How the Stealth Bomber helped us find a cache...
by Tony Fannin - Visit his website at: http://www.nowhere.nu

Went out on a hunt today for Pickett Trail - 'Straight Up!'. It was quite a hunt. Found the trailhead for this quite easily and we were on our way. It follows a nice river, was quite pretty, and was an easy hike. That is until we got to the 'Straight Up!' part. This is where our luck went weird.

We started climbing an embankment as was indicated by our GPS. As we got near to the cache, we encountered what I'll describe as 'heavy cover'(you'll have to do the cache to see what I mean). After emerging from the 'cover' our GPS indicated we were less than 100' from our target, straight up an even steeper climb. 'Well, it is named 'Straight Up' says I' so we started climbing. The bank, about a 60+ degree slope had a road at the top and a river at the bottom. One bad slip and you were going 200 feet down the bank into the river. The hill was also apparently the dumping ground for the city in the old days. Lots of rusted cans, bedsprings, medicine bottles, and crockery. We snagged a few souvenirs in the process. After trudging around on the hill for 45 minutes we decided to pack it in. I forgot the hints and I wanted to get back to town to catch part of the air show.

We made our way down a slope to a decent spot to rest. Our GPS indicated the stash was 50 feet away at this point, in many random directions. I figured the GPS was broken.

Just then we heard what we thought was a large gust of wind coming over the ridge. ROAR! as the B-2 stealth bomber flew right over our heads and scared us. It's fly over was the only reason I wanted to go to the air show. It was 30 minutes early. Dang, I whipped out the digicam and snapped a quick pic. We sat down and watched it.

After about 5 minutes it's flybys were over and we started to get ready to leave. I took one more look at the GPS and it said we were within 6 feet. Darn near sitting on what was just a few minutes ago 50 feet away. We looked a bit more and started to leave. My 5 y.o. son found it right under where we were sitting the whole time. If the Stealth hadn't passed over right when it did, we'd have never sat down and our GPS would never have had time to settle and pinpoint the spot.

The cache was rated 3.5/3.5 and earned that rating well.

Team Bohica