All of the days seem to run together here

March 16, 2010
All of the days seem to run together here & often I don’t know what day of the week it is. I’m not online much so that adds to my confusion of what happened when.

Anyway, on one of the days in the last 10, Joey & I did some more geocaching. There were 4 of them placed here in Alamos by Emily Preece (aka BlackDogGina) just this season. We were not the first to discover them all however.

There are quite a few pilots that now fly into Alamos since the small airport has been fixed up beautifully; its runway lengthened & fenced & an large new hanger has been built. Small private jets are now able to land here since the runway was lengthened.
The reason I mention this is because one of the pilots was the first one to discover Emily’s well-placed geocaches.

We were the second ones to find them all. What fun we had!
The 1st GeoCache was in the Pantheon (cemetery). It was a “nano” one in size which means it’s about the size of the tip of your little finger from just below the fingernail. It had a tiny magnet inside which allowed it to be well hidden and attached to the underside of one of the filigreed iron fences that surround many of the gravestones & monuments.


It took us about 45 minutes of walking around the cemetery, enjoying every moment, before we found it. It was dusk & we were getting a little bit worried that we might be locked in the gated walls because the close “at dark”.

2nd geocache was just up the street from our house hidden in a three foot high rock wall. This type of rock wall is not held together with cement. They way the rocks are perfectly placed keeps them together and they define boundaries of many of the properties here. I really love these rock walls. I guess I just love rocks….so much so that most of my screensavers show rocks…river rocks mostly…you know, the smoothed ones.

I digress. This 2nd geocache was cleverly placed in the rock wall in front of a huge cactus that was on the other side of the wall. The cactus was part of the hint to help find a particular small rock that needed to be removed from its place. Once the small rock was moved it exposed the cavity where the “micro” size cache was. It wasn’t necessary for this one to have a magnet because it rested peacefully in its cavity..

We had to visit this cache twice because just as we were about to pull out the rock that covered the cache we had to pretend we were taking photos of the big cactus due to a “muggle”. A friend of Joey’s showed up & they talked & talked, seemingly forever. We returned later when no one was around in order to see us make our discovery. Secrecy is part of the fun.

3rd GeoCache was as near the “Talking Tree”. That is a signal tower that’s camouflaged to look like a tree. It’s about 1 mile from town center & we were able to drive to the base of the hill where the tower rises above “O little town of Alamos”. The GeoCache was about 200 steps past the tower. Just as Joey was squatting down to pull this “small” geocache out from it’s hiding place; we it we heard male voices coming up from the other side of the hill. I whispered, “Muggles, Muggles” so that Joey could quickly re-hide the cache (before we even got a chance to open it) So, again, I needed to do the “pretended to be taking a photo number” as Joey was looking with interest at a rock that he still had in his hand as, perhaps, a rockhounder would do. When the 2 men behind the voices made their appearance we were well into stealth mode. TAH DAH!

As soon as they were out of site we opened the cache & discovered, not the log but also a TB ( travel bug ).That’s a special dog-tag-type thing with a recordable number. We took the TB with us in order to place in another geocache along our travels & follow its travels..

Right now I’m unable to remember the 4th geocache & we need to leave to go over to Cami & Squire’s home to watch him roast his coffee beans.

Ok, I remember the 4th Geocache now.
It was along a steep stairway leading up from the Palacio (City Hall) to Diane Carpenter’s house on the hill. The one where the last TGIF was held.
Great exercise getting to it…puff puff…..but it the sun was setting and the view from there is beautiful at this hour especially. I’ll try to add a couple of photos.

This is the view from “almost” next to where the geocache was found.




This is a view from the same spot only off to one side of the stairway. Ruins can be pretty too.