we had a pretty good time despite everyone being sick.
March saw us exploring a few new places such as Park Discovery in St. George and the city of Beaver in our new secondary geo-beast, Topaz. Later that month, a good friend of ours came to visit from our previous home of Edmonton, Alberta. We took her out to explore a few of Southern Utah's gems such as Kolob National Park and Silver Reef by Leeds, Utah. For years I had told her about geocaching but every time we had taken her out to find one, it was a 'Did Not Find' (DNF). After much searching in Silver Reef, she came up with her first find. It was a pretty exciting moment.
Geocaching.com hosted a souvenir event in April called Cache Carnival which focused on gathering caches with high favorite points. In order to complete the challenge most efficiently, we sought out locations with high concentrations of favorited caches. This lead us south to the city of Santa Clara which has tons of fantastic virtuals and earthcaches. We then headed over the mountain to Red Canyon to complete the challenge and even let a few new travel bugs start their journey.
In May, we did a springtime geo-outing on a slick, muddy frontage road that lead us from the site of a painted rock hoard to an information sign that required us to use our geo-beast, Obsidian, to retrieve the find.
We found very few caches in June, but that was mostly due to the purchase of our new home. Nearly 4 years since we had started our journey from Canada, we finally were able to get a new base of operations. I can now work on getting our cache workshop up and running.
July found us up in Salt Lake for my Brother In-law's wedding. It was held in a beautiful park, so naturally I did a quick search on the app to see if there were any nearby caches. Sure enough, 300 feet from where I was sitting was a cache. Took a little work during the reception, but I made the find. On the way home we made sure to pull over for a few pit stops. Truly one of my favorite ways to travel is to cache along the way.
Our friend from Canada also returned that month, this time with all her kids in tow. I decided to take the older two out on a little off-road detour which lead me to take Obsidian into beast-mode up the side of a small mountain. Though it wasn't the craziest road I've been on by far, the kids from the flat lands thought it was, which made it that much more fun for me. We also made a trip up to Mammoth Caves. It made for a muddy adventure to climb through the caves, but it was a great experience and of course there was a cache nearby that we were able to find afterwards.
The end of July also marked the start of another Geocaching.com souvenir challenge, Mystery at the Museum. This gave us the opportunity to race around and grab many various caches which yielded up their secret icons. It also lead us to a piece of geo-art called The Geocacher. We thought we could get what we needed by finding all of these, however mother nature had other ideas. The fields where the caches lay were filled with cheat grass, which have seed pods that love to attach to fabrics and burrow their way through to your skin. After sacrificing a pair of socks, we gave up the death march and decided to try something different.
We broke up the remaining challenge into three legs that also took us into the month of August. The first was to journey to find a number of the musical highway caches which also marked our 1700th find. The next trip was up the canyon to find a number of roadside finds. Finally, we planned a scenic route drive to Parowan which wound our way through Enoch City and along some frontage roads. The final was a virtual cache at the Parowan track and field. To celebrate completing the challenge, we went on one final hike at Parowan Gap. We orignally wanted to go for one of the old caches by the gap but the expanse of cheat grass fields warned us off. Luckily there was another cache nearby that offered a trail up to our prize.
August also gave us another Geocaching.com souvenir challenge, Streak Week. This required us to find a cache per day for one week. It was a good challenge, but luckily there were enough local caches around to seal the deal. Our final was at the Old Sorrel monument on SUU campus.
As usual for us, September, October and November were light on geo-adventures however we did manage to find at least one cache in each month. We did have other adventures, mostly involving events at the local art museum and family gatherings.
In December, we went out to grab a cache that will soon be eaten by a new subdivision. It was a quick find, but what made it amazing was the view of the valley below combined with the glorious colors of the setting sun. Later that month Geocaching.com released its final challenges. Find a minimum 1 cache on six different days. This also would overlap the Last Cache of 2019 and the First Cache of 2020 souvenir challenges. Slowly we picked away at the first challenge. This included finally being able to attend an annual event hosted by our good geocaching friend, ZerØ. For years we have tried to go to one of his year end events and for years we have been cursed with something getting in the way. This year, no obstacles found their way into our path and we were able to enjoy a wonderful night meeting a couple of local cachers.
We ended the challenge by finding a cache on New Years Eve and another on New Years Day which also completed the other two souvenir challenges. On New Years Day, we made an adventure out of our journey by travelling to the Snowfield exit and grabbing three of the nearby caches. It was a great way to start the new year and we ended the day with a quick trip into Kolob National Park just to enjoy the beauty of it.
Goodbye to a fantastic 2019 year. We achieved the goals of attending a Mega event, finding at least one cache per month which we had never achieved previously, and finally my personal biggest goal of attending ZerØ's annual event for the first time. We were also blessed to be in a new home for Christmas which was another goal we had made for the year.
I look forward to a new year in 2020 and am grateful for the adventures and opportunities it will bring.
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