Franklin Mountains

The 1171st Transportation Co. flew to Fort Bliss, TX on December 4, 2009 and soon as I got off the plan I saw the Franklin Mountians and immediatly wanted to go caching in the mountains. I did manage to get away a couple of times to cache with two trips into the mountains from El Paso, TX.

After completing training, the last group was at Ft. Bliss awaiting a flight to Kuwait, the motor sgt. arranged for a group outing to take a trolley up one of the mountains (Ranger Peak). We took the trolley, a couple of people were a little nervous but we were safe and arrived at the scenic platform. Four of us immediately set out to find Take a Hike OR Get taken for a Ride. The GPS was going nuts with all the metal and antennas on and around the platform and we searched and searched. A ranger noticing we were searching for something inquired what we were doing and I told him about the geocache. He remembered something about a geocache and called the office at the bottom of the mountain and turned out the cache was located in the gift shop that was closed. After contacting the cache owner of our issue and showed pictures of us on the mountain with GPS, he allowed us to claim the find. With that aside, the views from the top were breathtaking.

Being held back again, this time for a medical issue I saw my friends leave again. This did give me one more chance to visit the mountain range. The last full day before departing for Kuwait, I went after Backyard Fun. This cache gave me a solid workout and I was huffing and puffing on he way up the mountain. Found the cache after some searching and sat to admire the view of El Paso from high up.

10 Years! -Kuwait!

Was deployed to Kuwait in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in late Feburary, my company, the 1171st Transportation Co. had already been in Kuwait about 6 weeks prior to my arrival. I started caching at Camp Arifjan the first week I was in-country. Later, after reading the 10 year birthday party events being set up back home. I came up with an idea to create an event in Kuwait. After a few emails with the region reviewer, I set up 10 Years! -Kuwait. Just after listing the event, Airooster posts a will attend. I sent invitations to other cachers who had been visting Arifjan, some would attend, some could not, due to being on missions, R&R leave or re-deployment home.

The event was fun with many stories about geocaching and making friends. I soon found that one of the Chaplians of the new brigade that recently moved in is also a geocacher, chapredeb. Two US Navy officers showed up, having just arrived at Arifjan 45 minutes before the event. One of them, jeepnjudy has visited two Geo-Woodstocks.

The following day, I revisited the most of the geocaches at Arifjan; the 3rd time for Zone 6, with jeepnjudy and I found 3 that I had not found. After the archiving of one cache, I have found all at Arifjan. We ended up walking 3-4 miles and on the way back to Zone 6 in the rain, chapredeb saw us and gave us a ride after seeing us with Garmins hanging on our necks.