ET Trail

ET Trail – November 25-28th

WOW! What can be said about the ET Trail that hasn’t already been said? A LOT!! This was an amazing experience. So much that I couldn’t say on a Geocache Log page so I thought I would Blog our experience.

I had heard about the ET Trail from a fellow Geocacher – BIG BEAR.

I had listened to others talk about the ET Trail too, but I never thought that I would get the opportunity to go. Ok…. I have a few days around Thanksgiving, and no plans so could that possibly be enough time to put plans together for this run? Yes it was, we read previous posts which were really helpful and our plans started to materialize. I was going!!

Big Bear and I (Tru2Cntry or T2C) set out on November 25th to drive the 610 miles that night, we got to Alamo Nevada just before 3 a.m. Sean had already flown into Las Vegas and rented a car, drove up to Alamo to the Windmill Ridge Restaurant & Lodging (best accommodations around) earlier in the day. He had rented a room so we knocked on the door and quickly grabbed pillows and blankets and tried to get some sleep, all agreeing to get up at 6 a.m. and get out to the Trail and get started. It was hard to fall asleep, we had driven in from the North West end of the trail and saw that they were just flying by us as we drove, well… we did stop to check out one of them, we couldn’t help it. Then back in the van to find Sean and get a few hours of sleep.

Our day started at 5:59, grabbing GPSr, we were out the door and headed down the road! We did an incredible 700 caches on the ET Trail itself that first day! It was getting dark so we decided to turn around and head back to Windmill Ridge for the night. Had dinner at the restaurant there and reflected back on that incredible day. Tired but eager to start the next day early again we all headed back to our lodges to get a good nights rest. It was hard to fall asleep! Morning arrived and we were back on the road, no time for breakfast, we headed down the road to start back at ET 701.

We hadn’t planned it but we each took an hour at running and it ended up that we each had our own personal best, Sean had the first hour where he did an amazing 101 finds. I took the 2nd hour and grabbed my 82 just as we were counting down the seconds on the hour. And Big Bear blew us away with an amazing 124 caches grabbed in the last hour!! Amazing!! We all jumped out on the last cache, signed it, signed the pole, took pictures and reflected back on what an amazing experience this was. Thank you to the COs’ of this incredible run: Clay4&whtwolfden!!

After finishing the ET Trail we headed back to do the Alien Head. We walked it, it was 29 degrees and there was a strong wind, we had to hang on to the logs to keep them from blowing away! We did the Alien Head in about 2.5 hours. Jumped into the Geovan and headed back to the Ale-Inn for our Ale-Inn Burger to celebrate!! Met up with a few of the colorful locals there, finished dinner and headed back to the Windmill Ridge Lodge for a hot shower and a good nights sleep.

Got up the next morning, to SNOW!! It was beautiful, went up and had breakfast and reflected on one of the most amazing weekends and journeys that I know I will never forget!!

So… we definitely broke some records this weekend, how many caches in one day, how many miles to drive for a cache, the numbers went on and on… one of the biggest records we achieved on this trip was that BIG BEAR. reached his 10,000 cache!! I also got to my 2000th! Not only did we break records it was a weekend I lost a ring, and we almost lost a GPS out the window! Whew…. backed up and grabbed it and it was ok, and Big Bear replaced the ring with one that commemorates the ET Trail, with the dates we did the trail and our Teams initials… BB T2C SS, very cool.

After saying Good Bye to Sean, and promising to meet up with him soon to do more Geocaching, and off Big Bear and I went back to Redding, California.

Big Bear, Tru2Cntry, SeanStafford

ET Trail # E.T. 1021