Father's Day, 2008

For the previous two years, I spent most of Father’s Day weekend at the GBES offroad and navigational rally in Nevada. Unfortunately, my co-driver Antony couldn’t make it this year, so I decided to pass rather than try to go with a substitute. It just wouldn’t have been the same and it didn’t feel right. Plus my family wasn’t exactly heartbroken over my decision either! But I do wish I’d been able to go.

For 2008, I organized a last-minute offroad run up to the Santa Cruz Mountains. The goals were to have some appropriate fun, check on where the big Summit Fire had reached and if it had nuked any geocaches (including one of mine), and to maybe find a few caches.

There were only two other vehicles besides my Jeep, since the whole thing was thrown together late – when Loma Prieta Road was suddenly reopened – and it was a holiday. But everyone had their kids with them and that worked out rather well. The two other vehicles were also first-timers to our geocaching offroad trips so it was a nice, mild introduction for them. All in all it turned out to be a pleasant, low-key family run, and somehow all of the kids were astonishingly well-behaved.

Naturally, there is a gallery of photos from the drive.

I had to bail out of a three-day offroad trip next weekend as well unfortunately, so I’m a bit frantic to plan some sort of substitute run again… And soon!