The Mogollon Rim is a very special place for me and my family.  It is a place full of memories - both good times and bad - and a place where we go to pay our respects to loved ones lost.  One day, we decided to visit some of those special places, on one of our geocaching adventures.

Before we left the house that morning - Sunday, August 19 - John loaded a bunch of geocache coordinates onto the GPS, making sure to select all of those special places that we planned to visit that day.  Of course, he didn't tell me exactly where we were going that day; he kept that to himself.

Around 8:00 a.m., we all got into the 4Runner and headed off on our geocaching adventure on the Mogollon Rim.  To get there, we took SR 87 (the Beeline Highway) north to Payson; then, after stopping to use the facilities, we continued north on SR 87 through Pine and Strawberry, until we arrived at last on top of the Rim.

Once on the Rim, we immediately turned off onto FR 608, in search of our first cache.  I recognized this road as being one of the roads that connects to FR 147 - the road to Potato Lake.  One day, about six years ago, we were looking for this road and ended up on a dead end; that was when John was stung by a bee!

This time, we weren't looking for that back-way into Potato Lake; we were looking for a Fossil Pit, in which there was a geocache hidden.  We weren't sure what we were going to find until we actually saw it; it was a large, bowl-shaped indentation in the ground, where there were supposed to be fossils.  We didn't find any fossils there, but we did find the cache!

Having found that cache, we then returned to SR 87 and continued north to the next cache site, which was just off of FR 300 - the Rim Road.  That, too, was an easy find, so in just minutes, we were back in the 4Runner, on our way to the next cache.

As soon as we turned onto FR 218, that brought back memories of camping trips that took place long before Mary was born - memories of John "mooning the funeral profession" and suffering through second-degree sunburns after canoeing all day on Blue Ridge Reservoir...memories of camping in that same spot, while I was very pregnant with Mary...

We continued along FR 218, following the same route that we had taken that evening when we scattered the ashes of John's grandfather Archie, during that crazy camping trip in July of 1998...only this time, there were no second-degree sunburns, no Malort, and no bare butts.  En route, John told Mary about her great-grandfather Archie, and we told her that his ashes were scattered in Dickinson Flat, which was appropriate because he was born in Dickinson County, MI. 

There was a geocache hidden in Dickinson Flat, located right in the middle of the meadow.  At first, it seemed kind of odd that a cache would be hidden out in the open like that; I thought perhaps the coordinates were off.  Then, as we approached, we found a series of small, white rocks in the grass.  The rocks appeared to have been strategically placed; upon closer inspection, we could see that they spelled out "PHX", and there was an arrow pointing in the direction of Phoenix. 

And at the end of the arrow, there was a large white rock that turned out to be a fake rock, under which was the cache.  What a clever way to hide a cache in the middle of a meadow!

After replacing the cache, we walked back to the 4Runner, making sure to stop by the tree where we had scattered Archie's ashes so that we could pay our respects.  We also made sure that the tree was still thriving; we had a standing joke about the tree doing well, despite the fact that we had dumped part of that Malort around its base!

We left Dickinson Flat and started driving down FR 218 in search of our next special place: a place that we had often looked for, but had not been able to find.  It was the place where, nearly nine years ago, John had asked me to marry him, during one miserable camping trip on the Rim.  We had camped right on the edge of the Mogollon Rim and suffered through freezing cold winds all night.  On top of that, we had shared a bottle of Corbett Canyon Chardonnay - a wine that forever turned me off of Chardonnay, after it gave me one killer headache the next morning.  Despite how miserable that camping trip was, though, when John asked me to marry him, it was all worth it!

It had been a number of years since then, and we were no longer able to find that site again.  That morning, we thought that we had found it, though.  We pulled off into one campsite and got out of the 4Runner to inspect it.  At first, we thought that that was it, so we took a picture.  After comparing it to the engagement picture that John had taken in that spot, we discovered that we had not found it after all.  Maybe next time...

We continued along FR 218 until we connected once again with the Rim Road; from there, we went on to the next special place: Potato Lake.

Potato Lake is just one of those pretty places that we have always loved; it was for that reason that we chose that spot to scatter the ashes of our stillborn son, William.  Each year, on or around November 12, we return to Potato Lake to pay our respects to William; we also try to get there each time that we're in the area. 

There were two geocaches located near Potato Lake; they were both located on the hill that surrounds the lake, but were on opposite ends.  When we arrived, we attempted to find the one at the furthest end of the lake. We climbed about halfway up the hill and searched for the cache.  After about ten minutes of searching, we determined that the cache was just not there; it had, in fact, been "muggled" - stolen or damaged by non-caching folk.  (Yes, just like the term for non-magic folk in the Harry Potter books.)

Having determined that the first cache was missing, we walked around the lake and hiked up the hill in search of the other cache.  This one was there and it was easy to find, so at least we found one at Potato Lake!

After we were done at Potato Lake, we moved on to our next destination: Clover Creek.  Clover Creek has been a significant part of our life since John and I first met.  In our first year together, John and I hiked Clover Creek, bushwhacked as far as we could go upstream, and did a luxury backpacking trip there.  Later, it was the place where we took Mary on her first day hike (when she was nineteen days old) and on her first backpacking trip (when she was twenty-six days old).  Before that, it was a place where John had camped with his family many, many times over the years.  No doubt about it: it was one of our favorite special places.

There were a couple of geocaches to be found within the first half-mile of the Clover Creek Trail, before the wilderness boundary. John had already found one of them while attempting to do a solo winter backpacking trip earlier in the year; he could not, however, find the other one.   He figured that it would be better to have a second - and third - set of eyes to find it. 

From Potato Lake, we took FR 147 back to SR 87; then, we went north a few miles to FR 142 (on the left) and drove all the way up to the trailhead. 

We hiked in on the Clover Creek Trail about a quarter of a mile, until the GPS indicated that we were within feet of the cache.  The container was hidden in a rocky wall; John said that he had searched everywhere but could not find it.  After only a few minutes of looking, I managed to find the cache!

As we left Clover Creek that morning, we found one other cache, this time at the kiosk just off the highway, at the start of FR 142.  That was the last cache that we would find that day.

By the time we finished caching, it was lunchtime; and since we were already in the area, we decided to eat at the Long View Café, at Clint's Well. 

Clint's Well has been an important part of our adventures on the Mogollon Rim; we have spent a lot of money on supplies and gear at that little shop: ice, tarps, beer, cooking pans, lantern mantles, wine...you get the idea.  We have also had many meals at the restaurant next door, when we just didn't feel like cooking at camp, after short hiking adventures, or after finishing a backpacking trip.  Whatever our need is, we are always grateful to have Clint's Well.

After lunch, we decided that it was time for us to go home.  We had found a total of ten caches, had seen all of our special places on the Rim, and had paid our respects to our lost loved ones.  But now, our fun adventures was over...

Return to Naked in the Woods.