Modesto....

Our move to the Modesto Elk's lodge occurred a day early as the Thousand Trails didn't like the fact that our trailer tires were 2 feet into the grass. We asked the bartender where a good restaurant was and off we went to downtown Modesto to Gervazoni's. The decor was awesome, unfortunately our pictures didn't turn out. The background music was to our liking and the food was incredible. We started out family style with a huge bowl of clam chowder followed by a caesar salad. Bob ordered spaghetti & sausage while Donna ordered prawns with an Alfredo sauce over spaghetti. We each took home a box for the next day.

We woke to antique cars coming in for a car show the next morning. The boy scouts had a huge breakfast in the lodge which we enjoyed. Eggs, sausage, biscuit & gravy, fresh fruit, coffee & juice for $7. We needed to walk all that off so we went geocaching. What else. We went downtown for a cache that took us across from the historic train station. 

One of the most interest caches was near the Elk's. There was a short road that isn't used and has trash like mattresses & sofas dumped along it. Ground zero was on the sidewalk & neither the name or the hint made sense to us. Bob picked up an old headset & Donna was about to carry it off to the dumpster but why bother with all the other trash that was there. That evening after posting we couldn't find it we got an email from the owner of the cache who told us to call him for a hint. We did and the hint was check the headphones. Back we went. Bob opened it and couldn't spot anything but then we noticed the battery on the right looked a bit different. Sure enough...he had removed the innards of the battery & substituted the log.

On Monday we had made arrangements to go see Bob's cousin in San Jose. We didn't want to get involved with rush hour traffic so we went via a road that went thru the mountains between Patterson & San Jose. It was a very windy road andmany changes of terrain as we rose from the dry grasses on the east side to the higher elevations at Mt. Hamilton thru rain forest trees, past observatory's and back down to the dry grasses & smoggy side of the western mountain range. It was 93 miles and took us better than 4 hours with our "Butt Fluff" geocache stops.

Dixie & Jim were delighted to see us and Dixie fed us both lunch & dinner. We caught up on our lives and what we all were doing. Told them about geocaching and Bob took Jim out to find one in the neighborhood. They are hooked. Donna showed Dixie the website & she was awed by how many were just on the San Francisco peninsula. They were already checking on where to buy a GPS.

We left their house around 7 pm after rush hour traffic and got back home in less than 2 hours via the Interstate system.