Owl Canyon Campground, Barstow, CA

Friday morning we left Belle Campground and headed farther north to Owl Canyon Campground northwest of Barstow, CA. Once we turned on Fossil Bed Road, we began to wonder what we had gotten ourselves into--it was the bumpiest dirt road and we were in the RV, not the car. If Bob went over 5 miles per hour, everything shook until I thought the whole RV would fall apart! Well, about 6 miles later we found the campground and low and behold there was nobody there! We found a nice spot and set up  before settling in for the night. Did I mention that it gets dark around 4:30 p.m.?

Right after we settled in for the night we discovered that we had Internet, cell phone, and television! What a pleasure that was! Bob downloaded geocaches for the area so we would be prepared no matter where we traveled.

That night we heard several cars pull into our area and the people began setting up tents in the dark. The next morning we found that we had a boy scout troop camping a ways down from us.

Saturday morning we decided to go for the two caches near the campground. Here is a view of our RV from one of the caches.

 The other near by cache was a little higher in the hills.

 After that we drove to Rainbow Basin to view the area and find some caches. We  could only pull over to get one of the three caches along this one way drive. There were too many other cars traveling the road for us to pull over and climb the rocks without blocking their way. The one we found was difficult to get a good position to get it. Bob ended up flipping rocks off the cache and then flipping the cache down to our level. There had been a bit of a rock slide since it was placed and there was no safe way to get the container. We moved it down the rock wall about 3 feet to make it safer for other cachers.

Later that afternoon we hiked Owl Canyon. At first it was just a dry wash, then it turned into a slot canyon.

 We had to scramble up some rocks to reach the end of the trail.

 On our way back down the trail, we stopped to look in a cave that the Boy Scouts visited that morning. We knew they had been there because they left their lumi-sticks behind! The red one marks the end of the cave.

 Sunday we played tourists and cached our way to Calico Ghost Town.

 I took a breather on the front porch of the restaurant.

 We enjoyed seeing the old buildings once used by miners and pioneers in the area.

 Okay, this is not one of my favorite shots (of me), but the house was interesting. It is made from old soda bottles.

 This building used the mountain as its back wall.

 On our way back to our camp site we stopped at Peggy Sue's Diner on what used to be Old Route 66. There was even a geocache located behind the diner. All in prep for our next 2 record setting days of geocaching!

Monday we set off to break our record of 80 caches in one day and we did it! We found 100 caches! It was a long day, but we were up for the challenge. Tuesday, we decided to try to break our new record and yes, we beat 100 caches--we found 142 caches! It was a lot of driving down dirt roads, but we did it! Unfortunately, we didn't find all the caches in the area. We could easily have done another day of over 100 caches!

Wednesday we drove around Barstow, mailed some Christmas cards, and did a little shopping. Thursday would be moving day!