ET Highway Day 1: The Start of The E.T. Highway

We roused that day nice and early to get a nice start at 6am to drive to Alamo the only city with fuel along the ET Highway before Tonopah.  We stopped here for breakfast and fuel for the van and found that the nice folks here at the Sinclair also make fresh sandwiches, so we ordered a few of them and were on our way.

We did 5 in this area before the turn off to the ET Highway.  This put Just Leafy and I in position to get our 2000th cache find on 0001-E.T. - GC2ZK7J.  This has been long awaited and planned for find for by us, and boy am I glad to have gotten it done.  It was a great ammo-can painted light green with an alien on it.  We all gathered around and set up the camera on the tripod to take a quick group photo.
With that out of the way we were on our way to get this geo-bucket list done. 

The caching was fast, and furious.  It is unlike anything we have done before!

Really you don't have to put any effort into it at all, the caches are all visible from the road hidden under a little pile of rocks.  You just jump out, open, sign, replace and you are on your way again in seconds.  The faster you go, the more you get done.  To some that may sound monotonous, and to the extent I would agree.  But as a team working together you can take nice breaks and watch the wondrous scenery.

As we cached along we arrived in the little town of Rachel (population 47), the little big mecca of all things extra-terrestrial since it is so close to the mysterious Area 51.  This is the cutest little place with a UFO being towed by a tow-truck, and little cafe/bar that serves fantastic food and is staffed by the most wonderful people (they love cachers)!

But this was not our destination, so after a quick lunch we were on our way again.

We cached on and on and on, and eventually we ran out of light.  We cached as long as we could after, but the temperature drops significantly after nightfall so eventually we had to turn back and head to Alamo once more to check into our motel.  Completely exhausted we all turned in after dinner, and dreamed of the day to come.

We ended day 1 with a total finds of 639 geocaches.  I think we could have found more!  But with the first leg of the trip from Las Vegas to Alamo, shopping and getting over the learning curve, the smaller but impressive count was to be expected.