It was another one of those weekends: non-stop action that feels like it goes on forever, but when Monday rolls around it feels like the weekend was way too short. On Saturday, we ended up going on a long drive through the Swell to reach a cache that's been sitting for two years with no finds (pictures are here). I wasn't even sure how to get there, since some of the roads out there don't exist on any maps. I was able to pick out a route using satellite photos, though I couldn't tell how good the roads were, just that they existed. The drive turned out to be the best part. The road followed the bottom of a wash for a good portion of the drive, and the scenery was excellent. It was a little tricky maneuvering my long-ass truck through some of the turns and over some bumps and hills.

After finding the cache, we started heading back the way we drove in, and stopped for lunch in the bottom of a sandy wash. The kids played in the sand while Traci and I cooked lunch. After eating, we drove on some more and stopped again at a place we'd spotted on the way in. The road was cut through the middle of a very small hill, but in that road cut was a lot of exposed mica. Traci and I did a little prospecting and found a thick vein and began digging it out with my rock hammer. I got one solid piece that weighs about 15 pounds, and several smaller ones ranging from about two to seven inches.

Yesterday, I spent the entire day geocaching alone in Sanpete County. I got FTF on a new cache just off of US-89, but after that it all went downhill. I had as many DNFs as I did finds, and I only found 10 caches. The day didn't feel like a total waste, but it could certainly have been more productive if I'd chosen a better area to cache in.

I worked late Monday so I could get off work early yesterday, and Traci and I drove up to SLC for a geocaching get-together which about 70 people attended. We stopped at Mike and Ali's first, then all four of us headed to the dinner in my car. It's strange, but I've driven great distances twice in the past three weeks just to eat a meal with people who are just as crazy as I am.

Considering how much time I've spent in West Valley, I haven't done much geocaching in Mike's 'hood, so we found two quickies on our way back from dinner. After dropping off the ladies, Mike and I headed back out and found 14 more caches in about three hours, and got back to his place after 1:00am. I'm not sure West Valley is the best place to be sneaking around neighborhoods and peeking through the bushes with a flashlight in the middle of the night, but we managed to survive. I only got five hours of sleep before having to get up and drive back to Price in order to be here for work at 9:00am. It's been a long two days.

I started geocaching in September of 2003, and it took me until January of 2005 to find 100 caches. Right now, I'm one find away from 300, and I'm looking for a decent cache to mark the occasion. Getting first-to-find on a cache in an interesting location would be alright, but there are so many caches where I am the only one to have found them over the course of several years that an FTF isn't quite as cool. I'll figure something out by this weekend.

The trip to Happy Valley was a success. Traci and I normally travel up there every few months with a long shopping list, and we usually come home with less than half of what we intended to buy. Yesterday, we got just about everything we'd planned on, and it wasn't a major headache like it usually is. The weather even cooperated, and all the stuff we hauled back to Price arrived completely dry.

We spent a good chunk of my tax refund, but there's still plenty left over. Most importantly, I finally bought a new stereo for my truck--it came without one, and it's taken me this long to buy one. We also picked up a new gate to go between my yard and my mom's, a new vanity, sink, and cabinet for the upstairs bathroom, and a new tent for my planned assault on Sid's Mountain next month.

I've got plans each weekend for the next five weeks, but it feels like my entire life is being planned out in advance. Today was a welcome relief from "plans," and I've done absolutely nothing productive for once. Now it's time for me to get back to my glass of cheap wine. :)

For a few days there, I though it was almost summer, but now it looks as though winter has returned. I've had to cancel plans for a couple of hikes already, but it's given me time to plan for some home improvement projects that I've got to do this year. Traci and I bought some ceramic tile for the upstairs bathroom on Saturday, but I have no plans to start laying it until I get the rest of the things I need (new sink, cabinets, etc), and that'll require a trip to Provo/Orem. I think we may make that trip this weekend--it's too cold and snowy for me to hike, but I don't mind driving in it.

I just uploaded some miscellaneous pictures from the past few weeks that weren't otherwise worthy of their own picture page.

I had some unexpected fun yesterday--the family loaded up into the truck and we went looking for some UDash points. It probably sounds kind of odd, traveling to some random place just to say you've been there, but it can be fun. The first point we visited was behind Pizza Hut here in Price. There's a field there with horses in it. I had to cross the fence to get within 100 feet of the dash point (the minimum distance required to claim a "find"), and the horses in the field apparently needed some attention. They all came trotting toward me, so I hurried and snapped a picture of my GPS and got the hell out of there. I'm not particularly fond of trespassing on private property, but it was actually pretty fun. :)

Another dash point that we found was up on a hill above Helper where there are several water tanks and a shooting range. The last time I was up there, I saw several deer, and this time was pretty much the same. The rainstorm in Price had turned into a heavy snowstorm in Helper, and it was accumulating on the ground quickly. When I got my truck to within about 150 feet of the dash point, we saw some deer only about 30 feet away, and they were standing completely still and looking directly at us. I managed to get out of the truck and ease a little bit closer in order to take some pictures. We were only gone from home for a short time, but it turned out being much more fun than doing nothing.

I took Friday off work, and we headed down to St. George for a weekend of geocaching. About 700 miles later, I'm finally home and starting to relax. We got into St. George somewhat late on Thursday evening, so we just ate dinner at the Wendy's near our motel, then spent the rest of the night planning out our weekend. The St. George Travelodge was a complete dump, but we spent the majority of each day out caching, so it didn't really matter. We cached all day Friday, but didn't find nearly as many caches as we'd hoped, and got several DNFs. Saturday, we went to breakfast with at least 50 other geocachers, then headed up to Sigurd to spend time with some friends and do a few more caches. After arriving home Saturday night, we just unpacked our things and crashed.

This morning, Traci was gone (to church [hahahah]) before I even got out of bed, but when the kids woke up, I fixed them breakfast, got them dressed, then we headed down into the San Rafael Swell. Somebody had placed a new geocache down there last week, but I didn't have time to find it then. I suppose I could have driven down quickly on Wednesday afternoon to find the cache, but I'm glad I didn't because the area was so awesome, it required several hours just to explore and enjoy it. It was only a few miles south of White Rocks and the main gravel road (where I've been dozens of times), but I'd never seen such a place before. The kids had a blast climbing all over the rocks, and I had fun 4-wheeling on all the exposed sandstone.

After finding that cache, we re-hid another cache that is a moving cache, which means after finding it, you can re-hide it somewhere else. This cache type is no longer allowed on geocaching.com, but the existing ones are still allowed to exist. I ended up placing it in an area where I'd wanted to visit for quite awhile but never bothered to take the time. There is a huge house-sized boulder there, with several holes in it that go straight through to the other side. If I had realized before that you can drive right to it, I would never have hesitated to visit it.

I've only now had the chance to sit for awhile and do nothing, and it feels good. As draining as a weekend away from home can be, I expect I'll be doing something similar next weekend. There's talk among a group of geocachers about a trip to Capitol Reef National Park to do some hiking in the coming weeks. Since geocaches aren't allowed inside any National Park Service-managed lands, it will be strictly hiking, but I'm sure we'll do some caching outside of the park. Besides that, all I've got to look forward to is hitching on to the trailer for some camping. The weather is perfect for it now, since the snow has just barely melted from my driveway while I was gone to St. George.