Can’t believe it’s September already! We’ll be leaving around the 22nd, heading generally for St George, Utah. We have signed up for the Senior Games, Square Dance division. We have zero knowledge about what to expect or what we have to do. We’ll try to get it into the blog for anyone who wants to know. Most of our summer activity has been continuing to geocache. At this writing we have found and logged 107 different ones. We’ve also been able to get in some square dance, a volksmarch and a week with good friends Jim and Peg Opperud who surprised us totally with an unexpected visit!
We were able to take Jim & Peg to a couple of geocache locations. They were tolerant of our enthusiasm, but it remains to be seen if they were infected with the ailment! Here are a couple pictures of them hunting for a cache with our GPSr, and some of our Volksmarch (10 K) up in Custer Park
Above Jim shows the reflector he accidentally knocked off, revealing the cache log under it. Thanks Jim, we’d have never found it without you. The girls (Eloise and Peggy) are pointing at the reflector which hides the cache. Pretty devious – but there are worse ones we’ll show later.
Along the Volksmarch trail and crossing the eleven stream crossings each way.
This guy was grazing at the edge of the trail we were following. A little too close. Those who know say that it’s never a good idea to get this close. But as long as they’re eating, that’s a good sign they may not charge. Very comforting.
The Opperuds went with us to vist the missile silo located on Ellsworth AFB just outside Rapid City. The transport for the missile is the first picture, if you look closely at the next, you can see a rabbit which is on the protected area and sets off alarms that helicopters and snipers responded to. Didn’t take much, eh? On the missile tour bus. Rear end of the newest bomber the B1B, and you’ll figure out the rest.
A visit to Jewel Cave produced the following pictures inside the cave, and of course the picnic after the tour:
The historic Stratobowl is located west of Reptile Gardens on highway 16. It was the area that began trying for high flying balloons in 1935. It is fascinating history. To learn more, go here: STRATOBOWL INFO
Of course there are several geocaches here. One of them is where Eloise got the bejimminy scared out of her when she realized the sound she was hearing was a coiled rattler not 6 inches from her foot. We reported it when we logged in our cache find. The next visitors to the cache were able to kill it and posted the pictures. Here they are:
A lot of the geocaches are really cleverly hidden. These following pictures show the diabolical hides some people go to. They’re fun when you find them, but very frustrating when you can’t detect them: This first one was on a huge cottonwood tree that we circled many times before Eloise snuck up on it and pulled it sideways
The cacher called “Dr Evil” planted the above, and also made this one that looked so normal
Caches come in all sizes. Here’s a cooler beside a cooler…
One more example of where people will hide caches:
The historic Flume Trail takes you back in time to the mining boom of the 1880’s. The Rockerville Flume carried water 20 miles from Spring Creek west of present day Sheridan Lake, east to the placer diggings near Rockerville. Miners used the water to separate the gold from the debris in the Rockerville area. It operated until 1885 and let miners take over $20 million dollars in gold.
The Flume Trail hike has many geocaches along it. We haven’t found all of them, but we’ll be back! It boggles the mind how much labor it took to build this flume. It had a rock base, and the actual flume was made of wood that rested on the rock. All of the wood seems to be gone now. Here’s what it looks like…
Imagine 20 miles of this.
Driving through Keystone we drove past this. I parked and hiked back for a picture:
“Okay, Gary. Go get the car please”
Sometime in August we came across this pile of snow…out behind the skating rink. Zamboni refuse! I missed.
Here’s an eclectic assortment of pictures. They don’t really need explanation:
Lastly, here are some pictures we took after the long trek to the top:
That’s it for this installment. Visit again!!
