Having discovered the fun of geocaching, John and Mary and I have begun incorporating that activity into everything that we do, including hiking. This addicting game has helped to get us out moving during what had become a stagnant period in our normally active life.

One October Saturday, the three of us set out to see how many geocaches we could find...and, of course, to do a little hiking as well.  John selected a route for us that would take us to the Badger Springs Trailhead, in the Agua Fria National Monument.  The route included about fifteen different geocaches to find, as well as a short hike into Badger Springs Wash. 

We would also deposit our first Travel Bug - a dog tag that geocachers can attach to a toy or a sentimental item.  The item is then placed in a cache to be picked up by another geocacher, who can then move it along into another cache.  A number on the dog tag allows the Travel Bug's owner to track the item as it moves across the country and around the world.  John had purchased four of these trackable dog tags, and we soon made them into Travel Bugs - John and I each made one, and Mary made two.  For Mary's first Travel Bug, she attached her dog tag to a plastic Emily Elizabeth doll that she had gotten from a Quizno's kids meal; she called it the Emily Elizabeth Travel Bug, whose mission was to find Clifford, her big red dog, by jumping from one cache to the next.  Her mission would begin that day.

Once all of our Travel Bugs were activated, John and Mary and I loaded our hiking gear, geocaching toys, and GPS into the 4Runner to prepare for our day's adventure.  Around 8:00 a.m., we left our house and set off to look for treasure.

Our adventure began as we headed northbound on I-17, towards Black Canyon City - our first stop of the day. Just as we pulled off of the freeway, we zeroed in on a geocache that was supposed to be on the fence.  We found what looked like a cache container - a magnetic box attached to the chain-link fence - but there wasn't a log or anything inside.  Thinking that to be odd, we marked it as "found" anyway on the GPS and continued on.

The next part of our quest required some off-roading.  After passing through the gate, we immediately put the 4Runner into four-wheel drive and proceeded down the rough road to search for treasure. 

As with most 4WD roads, our route started out innocently enough.  It snaked along the desert floor for about a half-mile, eventually reaching the edge of Pyrite Canyon.  We came to a point that was about forty feet from our first find of the day, so we stopped the truck by the edge of the cliff and set about to look for it...only to discover that it was about forty feet below us!  The question was, how do we get down there?

The answer was simple; all we had to do was stay on the road, and we would soon drop into Pyrite Canyon.  And when I say "drop", I mean it.  The road climbed about twenty feet then immediately dropped sharply into the wash below.  It traveled through the soft sand of the wash for about 100 feet before emerging on the other side.

We parked the 4Runner just off of the road, away from the soft sand, and walked to the cache location.  When we reached the side of the cliff, however, we discovered that the cache was hidden about ten feet above us, meaning that we had to scramble up the cliff to get to it.  So, John did the scrambling, and he handed the container down to us for me to sign the log.  I then handed the container back to him so that he could replace it in its hiding place.

From there, we continued on towards the next cache, along that fun 4WD road (which had improved somewhat after the wash).  The GPS led us to a T-intersection with another dirt road, about 400 feet from the cache.  To find it, we had to scramble up the side of a small hill - not too difficult.

The third cache that we set about to find involved another hillside scramble; but this time, it was the 4Runner that would have to do the scrambling.  The road climbed sharply up a very steep hill - so steeply that we weren't sure that we were going to make it all the way up!  There was a saddle at the top of the road; that was where we parked the truck and hiked the rest of the way to the cache location, about 500 feet away.

Having found all three of the caches that we intended to find in that area, we now had to turn around and retrace our path back to I-17.  It took a little skill and a lot of luck, but we managed to make it back to the gate without incident.

After passing through the gate, John stopped the 4Runner at the site of the first cache that we thought we had found earlier.  He was bothered by that cache; why didn't it have a log?  Was that really the cache, or had we actually found something else?  Sure enough, after doing a little more searching, we found the actual cache - log and all! 

Once we were back on I-17, we continued north until we came to the Sunset Point Rest Area.  There, we stopped not only to use the restroom, but to look for two other geocaches.  We weren't able to find one of them; as for the other one, John and I searched everywhere for it, but it was Mary who eventually found it!

We left the rest area and kept going north on I-17 until we came to our destination of the day: Badger Springs Road, where we would find the Agua Fria Monument and the Badger Springs Trailhead.  Our plan, of course, was to do a short hike into Badger Springs Wash...but not before finding all of the geocaches in the area first!

Okay...maybe not all of them...We started out by looking for one cache that we had tried to find a few weeks before, but once again, it eluded us.  It just wasn't meant to be; so, we gave up and focused on another cache in that same area.  This one involved a short hike through the desert - only a tenth of a mile, not strenuous at all.  We found that one easily.

The next cache that we looked for was a short drive away, at the Agua Fria Monument kiosk.  Again, it just wasn't meant to be; this one proved to be too difficult to find, so we gave up and moved on to the next one.

The last two caches that we looked for were along the 4WD road leading to the Beaver Wash Trailhead, and we found both of them.  We also deposited our Emily Elizabeth Travel Bug into one of the two caches, to start her on her mission.

Around 10:30 that morning, we finally arrived at our destination: the Badger Springs Trailhead, where we would begin our hike of the day.  Part of the Agua Fria National Monument (a BLM National Park), the Badger Springs Trail is a popular hiking and equestrian destination.  The hike is a cross-country trek through a wash, to the Agua Fria River - a total of 12 miles roundtrip. 

Obviously, we weren't going to go that far, not that close to the "meltdown hour"; our plan was to hike in about one to two miles then hike back out again.  We probably wouldn't even get to the Agua Fria River...

We stopped to sign in at the trail registry before beginning our hike.  While doing so, we read some of the other entries; just a few days before, a group of hikers wrote that they had run into a large rattlesnake right at the trailhead.  We knew that we would have to be vigilant while hiking, to make sure that we didn't have a close encounter.

The trail began on an old Jeep road that took us downhill into the wash.  That part, of course, was easy...and, no, there were no rattlesnakes along the way.  Then, the trail led us into the wash, where we hiked cross-country.  This part of the hike was more difficult, especially for Mary, because we had to trek through the soft sand.

Since Mary was having such a tough time with the wash, we didn't make it very far that day.  We had only been hiking for about forty minutes and traveled a little over a mile before we came to the "meltdown hour".  It was then that we knew that we weren't going to make it any further that day. 

We stopped for lunch in a shady spot and rested up for our return hike - about a half an hour.  Then, once we were ready to go again, we started back towards the trailhead.  Just as we were leaving, another group of hikers passed by us, on their way towards the Agua Fria River.  So much for having the place to ourselves!

We completed our hike around 12:30 that afternoon.  Upon reaching the trailhead, we climbed into the 4Runner and drove away, back down Badger Springs Road towards I-17.  It was time for us to head home.

On the way back to Phoenix, we stopped one more time at the Sunset Point Rest Area, to look for the cache that we couldn't find earlier that day.  Of course, we still couldn't find that elusive little devil, but we did find another cache off of the old road near the rest area.  In this cache, we found a Travel Bug that we just had to take.  This particular Travel Bug had been put together by a third grade class from Reno, Nevada; the students were using the Travel Bug's journey to study geography.  We couldn't resist the chance to help these kids out, so we took it with us, with the plan that we would drop it off in California on our way to Disneyland in just a few days.

And so, after having found nine geocaches and having started our Travel Bug on its mission to see the world, John and Mary and I returned to Phoenix - a little earlier than planned, but that was okay.  That gave Mary time to have a play-date with her best friend Zoey down the street...and gave John and me a chance to go for a joyride on his new motorcycle...

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