Caching in Palm Springs: Wrecks in the Desert

Welcome to Palm Springs

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.

Sand dunes near Sweetboy's Sandbox cache

There was an Earthcache near the junction of Highway 111 and I-10 that I wanted to get, so I set out during an extended lunch break to grab that cache.  As I was looking at other nearby caches, I noticed that several of them had not been found in a couple of years. In fact, they only had a couple of finds since they were first hidden in 2009. One of them (Shades 2: Sweetboy's Sandbox by SHot70 link), looked like it was in an interesting location and doable as part of my trek to the EC. I have a real soft spot for lonely caches, so this became my first stop on the way to the EC. I drove out of Palm Springs and turned off of Highway 111 onto Tipton Road, parking near the train tracks. Behind me were steep mountains and in front of me was a large wind farm. Other than that, there was a whole lotta nothing out here. I hiked parallel to the train tracks and then crossed underneath the 111 in a dry creek bed. After that was about half a mile of sand. Up the dunes, down the dunes, around the dunes but finally I came to an old lake bed (well, more of a pond really) and saw my likely target for GZ. The question was, which one? Just across the dry pond were the skeletal remains of several vehicles. In the lake bed itself were scattered car parts, beer bottles, and deteriorating tires. It looked like this had really been a great party area at one time!

The cache is in there... somewhere

GZ led me to the remains of an old van (Chevy, maybe?) and I began my search. I've done car hides before, so I looked in the usual spots but was coming up empty. I resorted to the hint (don't judge me, people!) but misinterpreted the clue and focused on one part of the car for about 15 min. I was talking to myself out there (the desert does things to you, you know), trying to work through another way to think about the hint. Fortunately, myself had another idea and I returned to a spot I had already searched, but searched it much more aggressively. Bingo! A very well-hidden mint tin, attached with a magnet. The tin was filled with sand, but I was thrilled to be the 4th to find, particularly since the last person to sign the log found it on January 29, 2012, almost exactly two years ago! This was a little surprising since it wasn't too hard to get out to this cool area, and the search itself was also pretty fun. An interesting hike, a tough search, a perfect hint, and a fun find. This was definitely one of my favorites on this trip!