He was often criticized for having his two children late in life (he was 44 when I was born). His friends’ thoughts being that he would be too old to do active things with us when we were teens, and probably would never see his grandchildren. Boy, were they ever wrong! He took my sister and I hiking and horseback riding, and was last asked to be master of ceremonies at an installation when he was 92. He saw all three of his grandchildren graduate from high school, read to them nearly every day as they were growing up, and shared his whacky sense of humor with all of us ‘til the very end.
His favorite nickname for his grandsons was Watanabe, hence the series name. He often picked the boys up from school, and took them on intricate tours of the nearby rural area, sometimes taking an hour to drive the half-mile distance between the school and his house. If there was a pattern to these drives, we never discovered it. The names Boondocks, Timbuktu, and Constantinople were usually part of the itinerary, though their locations appeared to mysteriously move from one day to the next.
The Boondocks was always the field of weeds immediately to the south. The weeds weren’t nearly as thick then, so he went off-roading in his truck between dirt Wallace Road and (fortunately paved) Ave. 54. I’ve placed the cache across the street from something close to the spot he emerged from whatever new desert trail he had just made each time. He never heard of geocaching, but he loved to exercise his mind and I guarantee he would have loved it! I hope you enjoy the cache as much as just about everyone enjoyed the man to whom it is dedicated.
In memory of Rewell “Doc” Carlton, October 1910 - July 2004
WATANABE - Japanese, which means “cross border”. The first to be named this were court nobles and samurai warriors.
BOONDOCKS - from the Pilipino word “bundock”, which means mountain. The word, boondocks, was first used by American soldiers serving in the Philippines during WWI. It originally referred to a remote, brushy rural area; or to an unsophisticated remote city or town. Most of the internal Pilipino land is rural, difficult to access, mountains, rimmed by the major cities spread along the coastline. The term has evolved into American slang that refers to any isolated rural or wilderness area.
This cache is placed with permission. However, because they have had burglaries in the past, management requests the following:
*Please no night caching.
*Please do not search around the office building when it is closed (the cache isn’t there, anyway).
*Please do not climb over, or go around, any fences (the cache is not inside the fence).
We've upped the difficulty rating, and added a bit of extra info here, because so many seasoned cachers are having a difficult time finding this one. Be aware that coordinates can bounce a lot in this end of the valley. You might need to branch out a little, and hang out a bit, but NO bushwhacking is necessary. You can see the small Very Well Camoed bison with just a couple of seconds to find the right angle. However, knowing exactly where it is, even Team Barn Owls has been guilty of looking right at it for a bit too long before our geosense let us see it. Extra hints available for those who ask. Log only. BYOP.