[Ray]

The beastmobile just completed another 5000 mile road trip. It is claiming 123,000 total miles now.

[Ray]

In the last 12 months we have found 515 geocaches, but 463 of them were in the last 6 months.

[Ray]

This is for you Zuma!
😀 Ta Da! The Virgin River Gorge: http://animoto.com/play/F4a0Qa7FDareM4JDQU1oRQ *** Turn the volume up ***

Don’t try to duplicate this without washing your windshield first. 🙄

[Ray]

Here is The Virgin River Gorge http://animoto.com/play/F4a0Qa7FDareM4JDQU1oRQ. For the gypsy in your soul, turn up the volume and enjoy.

[Ray]

@stokstad wrote:

What was the total trip time and estimated cost? I would really like to take a trip like this sometime.

It was 15 days for us. Gasoline 190 gallons x $3.299 (average); Lodging 14 nights x $75 (more or less); meals 15 days x $50 (more or less) total about $2500 plus the cost of trinkets and entertainment. Traveling in October helped to keep costs down. We would have liked more time, but…

If you are considering the trip, keep in mind that some of the tourist sights are nearing the end of their life spans. They just won’t be around a lot longer. We saw this on the Illinois & Missouri segments on which we had the privilege of driving in 1963-1969, 1975, 1991 and now 2008. There have been big changes.

[Ray]

In our Route 66 adventure, we found several ghost towns. A curious thing to note is that when all of the structures are gone, the town cemetery may still be intact. Real treasures can be found if you can locate the town dump. Be careful though, abandoned does not mean public domain.

[Ray]

Recap
States Visited: IL, MO, KA, OK, TX, NM, AZ, CA, NV, UT, WY, CO, NE, IA
Total Distance: 5050 miles (8127 KM)
Gasoline used: 190 Gallons (724 L)
Fuel economy: 26.5 mpg (11.22 KM/L)
Geocaches found: 151
Virtual Caches found: 11
Multicaches found: 1
Unknown Caches found: 3
Geocaches Not Found: 18
Travel Bugs/coins collected: 11
Travel Bugs/coins dropped: 16
Travel Bugs/coins discovered: 6

[Ray]

@zuma wrote:

@kansas64 wrote:

Silly question to Zuma or Trudy & the Beast. Last year when I took this route between Mesquite & St George the Virgin Gorge was under construction. That is the road and not the Gorge. The views were great then but you had a lot of construction equipment spoiling the views also. Please tell me the construction is gone

Hi,

yes, the road construction is done thru the gorge. The waysides are being rebuilt still, which affects a couple of caches, but the road is in great shape.

For those who havent visited, the Virgin River Gorge looks a lot like a 3/4 scale Grand Canyon, only with an interstate highway running thru it. Great views, amazing that they built a road here. It is about a 2 hour drive from Vegas to St George, Utah.

zuma

Ya What he said, only allow extra time, for the stops at the available waysides. BTW, we loved St George. With 60K population, it at the northern edge of the Grand Canyon. St George is one of the fastest growing communities in the nation. There is an airport, Great medical facilities, mountains on three sides and wonderful little shop called Dairy Queen.

[Ray]

October 9-10
Fillmore Utah – Rawlins, WY – Kearney, NE

After our adventure in the LV park following the footsteps of Zuma & WI_Robin, we headed on toward home this took us through the Virgin River Gorge, the twin tunnels of I-80 and the Great Basin. This is some of the most beautiful roadway our great country has to offer. That day ended in Fillmore Utah, a historic community that once was the capitol of the Utah Territory. Caches here included a virtual cache that highlights the community history.

The following day found us on our way into Wyoming. Rawlins seemed like an appropriate place to stop. There was a plethora of motels to choose from, so it seemed like a no-brainer to stay at the Best Western for value. Unfortunately Best Western didn’t see it our way they were asking $149/night and Holiday Inn Express was right up there with them at $153. This community of 8500 people has almost as many rooms to rent. There is a Quality Inn, MicroTel, Super 8, Budgetel, yada, yada. We opted for the Super 8 at $65/night. Still a lot more than the $24.95 we paid at the Casino in Jean. And I am sure that there isn’t a 20% occupancy rate in any of these inns at this time of year. Thanks, Best Western, I will skip the Golden Crown Points for tonight.

We awoke an overcast sky and the threat of rain and snow. The temperature was hovering between 33 and 37 degrees for much of the trip down I80 this morning. Truckers were maintaining a 65-80mph pace while I in my best Mr. Magoo pose tried to see the roadway through the thickening fog. When it finally got the best of me, I got off the highway to seek a route with less traffic. I found Wyoming 700 through the Medicine Bow National Forest. 8 miles of gravel road that that hadn’t been graded in the past decade. the fog lifted enough for us to see some of the most awesome terrain, flora and fauna. OK, fauna was actually limited to a small herd of deer that we chased off the roadway. It wasn’t much of a chase since we couldn’t drive this roadway at much more than 10mph without rattling the bejeebers out of ourselves and the beastmobile. We finally found our way into Colorado and on to Nebraska.

We are now 700 miles from home and I am afraid to say, I will be home in time to return to work Monday morning. I have now caught-up with all the logging. all that remains is to upload the remaining photographs and put together a brief recap.

