Goodbye Mrs. Durkin

Guest Post by Michael.

Goodbye Mrs. Durkin
Goodbye Mrs. Durkin, I'm sick and tired of workin'.
No more I'll dig your praties, no longer I'll be poor.
As sure as my name is Barney, I'm off to Califarny.
Instead of digging praties, I'll be digging lumps of gold.

Well, I have never had to dig potatoes for Mrs. Durkin, nor anyone else.  Nor have I ever gone digging for gold.  Nevertheless, after several days and many miles, here I am in California.

DAY 1: Go West...and west...and further west

The first day started dark and early.  Up at six, grabbed a cup of coffee, packed the cooler, kissed the kiddos and my wife and headed out. Bound for I-10 and the West Coast.  Shortly after sunrise, I realized that I was soon to be leaving the land of
bluebonnets, and had to get a last picture of The Crew in the State Flower of Texas.

By lunchtime, I had made it to Fort Stockton.  I decided that this would be a great place to pull off the road and take a picture at the remains of the actual frontier fort.  Fort Stockton was built before the Civil War (and rebuilt following) to guard the nearby Comanche Springs, and to defend the settlements from Comanche raids.  Calling home, Misa let me know that there was a driving tour of Fort Stockton, and reminded me to look for geocaches.  She also let me know of several local diners where I could get a good lunch.  All-in-all I spent almost two hours in Fort Stockton, instead of the anticipated 30 minutes, but it was time well spent.

 For Stockton also boasts the World's Largest Roadrunner.  No word, however, on a large coyote.

Faster....Must go FASTER!

From there I continued west to the El Paso.  There I spied a sign for the War Eagle Museum in Santa Theresa, NM.  I pulled in just after they locked the doors for the day.  As I was getting ready to pull back out, a museum worker informed me that, even though he was locking up the gates, there was an automatic gate off of the flight line, and that there was no hurry for me to leave.  So I took some time to check out their outdoor exhibits. 



Most spectacular were two World War Two bombers.  These were not permanent exhibits, but operational aircraft flown by the Confederate Air Force.  It was awesome to get to see these gallant warriors up close.


 The Crew also enjoyed getting a closer look at these magnificent aircraft.

Leaving the museum, I returned to I-10 to hit the New Mexico Welcome Station just over the border.  It had some historical information, and a lovely fountain where the Crew could cool their feet. 

After that...New Mexico seemed rather endless, even compared to the miles I had already spent crossing Texas.  Perhaps it is because the scenery along I-10 is very similar, or perhaps it is because there is nothing there after Las Cruces.  Even all of the billboards were advertising attractions in Arizona!



Looking back into Texas

I hit the Arizona border close to sunset, no welcome station here, just a sign.  Around 8PM local (10PM in Texas) I pulled into Tucson, road-weary but excited to spend a day with my sister and brother and their families.



Daily distance: about 900 miles
Daily travel time: almost 16 hrs



DAY 2: Tucson Interlude

After a quiet evening visiting with my sister, her husband, and her three dogs and a cat; I crashed hard.  At some point during the night, her 17yo poodle, Bailey, decided that I was warm and curled up in  the bed beside me.  My sister thought that it would be funny to get a picture of us, under the ballerina picture above the bed.

After breakfast, we headed out to the Pima Air Museum, located next to the Air Forces holding grounds of decommissioned aircraft, The Boneyard.  The museum was huge, so we did not go in, but we visited the gift shop, purchased a post card and found that there was a geocache just down the road.  As my sister had never cached before, she went with me to find it.  As we approached the location of the cache, I spied a nesting dove sitting on her hatchling on the top of a cactus.  The dove was a great model, holding still as I took her picture. As I did this, my sister found the cache hidden under another cactus.

We met our brother for lunch at a sushi buffet, and made plans to get together later that evening.  Then we drove over to a cousin's house.  He was working on his collection of remote controlled aircraft.  He has them mounted with cameras, and plans to use them to help local authorities conducting search-and-rescue operations.  We thought it would be great to send the Crew up on one of his aircraft, however they would not all fit.  So one lucky one got to fly while the others helped operate the controls.

