Today we went to Reno for a number of reasons: to visit Gerhard's father, to gamble, to cache. We started about 9, and first stopped at the travel bug cache at Clipper Gap, where I traded a little girl's dolphin for a skull that wants to go to Salt Lake City.

Our next stop was at the Transportation Center in Truckee. There was one woman in the room but her back was turned, so we snagged the cache. Then we went toward the bookstore, which I used to love. Aaugh! It's gone! I wanted to get a Father's Day card for the Reno guy. We walked down Main Street and finally located a gift store where I found a cute (not Father's Day, but oh, well) card and a couple of rolls of Necco Wafers. Those things are hard to find! I noshed on those till we got to Lake Tahoe, and picked up the virtual at the Ponderosa Ranch. (Another place we gotta get back to!) Then it was up the Mt. Rose highway to the viewpoint, where we placed a premium cache. Rich thinks, quite rightly, that there are plenty of ordinary caches, so now people should leave premiums to encourage more people to join (without embarrassing them, like we were) and help keep the website going! This one is "on the way to the Tree" and talks about the Washoe Pine, even about the day we lost it.

Then we went to visit the Tree itself. The dogtag Rich put up to honor GoE is still in fine shape. I said "hi" to my dwarf's spirit, which has got to be hanging out there, and we got back to business!

Galena Creek Park has a couple of caches, and after trekking after them at altitude we were TIRED and hungry. Rush was over, and we were listening to KOH (Reno) and they were talking about all the people lined up to see the President. Uh-oh.

Now, unlike the time we accidently ended up in San Francisco with Clinton, this time I wouldn't have minded seeing the Pres., but my main worry was traffic, since we were coming in from the south and would pass the Convention Center. Well, first things first. We went looking for one out on a new parkway to the southeast of town. It's a 3 hide, one terrain. The hard part was finding a parking place. Then we walked into this new park and Rich immediately keyed on the new plastic fence. "See if that top comes off," he said to me. I started to wiggle it off, but it was a tight fit... and suddenly it POPped up and flew about 10 feet away. On the other side of the fence. Yes, the cache was under it. Rich got the top while I looked at the cache.

Then we looked for a way to another cache which might be along the road... no, it was UP a hill, never mind. We went to lunch at Wendy's.

We began to work our way toward another cache which our GPSr insisted was on the lower edge of a hill. We tried this road, then that road, then got into a traffic jam of people who had been watching Air Force One land. Finally we got up a hill and to a trailhead, with a sheriff sitting in it. "Hello, folks." We thought he was going to tell us no hiking allowed today, but he was fine with us getting out and wandering around, just don't be startled by the folks on ATVs with guns! OK, maybe we should share what we're doing. He'd only heard about Geocaching this morning.

We walked around the reservoir and located the cache, called "52 card pickup." You are to sign a card... I signed the King of Hearts for Rich (awwww) and we left Harry Potter cards. Back at the car, we asked for a route to downtown that would bypass the Convention Center. Then I traced it on our map and realized how it all connects to places I'm familiar with in Sparks.

We were driving around the Airport, and I saw Air Force One!!! It's the next best thing to seeing the President. We heard a lot of the speech, which was quite good. Cheers erupted over and over. Almost everyone I've run into in Reno is a liberal, so this was encouraging. I dislike Senator Reid (another "we will win!"-er) almost as much as some of the others.

We dropped some money at Fitzgerald's and used some of the points we "earned" to get five little presents for the out-of-area grandkids who are visiting next month. Rich initially thought I was getting cache stuff, but I had a plan, really.

We visited our friend for a couple of hours. Then we went up to the Reno Travel Bug Port and counted a bunch, though I only took two, the alien (which will go into our "skiffy" cache) and a Mr. Potato Head. From there we decided to get one on the way home and eventually found it, right overlooking people's back yards, under a bale of straw. We think the neighbors actually know about it, but we tried to be discreet anyway.

We tried to locate one in Crystal Peak Park (where we've been blackberrying) in Verdi, but couldn't get a good approach. It was getting dark, and we started home. I was hungry when we left Verdi, so I was ready to kill and eat Rich by the time we got home! En route, in the mountains, we saw what I initially thought was a small coyote, but which was a fox on the road. I hope he got off before he got smeared. That's the first time I've seen a fox in the wild!

A nice day.

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Glenn on the War on Some Drugs: "The response, of course, is that terrorists often make money via the drug trade. But they do that because it's illegal."

Judge's remarks at sentencing of Richard Reid.

Krauthammer on the Middle East.

Saddam's plans.

Hell, I can't even FIND the goalposts any more!

The Onion points out that the 9/11 Commission could have been prevented. Ah, if only.

A comment at Protein Wisdom:

I'll disagree Jeff. These people are very serious about fighting and winning the war. Their war against Bush, that is. And if the country ends up as "collateral damage," that's a price they seem to be willing to pay.