Another big day today with the last 300 of the ET highway to be found. A first stop into Alamo to fill up and some breakfast and we were on the trail again. Conditions today were perfect with a slight breeze, sunshine and not too hot. We passed through some more terrain that could have been the Flinders Ranges.

We met up with some Mexican cachers and the speed they were running you would think they were being chased by the Border Patrol. We finally finished off the ET highway mid afternoon and I had to leave the team and head back to LA. it had been good to team up with Bob and Kay again and add a new team member with Sissy. Will we tackle some more next year – who knows.

I was feeling very tired but I still had 600 kilometres to travel to get back to LA. Hopefully the traffic will be better than coming up. A couple of stops along the way to revive including the famous Las Vegas sign which is of course a virtual geocache. Travelling was good being able to sit on 70mph all the way into LA arriving at a respectable time but it was still dark. It was time to unpack the car, shower and hit the hay again

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This morning was another early start but today there was some white stuff on the ground (it had snowed overnight) and the temperature was hovering around zero, so we some spent the morning caching around the town of Tonopah to allow the temperature to rise as we didn’t want to be out in the desert with these temperatures with a wind.

We finally headed out into the desert around 9:30 and it didn’t take long to warm up even with the snow flurries that were around us.

We didn’t stick to the order of caches and in fact did the final cache this morning so that we didn’t have to back track. Doesn’t have the same impact knowing we still had around 500 to find. Took some photos – reached some milestones – mine was 7000 finds 🙂

We continued following the trail ending up around lunchtime at Nevada’s oldest cache – XKD-380. It was in some spectacular rock country and we even had some snow falling as we found it.

Some of the country around here could be mistaken for the Flinders Ranges if it wasn’t for the snow on the peaks.

We finally developed a system which had the running shared by three of us, taking it in turns as I was starting to tire again. This meant between myself, Bob and Sissy we ran for every third cache while Kay did the logging. This even increased our pace to around 60 per hour.

Once again we continued til dusk then headed into Tonopah for some sustenance before heading back to our lodgings at Rachel arriving around 11:00. It didn’t take much rocking when the head hit the pillow and it seemed the alarm was ringing again to get up.

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After a late night to bed, it was an early rise with the sun in the Nevada desert. There is something eerie about watching the sun rise over the bow of a flying saucer but I guess that is normal here in Rachel, Nevada.

After sorting out what we were leaving behind and what we could fit in Bobs car it was time to hit the road for a big day on the ET Highway. It started out with clear skies and a gentle breeze but this was soon to change.

By the time we had hit around ET #450 or so, the wind started to reach gale force and was whipping up the dust and sand. It was soon relegated to me to head out of the car mainly because you needed some strength to open and shut the door without getting it ripped off the hinges.

I kept grabbing the Geocaches for the next 300 with the support crew in the car doing the driving, logging and signing. By the time we hit ET #700, I was ready for a rest and took over the logging role.

We eventually got a reprieve from the conditions when we drove into a gorge, so took the time to have a bite to eat as well as grab a couple of the non ET highway caches including an earthcache.

Back on the trail and the wind picked up as we exited the gorge and so did the dust. Not long after we arrived at Warm Springs or what is left of it. It was supposed to have been some sort of resort in its time with hot springs flowing water out of the hills, however it now all boarded up and abandoned. We continued until dusk then headed towards Tonopah, making sure to find enough Geocaches along the way to take us to 601 finds for the day. This bettered our last year daily find of 524.

We were all pretty beat and Bob dropped us off at all our hotels. There were a number of conventions in town so couldn’t all get into the same hotel. We were to find out in the morning there wasn’t a lot of choice in town so we were lucky to get rooms at all.

After logging a few of today’s finds it was off to bed to rest the weary body.

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This was to be a day of travel. Started out moving out of the Grand Sierra Resort, flying to LA, only to pick up a car and drive back to Nevada, albeit at the bottom end of the State to Rachel (where??). Rachel is a little one horse town out in the Nevada desert next to the infamous Area 51 and it uses its location to promote the ET stuff but more importantly it is a central base to tackle the ET Highway Geocaching Power Trail.

This trail originally consisted of 1000 Geocaches over the roads around Rachel, but ended up being taken down by the Nevada DOT. After a huge backlash by the Rachel community and Geocachers, the original hiders met with the Nevada DOT and a new trail was borne with certain stipulations, this time with 1500 caches. There are currently plans to extend it even further to add another 500 caches which would make it the biggest power trail in the world, but I think it is already.

It was a mistake to try and head east on a Friday towards Las Vegas as it seemed that the whole LA basin was on the road with me. With a few accidents and other delays I finally arrived after a 10 hour journey (4 hours more than it should have).

Still had time to grab a few of the caches around Rachel before our big day tomorrow on the ET Highway. Digs tonight was at the Little A’Le’Inn.