Quartzsite SKP-Geocaching Rally

Monday: (01/31) A nice morning, no wind and clear skies. Toast, scrambled eggs and sausage for breakfast. I spent the morning working on the computer and also joined a new SKP group, the Geocache BOF. They are having a rally just north of town so I started that way after lunch. Cottage cheese for lunch. I made a stop at the General Store market for drinking water and a couple of other items. While there I crossed the street and picked up a pie at the bakery as well. Then I headed North 10 miles to Plomosa Rd. There is another BLM camping area there and the Geocache BOF meets there at mm2 on Plomosa Rd.


My campsite at the SKP Geocachers Rally on Plomosa Road. I attended the 4pm happy hour. I missed all the other activities of this first day of their rally.


Leftover stew with a chef's salad for dinner. Desert was a slice of apple pie from the Quartzsite bakery. At 6:30 I attended a presentation on the Geocashing.com website. I'm already familiar with it but I did learn a couple of things. After the presentation I enjoyed the group campfire. It was quite windy again today after about 10am until 6pm. In the evening the wind had finally stopped.

Tuesday: (02/01) Oatmeal for breakfast.


At 9:30 there was a presentation on GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) by Barbara Westerfield. 18 people crammed in to one of the RV's where there was floor space only. GSAK is an application for the PC that allows easier connection of the Geocache data with any GPS device. With the Android phones there are apps that provide more functionality already but with the large number of GPS devices out there, GSAK is very helpful.


I really enjoyed watching Barbara's cat. Even with 18 people in the coach, the cat said hello to every visitor and roamed around at ease.


After the presentation I joined a caravan of 4x4 vehicles on a geocaching run out in the desert. With 20 people it's more difficult to really find the caches yourself. We traveled some pretty rough roads to some of the caches. Lunch was a PBJ sandwich.


There was the usual happy hour at 4pm. The wind seems to start every day about 2pm and continue most of the eventing. Note the people standing in the sun in the right picture. The wind and cold made it less pleasant outside.

At 6pm there was a "Z". It's sort of like speed dating though not fast and not dating. Some RVers host a small group of visitors in their RV and a group of about six visitors move around to different coaches every hour. Interesting evening. No real dinner but there were lots of snacks at each stop.

Wednesday: (02/02) Oatmeal for breakfast. It was cold, about 28 degrees, and windy this morning.


One of the motorhomes had a small water leak. On one of our cold morning a stalagmite had formed. At the morning coffee, waymarks for two games were distributed.  For the poker game you just located the caches and selected a card in an envelope at each. I only got a pair of sixes. For the golf game you find a letter on a golf ball at each location some locations had one ball, others many balls, and others many balls in many locations. You have to identify the geocaching related word the letters spell and also make as many two word groups out of the letters. Lunch was a baked potato with salsa on top and a pork chop. There wasn't much going on all afternoon. Just as well since at 2pm it was all the way up to 38 degrees with even stronger winds. At tonight's happy hour I found out what I expected. I found 10 words for the golf game, the winner found 39 words out of the 6 letters "SIGNAL". I don't think I understood the rules?

Thursday: (02/03) Breakfast was oatmeal. At the morning coffee meet it was still cold at 38 degrees. It was a quick meeting which set next years dates and location and it was determined not to have a pot luck dinner since it was expected to be just as cold as yesterday. We all said our goodbyes. I was rolling out toward Parker before 10am.