Our first stop was in downtown Willcox. This old railcar is across the street from the historic train stop. It's just down the street from the Rex Allen Museum. (For those of you old enough to remember Rex Allen)
It only took Doug about one minute to find the cache tucked up under the back side of the car. It was a tupperware type container with a few little goodies inside.
After that easy find, we drove to the other side of the freeway, where we found Stout's Cider Mill. Next to the store, was an empty lot with a display of a mine entrance and a couple of coal cars.
And, that's where Doug found the next cache. In fact, he tripped over it before he found it. The cache was a fake rock that blended in with the rest of the scenery perfectly. We signed the log book and tucked this back with the other rocks for the next geocacher.
Of course, we had to check out the cider mill. When we entered, a sweet, older lady poured us samples of the cider. Good stuff.....but, we aren't really cider drinkers. While wandering around the store, we discovered a bakery in the back. They bake world class apple pies using three pounds of apples per pie. When the crust goes on top, it looks like a volcano. I have never seen pies this tall! Of course they have lots of other items for sale too.
Also next door to the cache is a visitor center. We stopped in briefly and then continued on our way to the next cache.
We went from cider to wine! Unfortunately, the winery was closed today. Doug searched for the cache while the gps signal was bouncing all over the place. He was having trouble nailing down the coordinates so I walked over to the information container hanging by the front door.
Guess what I found inside! The cache! This geocache was just a log book. I signed it, returned it to the inside of the info box and we were off again without sampling any wine. Bummer.
Our next stop was the Willcox Playa Wildlife Area. The Willcox area is known for it's population of sand cranes. These beautiful birds travel from as far as northern Canada to feast on the grain fields that are so prevalent in this area. We saw several flocks flying overhead, but there were none at the viewing pond.
We did find the cache though. And inside was a gold dollar! We pocketed the cash and signed the log book. That was a fun one! We did leave a watch in place of the coin.
As you can tell from the blue sky in all of the pictures, we never got the predicted rain. So, we continued to our fifth geocache. This was in another wildlife viewing area that was provided by the Arizona Electric Power Plant. It's a nice picnic area with a raised viewing platform that includes high powered binoculars for watching the birds in the fields as well as the nearby lake. I took a picture, but the birds are so far away they look like little white spots. The cache was in an Altoid tin attached magnetically inside one of the metal hand railings of the viewing platform.
Our final cache for the day was near the small town of Cochise. Being an ex postal worker, I had to get a photo of this sign out by the highway. It's for the Cochise Post Office established in 1886.
The geocache itself was right out on the highway. In fact, attached to the highway sign! I stayed safe and sound on the side road while Doug dodged the traffic and found the tiny metallic box stuck to the back of the tall part of the sign.
After signing the log book and returning the geocache, we turned the car towards home.
We found this sign that gave us both a chuckle and thought we would share it with you. We never saw the earth fissure, but we drove carefully anyway!
One of the things we love about geocaching is finding places that never show up on brochures in the visitor centers. There are so many out of the way parks and historic sites that keep life interesting.
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