Tuesday, August 21, 2012, Tonopah, NV

Tuesday, August 21, 2012, Tonopah, NV

 

 
Tuesday, August 21, 2012, Tonopah, NV
We slept in until 9:20. I flushed the electric toilet in our bathroom and nothing happened. The water was off. I checked outside and the water was off at the faucet but also running out the overflow at the fill opening on the side of the coach. I checked the bypass valve and it seemed to be in the correct place. But if the city water is on it overflows the tank instead of bypassing the tank and feeding the inside faucets. With that and the DirecTV problem from yesterday, I am starting a list of repairs needed. Last night a rain storm started at about 11 PM, because it was blowing in I had to shut the windows. It became stuffy right away and I turned on the air conditioner. It was raining too hard to go out and extend the awnings over the windows. This morning I decided to extend the awnings over the side windows so rain wouldn't come in. The awning above the window by my computer was no problem. When I pulled the awning over the driver's side windows, the strap came loose. Something else to add to the list.
I sat down at the computer and started sending thank you's to all the people that sent expressions of condolence about the death of my mother. I think I got them all, some of the e-mails had been sent to Gerri's e-mail and she forwarded those to me. I also thanked all those on Facebook who had made comments on Gerri's post about my mother's passing. There were a lot of nice comments from people she had met while we were traveling.

At about 1:00 I was ready to go out geocaching. One of the reasons we are staying in Tonopah three nights is for me to do the oldest active cache in Nevada and a few caches in the series along the Extraterrestrial Highway. The ET caches are a series of caches along Nevada SR-375 and other roads in the area of the Tonopah Test Range and Area 51. There are over 1800 caches in the series. I set my GPSR on the Oldest cache, XKD-380, as the bird flies it is 38 miles from where we are parked. As the Jeep drives it is further, North on US-6 from Tonopah 38 miles to the Fish Lake turn off, 18 miles of dirt road to a Forest Service road, 4 miles to parking and a 450' walk to the cache. Of course half way through the walk I came across a road that would have meant a shorter walk. The last 240 feet was up a hill and over to the edge of a cliff. A few years ago this would have been easy rock hopping but now I have to practically crawl over the boulders to keep my balance. I located the cache and signed the log book, I was the 705^th finder. This cache was placed 12/26/2000, I have only done two older caches. I took some pictures with my phone showing the surrounding area and started back to the Jeep.  

Looking east over the rocks that hide the cache.

I have lived in Las Vegas for 48 years, but this area exemplifies what I love about Nevada.  The long valleys, the rugged mountains and the sparse population.

Looking north from the cache site

After logging the cache I decided to do 12 of the ET series caches while returning to Tonopah. The first one was only 140' feet from the Jeep. The others were placed one every 1/10 of a mile apart. Once back on US-6 I did 8 more caches along the road back to Tonopah. The last cache I did was just west of the RV Park.

We finished up the last of the taco meat leftovers, the tacos were better every night. After logging my caches I checked my e-mail and answered some more messages of condolence.
Gerri had me massage her left ankle and the area around the scar from her operation before she went to bed. It had quit raining by 11:30. If tonight is like last night, it will rain off and on until morning.
I did start writing a biography/eulogy for my Mother. I may post it here later.
I was in bed by midnight.