Barry M Goldwater West Range

All day all I could say was Wow this is amazing, today we went geocaching into the Barry M Goldwater West Range with our friends Clyde and Jane Smith from Revelstoke.

To get onto the Range you have to go to the Marine Corp Base and get a permit which is good for a few months and then every time you want to go out you call them and let them know you are going.

So we left home at 8am to meet up with Clyde and Jane and entered the Range at 9am. It was a full day of geocaching and the scenery was spectacular.

Clyde took this picture at our lunch spot which was in a wash and I was not sure we were going to get out of there as we traveled for over a mile in extremely soft sand. Talking to a ranger later in the day, he says you get stuck, let the air out of your tires, but we were in 4 low and did not have any problems.


There are literally thousands of geocaches on the range and many in series, this little fellow below is in the Mr. Peanut Series, always fun to find his.



So at the end of the wash I was talking about, is a canyon with a cache in it and Jane and I felt we should go after it, so with Rusty accompaning us we headed in. However we did not find this cache at the end here,the GPS says the cache is still 20 feet ahead and since that is diagonal how far we would have to climb was hard to tell, so with better judgement we decided this would have to stay undiscovered by us.

Can you see Rusty at the bottom, he is saying what is keeping you two.

We got out of the wash and arrived at Yodaville, this is a spot a few miles away from a little town they set up for target practice, we were not allowed to get close but we tried to take a closer look.

Something new around every corner, look at this face in the rocks, it looks like he is yawning.

Ron found a cache in this ugly looking cactus.

It was like travelling through a western movie set.

Here we come through the Cactus, we were in 4 wheel drive most of the day but it was not bad.

The sun started to glisten the mountain sides.

Amazing mountain shapes.

We could only touch a few of the caches but here is the start of a whole trail that we will go out and explore another day, it is call the Jeep trail(can you imagine).

It is getting dark and we are on our way out, we were blessed with great scenes from morning to night.

Went into a little pub in Wellton for dinner and got home at 9pm, not that was a full day, and I slept like a log last night. Thanks to Clyde and Jane for the wonderful day.

Ladder hike in the Painted Canyon

So we wondered, were we physically in shape to tackle the Ladder hike in the Painted Canyon east of Mecca and thought lets give it a try.
I worried all night as I read articles that the road in was so sandy that everyone was getting stuck but Ron promised me if it looked bad we would turn around.
As you turn off the highway onto the Painted Canyon road it says 4 x 4 access only, oh what were we getting into, well it was just fine, there were lots of soft spots but we had no troubles and when we got there the parking lot was full of 2 wheel drive vehicles, some arriving were hooting "Hooray we made it".

The hike is only 5 miles but 5 miles of hard work so that it felt like you did double that.

Here is Ron at the start of the hike, we head up this canyon a half a mile before turning off into the Ladder Canyon.


The article said you may miss the entrance to the canyon as it is covered with rocks but we were lucky so up and over the first pile of rocks.

We weaved through the rocks getting into the canyon.



Here was our first ladder, apparently there had been a bad storm in September and the water rushed down the canyon and destroyed many of the ladders, some have been replaced but others we had to work around. This one was a little wobbly

Second set of ladders, a little steeper, I needed a little help getting off the top.

Here goes Ron.

Straight through there, yes that is the way.

We caught up to a group from Orange County Hiking Club and the leader said, "You are sure brave coming in all alone" Hummmm what does she know that we do not.

However we made it through the first set of ladders and got up on the ridge to look back over the Salton Sea.

The wash below is our trail that we will eventually get back down to to enter into the Painted Canyon.

The trail behind us and again a little bit of the Salton Sea in the far background.

Once down into the wash the walking was hard as the path was soft sand so you were always turning your ankles. In about a mile we entered into the Painted Canyon and the pictures do not do it justice, it was unbelieveably beautiful. A different scene around every corner.

The rocks were so colorful.

It is hard to explain all the different shapes and shades.

Look at all the different formations and colors on just one corner.

So here we go again with the second set of ladders, this one was so steep that I slid part way on my butt then caught onto the rope to get onto the ladder.

From the bottom looking up

We had planned to get a few geocaches along the way but you became so engrossed in the hike that we forgot until we got down to the botton and then picked up a couple on the way out.

What a wonderful area to find, it was a real treat, we are a little sore but made it to happy hour and when the hockey game is over I will be hitting the bed.

The Boo Hoff Trail

We had a little different balloon go overhead this morning.

So we set off this morning to do an old Indian Trail called the Boo Hoff, it was an easy six mile hike and the wind was blowing so we did not get overheated but we certainly are getting brown from the sun.

We took this trail as it had quite a few geocaches along the way and we found 19 of them.

Here is Ron at the top of a small hill, he found an ammunition box holding the cache, we have found them in many funny places, one called Graveyard Ridge was in an old cowboy boot.

We really only climbed 500 feet in elevation and going up it did not seem we were even climbing but going back down it felt really good. This is looking back at the village of La Quinta.

Here is a cache in the tree, Ron hunted all around the bottom of the tree, lifting rocks etc only to look up and there it was.

Now this was a prickly one, and guess what the cache was not in the clue, we still had to search around for it which was only 18 inches away but very well hid.

Now Ron hates going in the rocks, he thinks he is going to find something he does not want to have contact with but I don't mind and I found the cache.

This was at the end of the trail, we found a big rock(not to hard to find) and had our picnic lunch, the whole hike took us about 3 hours but we are always pokeing around looking for the treasurers, we had a very

good day out.

Going to try a different set of trails tomorrow called the Bear Canyon Oasis, should be fun.

Our holiday season

Happy New Years everyone, all our best for 2012

Ron and I have had a great holiday season. Christmas eve was celebrated here in the RV park at Desert Hot Springs, it was a lovely day, fantastic meal and great friends.

Here is our Christmas eve crew.

Christmas day we went to Indio to have dinner with a different set of friends and the weather was perfect for our turkey dinner outside, we had such a good time and even got a game of bean bag baseball in.
Our crew for Christmas dinner, turned out to be 25 of us in total, there was so much food.


Just about dusk 4:30pm and a couple hot air ballons came over top.

So for Christmas, Ron got a new set of ear phones and a karaoke machine, which he is loving. I got three new swim suits(which I really needed) and a GSP for geocaching, our newest hobby.

We have been out almost everyday finding all sorts of treasures, good exercise with fun.

One of our days out was up a considerable climb and on top of one little hill a birdie was waiting for us, the treasure was right underneath him.

From here we had to climb down a rather ugly hillside to reach another treasure, needed to be a mountain goat, I was getting heck from my husband for not wearing my hiking boots.

We found that treasure it was right under this little bush. Look how high we had climbed and this was after we made it down the hillside.

My favorite find yet was called Daddy Long Legs, it took us down this sandy back road, I was so afraid we were going to get stuck. When we got there this is what we saw, not to sure I would want to sit under his idea of shade.

The actual cache was found in a little bush right beside the bush, very ingenious, the cache was a little silver tube stuck inside the spider at the bottom. Such fun.

The weather here has been wonderful, a little warmer than usual but we are enjoying the park pool everyday. We had a good New Years Eve, we decided not to party it up but headed out at lunch and went over to the Augustine Casino where we left a little cash, then went out for lunch, went to the big mall to walk off lunch and then to the movies. The movie we saw was War Horse, it was very good, at the end, the theatre audience applauded, that has only happened to me once before in Mamma Mia.

We then came home had a couple drinks and had some funwith the karoke machine. Watched 12 o'clock come and climbed into bed. Here is to 2012.