Eight Days In The Desert – Part I

As part of a series of articles, Incepit has detailed how his and Markirene’s journey to the ET Highway in Nevada along with the powertrail located on Route 66. They took this journey back in May of 2012 and we finally get to hear a little bit more about it.

In this first part of the series, we learn about the first three days of their trip.

Day 0 – The Planning

It was October and time to start talking with Mark (MarkIrene) about our now annual trip to Geowoodstock, but I was starting to have thought of an alternate plan.  We had previously done the E.T. Highway in Nevada, before it had been archived.  Now it was up and running again, this time with 1500 caches to find for the adventurous cacher.  As an added incentive, I had been watching route 66, a series of 800 caches along “America’s Highway”.  I stopped by Mark’s house, and after some catching up, he brought up that even though we usually find a good number of caches on the way to Geowoodstock, maybe this year we should concentrate on numbers instead of the one mega event icon. He had the E.T. Highway in his sights without me even bringing it up.  I told him about adding Route 66 to the plan, and the likelihood of finding 2500 caches in a week was frosting on the cake.  Over the next few months, dates and tickets were finalized, and as the time drew nearer, more and more side trails started to show up and the route looked good for finding closer to 3000 caches was in our reach.

Day 1 – The Trip That Almost Wasn’t

Originally, our day started with a 6:30am flight from Moncton to Montreal on a Jet with close to 2 hours to get through customs and catch our second flight to Las Vegas.  Our airline informed us of an “equipment change” to a slower aircraft, which would result in only 90 minutes in Montreal.  After landing and rushing through security, we hit the customs line-up.  After several minutes, we were called out of line due to the short time before our departure and sent to a short line for a customs officer. Unfortunately, our customs officer had problems with one of the people in front of us, and our precious time was short.  We tried to switch lines, only to be sent back.  Finally, Mark had a quick visit with the customs officer and rushed ahead while I took my turn.  I also passed quickly through and rushed towards my gate, where the agent was waving frantically at me, not wanting my ticket, only my passport as I was already “booked” on the plane, or else the doors would have already been closed.  Catching up with Mark on the plane, he told me that as he came out of customs, he heard the dreaded “report to the gate immediately, the doors are closing announcement”.  The agent was even calling from down the hallway to ask if he was one of the two missing passengers.

We landed in Las Vegas at 11am, local time, and first order of

business, pick up the rental car and hit the Heart Attack Café.  We had reserved an SUV for higher clearance on some of the backroads, and were pleasantly surprised when offered an upgrade to the traditional cachers ride… a Jeep. We hit the café, where customers are dressed in hospital gowns, the waitresses in nurses uniforms, and the cooks dressed as surgeons.  We each tackled the double burger (each patty being ½ pound) with 12 strips of bacon.  I tried to order a diet Coke, to be informed “We don’t serve diet anything here”.  A quick trip to Walmart for food, water, batteries and my much needed SPF70 sunscreen, and a quick trip to an auto parts store for a 5 gallon fuel tank, and we were off.

We made for the start of the E.T. Highway, the last town on the way is a small community named Alamo, with the last gas station for 150 miles in the direction we were headed.  We cached along the way, stopping here to top up the Jeep and fill our 5 gallon gas can.  We did some quick math, and knew figured out that even if the Jeep ran dry of gas, our 5 gallons would get us more than 75 miles and back to available fuel.  We started at E.T. 0001 around 8pm, just as the sun was going down.  Something I’ve always noticed when caching this far south, twilight doesn’t last the 30 minutes like at home, but a very quick 5 minutes and darkness hits.  The hardest caches to find on the E.T. Highway are the first 200 or so, so things were off to a slow start, but it was the beginning of a long week of caching. At midnight, the cache count for the day is 223.

Day 2 – 24 Hour Caching Streak Record Day

We were watching the GPS time closely as we hard already decided to set a new personal record for each of us for most caches in a day.  We had each set our old record also on the ET trail 2 years before at 500+ caches.  During this night, we saw a lot of rabbits and some aircraft in the nearby military area dropping flares and doing some strange aerobatics… something for which this area is famous for.  We continued to cache along the highway and a series of caches just off the highway until about 3am local time, when we decided it was time for a nap.  We pulled over on the deserted road, put back the seats and had a nap in

the Jeep until 6am.  We were very quickly back to caching, and closing in on Rachel around 11am, we decided to jump ahead before the temperatures got too insane, and hit one of the hiking series we planned on doing, the “famous” ET trail UFO.

Wind warnings for the area had been issued, and during the hike we saw lots of large dust devils, though thankfully avoided them while on foot.  After the hike, we needed a bit of cooling down, so we headed for the L’il Al’Inn.  This place is “famous” to UFO hunters.  We sat in the air conditioning and had a “famous” Alien Burger.  I won’t go into much detail, but Mark and I both agreed that it wasn’t exactly the place where we would eat again.  Back on the road, we continued caching up the highway, and then detoured to find another series of caches we had started on our last trip, the “Alien Head”.  We continued caching the ET Highway, occasionally hitting some side trails until well after midnight, when it was time to pull over and have another nap.  At midnight, the cache count for the day was 918!

Day 3 – The Oldest Cache and A Flat Tire

The morning started out cold and we awoke to more caches.  The gas gauge started to dip and we headed 60 miles up the road to Tonopah.  This is a strange town.  It has basically one street and used to be a mining community, but now it’s just a rough place with a few gas stations, a Burger King, McDonalds, and a few hotels.  It is also a well known speed trap, where the speed limit drops from 70mph to 25.  We arrived and gassed up, deciding we might as well get a hot breakfast.  Unfortunately our first stop, McDonalds was having difficulties, which included the inability to make any hot food, so off to BK we went.

All fueled up, and topped off, we backtracked to pick up the ET trail,

and eventually headed into the backroads where the trail now leads (when we did the first trail a few years ago, it was all paved, but with the addition of 500 more caches, the trail now heads onto sand and rocks).  Along this back road, we were pleasantly surprised to get an FTF!  Following the trail also brings cachers very close to the first cache in Nevada.  It was a pleasant walk up along a cliff face, with a great view from the top at the cache site of the surrounding desert.

We spotted several Antelope in this back area, and things were going smoothly, until I heard a pop and a rush of air!  At the next cache I got out of the Jeep expecting bad things, and unfortunately saw what I had expected… a large hole in the tire.  We scrambled to get out the jack and within a few minutes, we had the tire changed out, though we proceeded cautiously, since we no longer had a backup, and we were several miles from even the nearest public road in the middle of the desert.

Fortunately the spare tire held up and we finished the E.T. Highway, along with some side caches and decided it was time to call it a day.  We headed for Tonopah and found a hotel room (the first of the trip) and some food.  Quick showers and a good nights rest, having already decided to sleep in and that tomorrow would be an easier day as we relocated to China Lake, CA. in preparation to assault route 66.  Cache count for the day, 741.

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Stay tuned for part two of our Eight Days In The Desert story about Incepit and Markirene’s adventure to Nevada and California.