Lessons

So, what did I bring back from Colorado?  Well, I don’t know if you picked up on this subtle throughline that I wove into the narrative, but I hate mountain passes.  They are the most difficult type of driving and wear me out like little else.  But I also realize that I need to evaluate them separately.  What do I mean by that?  Well, I drove from Austin to Westcliffe and then continued on.  The drive from Austin to Amarillo is not exactly easy highway driving (I much prefer “get on Interstate X and drive 600 miles, turn onto Interstate Y and drive 200 more”).  Consequently, I hit my first pass (not counting the Raton Pass, which is an exquisite drive) after 13 hours and 800 miles of driving and they only got worse.  I don’t know if my antipathy towards them is completely because passes suck or because I had already had some difficult driving before hitting them and they added to the difficulty of getting home.  I got a good night’s sleep in Gunnison, which may have helped my mood on the way to Telluride, but the Million Dollar Highway between Ouray and Silverton used up any good feeling I had previously.  I may reconsider how I feel about passes once I can do some easy driving before encountering them or, better yet, flying out to them.  I also might not encounter the same level of treacherous in future mountains (the Smokies and Appalachians look to be far easier than the Rockies).  Regardless, I’m very, very not enthused by mountain driving.  If there was any question before, I think it was mostly answered this trip.  I am willing to examine more data, but I definitely see a pattern in that regard.

The other realization has a farther-reaching impact on the future of the project.  As mentioned before, I did not go get the New Colorado County Challenge.  It required a more experienced driver in a 4×4 to go up a pass between Telluride and Ouray.  I couldn’t hire one for a reasonable price on the Fourth of July and would have been slowed down by local festivities anyway.  So I concluded that the greater project (finding a cache in all 3,144 counties and county equivalents) was primary and completing county challenges, though preferred, was secondary, possibly tertiary if one considers courthouses to be a secondary objective.  If I extend this thinking, it could reshape my needs for the future.  You see, as I’ve been hitting new counties, I’ve made a point of getting caches that would qualify for applicable state county challenges.  Do you know how much faster Oklahoma would have been if I didn’t insist on getting all physical caches?  At the moment, I consider myself as having to go back to Trenton and Paterson.  Do you know how much easier New Jersey would be if I got any cache and not just caches specific to the county challenge (small or larger; only Traditional, Multicache, Mystery, or Letterbox Hybrid)? At that lower level of accomplishment, I could finish New Jersey in a long weekend.  I wouldn’t have to go back to Connecticut when I do Rhode Island to get the Connecticut County Challenge (though I probably will anyway).  I wouldn’t have to get three caches per county when I go back to New Hampshire because of their county challenge (a Traditional, Multi, and Mystery in each county).  That is a bit of a game changer.  But it also takes away adventure possibilities.  If I wasn’t trying to get physicals in Arkansas, I wouldn’t have found myself following wagon ruts in the middle of the night in a field under an endless blanket of stars.  If I wasn’t trying to sign the Oklahoma County Challenge, I wouldn’t have reconnected with my cousin in Norman.  I would have totally half-assed Louisiana if I could discarded caring about physical caches (there were enough Virtuals to have made it much easier).  I might not have been looking for high favorited caches and would have missed the one in Ozark.  Don’t get me wrong: I would like to go back and sign the Colorado County Challenge, but if I’m not bound to it, future states might be different.  I think I’m going to shoot for county challenges but not be beholden to them.  The Maryland County Challenge might be a pain in the butt.  Massachusetts will probably be fine (I just have to have an Event in one of the counties [I’m looking at you, Suffolk County]), but will I want to fiddle with the Florida County Challenge (log the North and South county challenges)?  We shall have to see, now shan’t we?