That evening everyone came over, including another cousin, and we enjoyed some grilled foods and fruit.








Also, I received word that the Army would have a possible house for us as soon as I arrived in Monterey!


DAY 3: Crossing Arizona

This was by far the easiest day, and the shortest driving day.  That is not to say that it was quick and uneventful.  I had checked for geocaches heading out of Tucson, and found one at the Pinal Air Park. 
This appears to be a former Air Force Base, but is now used to store old wide-body commercial aircraft like Boeing 747s and Douglas DC-10s.  I found the cache just outside the gate, and headed back to the road. 

My GPS decided that I needed to go around, rather than through Phoenix, so I turned off onto I-8 and headed into the middle of nowhere.  My exit took me to Gila Bend.  There were no caches here, but plenty of dinosaurs and one very large Gila monster.  Then it was north bound back to I-10. 

Here I decided that I had no desire to venture anywhere near Los Angeles, and so I headed north-west.  Along a narrow little highway, I saw some armored vehicles in a small park in the town of Bouse, AZ.  I quickly pulled in and found that they marked the site of a camp that trained tank crews for Patton's army during the Second World War. 


From there, I continued north, through the Colorado Indian Nations Reservation and Parker, AZ.  Found a cache in Parker, and then drove along the Colorado River to Lake Havasu City. 



Stopped to look at a site that was supposedly home to Travel Bugs, I found the cache empty, but nearby appeared to be an old mining site.

While Lake Havasu City is a popular destination because of the lake, there is another, rather unique, place to visit.  In 1971, the city of London decided to modernize the bridges over the Thames.  In the process, it needed to replace the Century-and-a-half year old London Bridge.  Rather than see London Bridge fall for good, it was purchased and moved, brick-by-brick to northwest Arizona, and rebuilt in the desert.  When Lake Havasu was formed, a channel was dug under the bridge, so that it once again fulfilled its purpose.  Of course, it also served as a spot for a cleverly hidden cache!

Driving around the north-end of Lake Havasu, I finally reached California. While there was no welcome center, there was still a welcome of sorts.  California operates inspection checkpoints along its borders, to be sure that no one is bringing in any unauthorized plants or animals.  After this I soon reached my destination of Needles, CA, home of Snoopy's brother, Spike. 

Daily distance: about 370 miles
Daily travel time: 6 hrs

DAY 4: California Cruisin'

I attended Mass at lovely little St. Anne's Parish in Needles.  The priest was quite good, and obviously wanted his parishioners to understand the meanings of the Mass.  No joy on caches there, so on down the road to Barstow.  At a Rest Area off of I-40, I found a little cache and some unusual rock formations.   No luck with caches in Barstow, so I continued on down the road to Bakersfield. 


My ever resourceful wife had clued me in to some interesting caches down CA-46, including one near the location of James Dean's fatal car crash.  As the day was getting late, I decided to push on past Bakersfield to these caches.  I did find one along the way, where the highway crossed the Central California Canal,  and another where it crossed the oddly named "Brown Material" Road. 


Picking up some caches near the intersection of CA-41& -46, I found James Dean's memorial. By this time it was nearly dusk, and I was only 3/4 of the way to my destination.  I picked up US-101 near Paso Robles, in the middle of some beautiful vineyards.  US-101 follows the old Spanish Royal Road, el Camino Real, that connected the missions and settlements of Spanish California to Mexico. 


I pulled off to pass one of these missions, Mission San Miguel Arcangel. It was very lovely, but it was too late to visit.  Back onto the road and headed to Monterey.  I finally arrived at my hotel around 9 PM, but went back out to drive past the house that we had been offered.  It seemed very nice, and made me very excited to actually look inside the next morning.

Daily distance: just under 500 miles
Daily travel time: almost 8 hrs

Total distance: about 1800 miles
Total travel time: almost 30 hrs

DAY 5: A new home

I was able to tour the house the next morning.  While the bedrooms are smaller than is typical in Texas, they will do for the next year, and the kids can definitely spread out more.  I was able to get signed up for the house before starting the reporting process to my new duty station.