Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
A decon container in a remote area....An unlikely oasis of spring water in the desert. Definitely an area to be snake aware as you search.
After a truly lovely day that Ace and I had caching our way up Mt. Lemmon, and enjoying ice cream (the pie was too expensive) at Summenhaven, we decided to head down the Old Mt. Lemmon road to get the Woodcutter's "swing cache". After scoring that cache and checking out the swing, I told Ace that the road continued on to Oracle and eventually home towards Sahuarita. Heady from our adventurous day, we decided to finish it up right by exploring this "new trail."
Even though we like remote and uncluttered locations, I found myself thinking that I was glad to have a "reliable" car (our 1998 Grand Cherokee Geojeep, with a measly 240,000 miles on it) to travel such a remote area with. That "premonition" was followed by an almost immediate "check instrument" alarm, which showed that our tempurature guage had pegged out and we were seriously overheating. Well, we added what water we had, ran the heater, coasted down hills and generally tried to fix the problem, wishing we had brought a litle more drinking water, as the temperature waxed and waned. As we rounded a corner, what should appear but a beautiful spring-fed pond, out here in nowhere, full of the life giving water we needed to keep going! The Oasis!
We filled up our jeep and all our containers and were ready to continue to limp towards civilization. I said..."this is such an amazing place to find, we should put a cache here!!" With a little encouagement, Ace agreed, the container was placed, reading taken, and off we went on our "merry" way....
In our family, I am the optimist, Ace the realist. He was the one who pointed out that we were not necessarily "out of the woods" yet. Well, like many the oasis that is seen in movies, this one turned out to be a mirage.
In spite of the added water, the overheating continued, to be joined by "strange" knocking sounds and the smell of hot oil. Soon the oil pressure was also waxing and waning. We might have made it out if there was not a long uphill stretch that by now required a lot of power to go up, causing a lot of heat....well, you get the picture. Of course no cell service, so the best plan seemed to be to go as far as possible. Finally in the bottom of a downhill coast, the geojeep will no longer turn over and stops with a haze of black oil smoke from under the hood.
It is now about 7 pm. We gather our valuables and start to the the top of the next hill, where I say we will "surely have cell service". This phrase was repeated on the way to many hills in the next 7-8 miles or so. Thank heavens for the nearly full moon and very small flashlight for looking for snakes in the dark areas.
Long walk, I mean story shortened, somwhere past Peppersauce campground, we got cell service, and were trying to decided who to call, just as the only car we had seen in nearly 3 hours pulled up...a white jeep "travel bug" wrangler. The nice young men in it happened to live near the airport and took us there, where we thought we could rent a car at 11pm, and did. Our heros!!!
Even though the "Oasis" did not save us, the cache is there to point others to this surprise area on the Old Mt Lemmon Rd. We will return to enjoy this area more when we get our new engine put in. :(
Enjoy the cache, and make sure your cachemobile is ready for a REMOTE area.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Ebpx ba, be ba ebpx?