St George, the Heart, and Breakfast.

PeanutsParents in an underground cache.

Well the month is almost over and I thought I better write about my trip earlier this month. I am falling behind in my blogging so I better get at it.

Earlier this month I decided to head to southern utah for a breakfast event with PeanutsParents.   It was all a maybe trip, and we were never really sure of who was going, or when until about two days before. 

Well we headed down friday afternoon and really did not not do much on the way down.  We were trying to get to southern utah before it was too late.

We drove for three to four hours with only a few stops.  That surprised both of us.  Normally a three to four hour trip would have taken us most of the day.  However I got out of work pretty late, so our trip was rushed to get there with good time.

CITO pile of crap

The drive to St. George was great, faster than either of us shot.  When we arrived in town we got in touch with DrJay and family, and went to say hi.  Then got asked if we wanted to go work on some puzzles.  So PeanutsParents, Momthecook, cachinhubby, Jac0b, and I headed out in the evening to grab some caches that were around.

The next morning we got up early, really early.  Apparently there was a CITO over the border in Arizona.  Woo hoo one more state. So off we went.

It was really early and we were cleaning up an area that is a truck stop.  An unofficial truck stop. Apparently many of them just threw trash out of their cabs and made a mess.  So there we were to save the day. Much of it was in a pile, but without bags, so we spent a lot of time just bagging stuff.

After that we headed north. We grabbed a few caches on route. It was a good morning and normally I would not be out of bed at this time.  However this was for caches, breakfast, and bacon.  The event was the Spring Breakfast event.  Every year it gets bigger.  I counted 130 cachers (about).  It is hard to count with everyone mulling about.

It was a great event.  I do not know how many years it has been going on, but it seems to grow every year.

There were a number of people that traveled hours south to the event.  Chasing the sun, and others that headed up from St. George. 

I brought one of my limited edition coins to give away.  And who won it?  The guy that I drove all the way down with.  I thought that was really funny.  Out of 130 people, he was the one to win it.

It is funny how some events are just the right place at the right time.  Sunshine, while the rest of the state is usually still int he cold of late winer.

Last year my wife and I came down and we spent our time doing every virtual and earthcache that we could find.  That was a great trip.  I had nopes of going with my wife (no offence to peanutsparents) but with kids activites and stuff like that,  of course Peanutsparents had planned on going with his wife as well.  So it all worked out.

Well later that morning we decided to head out into the desert. It was time to start looking for caches. We grabbed a few caches. In fact I pulled my old trick.  There is a road on the map,so we followed that.  Unfortunatly the map on the road was a rough road, we did eventually make it to the location, but man it was a nasty ride.

We headed to billionj's mom heart int he desert. There were a lot of caches that made up the heart.  So we were actaully planning something rather long. There were about sixty caches in the outside of the heart that we were planning on doing. 

Actually we thought about doing the O in mom as well.  But more on that later.

We headed out into the desert and we had a number of us. About a dozen running from small 7 year olds to mid 40's all going for a nice stroll.  A stroll in the cactus and sand for 7-8 miles.

The group tended to stretch out as time went on.  What started out as all of us together slowly started to string out into a longer and longer line. By the time we got to the bottom of the heart (about 20 caches into it), we all knew that some were not going to make it.  Unfortunatly for those that gave up it was a two mile hike back to the cars.

As we crossed the road on the SE edge of the heart all of the kids gave up.  Jac0b started back at that point. He started with the rag tag band to head back ot the cars.

A bit later A few others felt like they had enough as well. So they headed back as well.  So with 35 caches and 4.5 miles of sand dunes and sagebrush ahead of us DrJay, Peanuts Parents, and myself continued to the quest.  It was a long long hike.

I had forgotten how much I hated hiking in the sand.  I grew up in southern Utah and we avoided sand.  You have to work twice as hard. It gets in your shoes.  In fact when I was done I had a lot inside my socks. It made for rough hikeing.  However even had we decided to give up we were going to be hiking past many of the caches that we were looking for heading back to the car.

I never did actually measure the length.  Five barbed wire fences were crossed, and many miles.  It was fun to go with the people that I went with.  They are a blast and I would not have enjoyed myself had I been caching on my own like I normally do.

The scenery was awesome.  Given it was mostly sand, and hills.  However it was really a nice break from what I see up north.  Like I said I grew up seeing sights like these.  Now as I get older I start to appreciate what I grew up with, and what people travel thousands of miles from around the world to see.

Needless to say the rest of the day was spent trying to pretend that we were alive.  Nearly sunburned, and wanting sleep we headed back to the hotel to sleep and get cleaned up.  I went to dinner later, but was pretty burned and just exhausted. So I did not eat a lot.

The next day was the drive back.  I actually found another fifty caches on the way home.  I really need to log them.  I have tried to make each log part of the experience this year.  So I put off logging (like blogging).  However I will get back to it.

In all it was a great trip.  Thanks for everyone that made it so enjoyable.  We saw many great sights.  Thanks for everyone in making it fun.