ET Highway Day 3

The alarm went off at 6:30 and we started getting ready for our third day out in the desert.  It was really hard to get up but we were excited to get the next 500 caches done.  The great thing about today was we had the caches planned out the night before so we weren't going to be confused.  The only thing we were going to have a hard time with was knowing which sections and doing the math of how many we got before we switched the runner. 

We checked the GPS to see if there was a McDonald's nearby for a McMuffin or breakfast sandwich and according to the GPS there was on the south side of town.  We headed out that way...only to find out it went out of business.  Breakfast fail @ 7:30!  We turned around and went to the Subway at the northwest end of town.  This was seriously cutting into our caching time but we needed our energy.  I've never actually tried Subway's breakfast before.  We all got a flat bread sandwich with egg, bacon, ham and other odds and ends.  You buy one 6 inch and you got the other free.  They each bought a half and I got a whole foot long for the price of a half.  Why not right?

We ate our sandwiches as we drove the 30 miles back to where we left off from yesterday.  We started with a section on the west side of Hwy 6 towards Arrow, Nevada.  Brenda did this stretch of over 100 with third oldest cache in Nevada called Golden Arrow.  She said since she drove a lot the previous day she said she wanted to put her share into jumping out of the car today and grabbing caches.

At 8:12 we started at 1501.  It was really dusty.  The road looked freshly disturbed.  We continued on.  We weren't sure if we would intercept whatever machinery was doing this but we were on the look out.  We were at a steady pace and saw a cloud of dust ahead of us.  There it was.  It was scraping the sides of the road to get rid of the sagebrush and other annoying desert foliage out of the way.  In the meantime, the dirt was very puffy and deep, we had to be careful where we drove.

As we passed the road grater at cache #1563, we waved to the operator and wondered what he thought about us being in the middle of nowhere stopping every tenth of a mile.  I'm sure he has seen others the last few days.  Brenda continued to power on with this section of caches.  We hit our first 100 caches at around 9:43.   We reached the end of the trail and at one of the oldest caches in Nevada, Golden Arrow.  It was hidden on 1/10/2001.

At 10:21 we finished this section of caches and walked back in our SUV and headed back towards Hwy 6 to the next section.  We drove past a large truck with tons of people in it.  I wonder where they were going since there really isn't anything out here.  We got back on the main road and went to #979, the place we left off yesterday.  This was going to be the long stretch of caches.  We all took part jumping and grabbing the caches.  Today we hoped to get over 500 of them so tomorrow would be easier.

Less than an hour later we hit cache #1000, which was technically halfway but we did them out of order so we really weren't halfway done, we were over halfway done.

We continued hammering them out one by one.  At cache #1043 we hit our 200th cache of the day, which was roughly at 11:42.

We kept going and going.  We wondered when the end would be.  It was such a long stretch of caches.  At cache #1727 and 300 for the day we stopped and ate lunch around 2.  Those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were so good.  We all had a handful of chips and drinks.  This also was a great opportunity to use the bathroom since there were juniper trees to hide behind.  We could not believe how dusty the car got.  That was just from today.  We saw horses roaming the fields nearby.

Everything was worn out looking, dusty and dry.  The landscape was really cool in certain places.  Ray jumped out and took a turn on the long stretch of caches.

We were getting closer and closer to the end.  The landscape changed into a rocky canyon.  It was pretty cool.

We had a couple more Brenda fails with the GPS but they were easily fixed.  We laughed about it.  We trudged on and on.  The lake was slowly coming into view, one cache at a time, one tenth of a mile at a time.

At last the end was near.  We took a few pictures and enjoyed the scenery.  There were a few more after this old desert homestead.  When we reached the end of this section, it was about 4:00.  Now to the last section of the day before we headed back to Tonopah.  This was my section and I powered out #1113-#1200 in an hour and fifteen minutes.

While doing this section, we found the oldest cache in Nevada, XJD-380, which was hidden on December 26, 2000.  It's sad I traveled to another state to get its oldest cache and I haven't even gotten the one in my own state, which is about a two hour drive from my house.  It's been found over 850 times before we arrived to grab it.  The location was pretty cool and I knew exactly where to look once we got there.

We got back in the car and finished the fifty odd more caches along the dirt road.  We hit #500 at 5:34.  We were getting hungry.  We started talking about what kind of food sounded good and what kinds of places were in Tonopah.  We were done with our third day on the ET Highway at around 6:00.  We got over 500, which is my highest cache day so far.

We drove the 30 miles back to town and looked for a place to eat.  We stopped first at a casino that said they had food, they didn't and it smelled so bad like cigarettes.  We moved down the highway to a place called Cisco's.  They had everything.   Brenda and Ray ordered a pizza and I felt like a hamburger and fries.  We sat in the resturant and watched Sportcenter on the TV.  I've missed so much sports news.  They talked about hockey, the NCAA bball tournament and the guy from Louisville who broke his leg.  So glad I didn't see that.  Ew.

After dinner, we went back to the hotel, used the shower, figured out our route for tomorrow, shared stories and pictures and then went to bed.  It was going to be another long day.