Well I thought I would sleep right through but no. It was 3:00 am and I was wide awake. Mucked around for a while before dropping off again for another hour and awake again at 4:30 am then again at 6:30 am. Oh well I might as well get up.
Richard “Jeditrekr” was picking me up for breakfast and then off to do some Reno 4WDing Geocaching. Breakfast was at Hog Wild Cafe and if you wanted to fill up the stomach and the arteries, this is the place for you. It was pretty popular for early on a Saturday morning and I tried to pick something on the menu that wasn’t going to be a mountain of food. I think I got it right with the Sunshine Bread which in its simplest form is toast, bacon, eggs, onion and potato but still a plate full.
After filling up, there was time to grab a couple of geocaches before heading to the Meet ‘n Greet prior to the 4WD Trip. These events have been a bit a bit of a tradition for the 3 years I have been coming to Reno. The local cachers put on an Event to coincide with my visit. This year it was called Fun in the Dirt (Meet the guy from down under).
There wasnt a bad turn out for a Saturday morning with 8 4WD’s turning up with 14 geocachers. One of the attendee’s was the Worlds #1 Geocache Finder. He is Alamogul with over 64000 finds – unbelievable. After meeting everyone – some old faces and some new, exchanging pathtags it was time to head east into the hills.
The caches we were going to were out the back of Hidden Valley Regional Park. As we drove up the first valley, the ground was littered with thousands of shotgun shells – an ominousness sign of what was to come. The first cache was Gunpowder Butte. We had only just got out of the cars and the bullets were flying. We were unsure of where they were going but soon found they weren’t being shot in our direction.
As well as geocaches hidden in the area, it is the local haunt to go and shoot anything that doesn’t move and I am sure things that move are aimed at as well. There were only a couple of groups set up when we went in but 3 hours later when we came out just about every spot was filled with shooting groups setting up all sorts of targets. Nothing quite like the smell of gunpowder and the constant bang of rounds going off.
We drove through some spectacular country similar to the Flinders Ranges if it wasn’t for the snow on the higher peaks. There were no challenging roads but there were some challenging climbs to some geocaches. they certainly tested out the heart and the lungs.
This wasn’t a big numbers run but there were 2 “first to finds”, some good company and some great scenery.
We finished around 1:00 pm, Richard dropped me back at the Grand Sierra Resort and there rest of the day was easy going, even having a massage to relieve my back. 🙂
