Caching in Palm Springs: Geoart

I spent last week in Palm Springs attending a protein science conference. The meeting was very good and I had a lot of talks to hear, people to meet, and swag to grab from vendors. This left me little time for geocaching, but I managed to squeeze it in! I had scoped out the area for interesting caches, and asked some folks here in San Diego if they had some favorites. This became my to-do list. Some were on there because they were unusual hides, some were vintage, and some required some hiking. In the next few posts, I will share some of my favorites from this trip.

Beautiful moonrise

Easter Egg geoart

Last November, I did the Putting Kat on the Map series (here's the link), which was one of San Diego's first examples of geoart. I noticed that there was some nice geoart series in Palm Springs, so these became high on the to-do list. The problem with these power trails is that they can take a fair amount of time, and between meetings, breakout sessions, poster sessions, and receptions, it was hard to find a large chunk of time for power trails. I decided to try a smaller trail first, the Easter Egg Hunt series placed in March 2010 by olsenr. I skipped the second half of one of the afternoon sessions and had a couple of hours before dark. As is often the case, I stopped for a couple of other caches first (one was a Wheeler Dealer cache, more on those in a future post) so by the time I got out to Desert Hot Springs, it was getting pretty late. I had two choices: go for it and get it done before nightfall, or go back to the hotel and be a weenie. The nearly full moon was rising over the mountains, so I figured I might get a little extra light from that if I didn't quite make it. Besides, I'm no weenie. I did do some quick math and decided the best way to finish was to move quickly. Yup, I was going to run around the power trail. I was wearing hiking boots, but I had run in them before and I knew my trusty Ahnu boots were fine. So, I started at Is it Butter (link) and ran counterclockwise around the egg. Fortunately, the hides were pretty straightforward, and once I knew what to look for, many of them were instant finds. The entire loop (a dozen caches) was almost two miles and I got it done (in fading twilight) in just under 45 minutes. Great fun, and a good tune up for the next geoart series: Heartburn!

Heart-stopping views of a wind farm against the mountains

Later in the week, I had a morning free, so I decided that was when I was going to go for the heart. The Heartburn series was placed in January, 2009 by KNOCK and consists of 22 caches, each a food item that causes heartburn. I started with Pickles (link) and again worked counterclockwise around the heart. I was less pressured by time with this series, but still tried to move quickly since I was using my cell phone as a GPSr and it is notoriously bad with battery usage. Again, the hides were easy to find and almost all of them were the same type, so one just follows the arrow and signs the log. Not much thought at each cache, but that's okay. We are doing this in the name of art!! Many of the caches had clues in them (letters and numbers), which were part of a series of bonus Heartburn mystery caches. These have been archived now because some of the clues have been lost over the years and it is hard to solve the puzzle. I wrote these down anyhow, and tried to guess what the missing numbers were, based on the numbers I had, previous logs in the puzzle caches, and some logic. I got somewhat reasonable numbers for a couple of them but I wasn't confident in the numbers, or in the odds of the caches still being there. Near the bottom of the heart (Chocolate Chip Cookies and Got Milk), I ran into a huge debris field of trash. Unfortunately, trash scattered through the desert was a common theme during my caching in Palm Springs, but it was especially bad here. Glass, mattresses, TVs, car parts, construction waste, unidentified electronics, paint cans, carpeting, clothes... you name it, it was probably out here. I had to pay pretty close attention to where I was walking so as not to step on a nail or something.

Heart Shaped geoart in the desert

Anyhow, the whole group involved about a three mile hike through the desert and between the rising morning sun and the howling winds, I left the area thirsty and wind-burned. I brought a liter of water and it was gone by about cache 15. As I returned to the car, I was happy to have added a heart to my Easter egg. Two nice examples of geoart in the desert that do much more than just boost the smiley totals! A big thanks to KNOCK and olsenr for setting them up, and to the various cachers since then who have helped to maintain them.