[Ray]

@SammyClaws wrote:

Hi Beast,

Since your writing to us from the future, who won the World Series? I see an opportunity here.

Yes we caught that little Faux Pas as well … December 6 should have been October 6

And October 7 should have been October 7-8. The next post is October 9-10

[Ray]

@zuma wrote:

… We went to Utah one day, and the drive there was awesome, thru the Virgin River Gorge…

at our first cache in LV, I had Trudy read the log to me, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.. could it really be true.. Zuma & WI_Robin were here just a week ago?

Now I find out that you took that same awesome drive into Utah. Trudy was snapping pictures as I drove. I must have a hundred photos of the same dead bug on the windshield.. taken from several angles.

We are happy that you found the same joy in that wonderful stretch of road, and congratulations on your achievement. ~T&tb

[Ray]

October 7, 2008

Barstow to Santa Monica and beyond..

We found this was the most difficult segment to cache. Mainly because of our own shortsightedness. We loaded up a bunch of traditional caches for this heavily traveled and very visible stretch of Route 66. Unlike the route to this point, Foothills Drive and the other roadways that make-up the LA county portion of the trip, is very well maintained and heavily traveled. Virtual caches would have been a better choice here. Temperatures in LA reached 102, thankfully the A/C in the beastmobile kept ticking.. once we got to the official end of RT66 we drove Olympia east to west and west to east; Lincoln north to south and south to north looking for the official marker. We did not find it; but we were there.

We tried our best to get out of this metropolitan nightmare as quickly as we could, but found ourselves headed into downtown LA. We got a small sampling of LA city traffic and made a hasty retreat to the north where we found ourselves cruising the streets of Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Willshire Blvd, Rodeo Drive.. all the tourist spots. Yes we saw the guy selling the maps to homes of the stars. We didn’t buy one.

We started our journey home via Las Vegas, We spent the night in Jean, NV at the Casino 🙂 and then proceeded on to visit the Hoover Dam. This is another thing we should have done before our children grew out of our home. From the dam we wednt on to LV and grabbed a few caches in a municipal park (rather than on the road caches). There were six caches in the park we selected and we visited five of them. The log sheets in each of the caches we visited here revealed Zuma and WIRobin had visited the week before. Well at least we beat the Ecorangers to these, but we had to go 1500 miles from home to do it. We have been without WiFi connections for the past couple of days, leaving me behind on logging and on this journal. But, I will catch up in the next day or two.

[Ray]

December 6, 2008 Williams, AZ to Barstow, CA only 90 miles to Santa Monica.

Today was our day to tackle the Mojave Desert. We started the day with a hard overnight frost that left our car in need of some serious window scraping before we could move. This is a good time to make this part of the trip since the desert temperatures drop below 100 degrees in October. In the Kingman to Oatman part of our journey the temperature peaked at only 97 degrees. We visited only 8 geocaches today, and concentrated on getting as close to our goal as we could. The sun was starting to set when we got to Barstow. We were fortunate to get here before we ran out of gas. The rare Desert gas station charges a premium for their product ($3.99 – 4.59). While here in Barstow it is a more moderate $3.59.

Tomorrow we will complete the final leg of the journey and then start our return trip. Stay tuned folks, we aint there yet.

[Ray]

October 5, Williams, AZ

On our final cache of the day October 4, we were interrupted by a young muggle couple curious about our activity. We explained geocaching and since we were about to score a dnf, we gave full details of what it was all about. Later we went back and gave the cache another try and found it. This morning, when we boarded the train, we found ourselves sitting in the seat behind Chris & Christy N. of San Diego, CA. Chris explained that he was a member of the San Diego FD. Ironic, I explained that my cousin Jon H. was a member of the San Diego FD. Chris replied that Chief Handley is the man that hired him… It made the 2 hour train ride pass very rapidly.

We spent the next three hours walking the south rim of the Grand Canyon marveling at the raw beauty of a big hole in the ground and of the forest this National Park exists in. The forest looks much like those in northern Wisconsin. With the exception that our forests have a mix of hardwoods and this forest has a mix of desert species intermixed with the evergreens. We were stopping at almost every available park bench to regain our breath as the 7k foot altitude sapped the limited strength these sexagenarians could muster. There were park visitors renting pack horses to enter the canyon and others descending into th canyon on foot for the hiking adventure of a lifetime. Trudy & I were not able to draw enough courage to venture any closer than the edge of the paved trail. There is no way we would ever descend into the depths of that man killer. We took photos, but they pale in comparison to the published photographs available from so many sources.

Chris & Christy were spending the night in the park, so we met a new set of travel partners for the train ride back to Williams. This time we found ourselves in the last seats in the observation car, seated behind a couple from Grafton, WI. This made the return time fly. The Sun was setting as we got back to the Hotel, and we were exhausted. We did not get any geocaching in, but we can geocache for another seven days; we won’t get another chance to visit the Grand Canyon for quite a while.

[Ray]

@-cheeto- wrote:

the narration and pictures are excellent!! I think many are enjoying reading your posts.

Thankyou. We hope that our journey might tempt out friends to prepare similar journals when they embark on such adventures.

[Author]

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