There's No Place Like the Southwest...

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Viva Las Vegas.
Viva Las Vegas.

SPEAKER_03 (00:05):
Sorry.
You're gonna be blast your ears.
I did back up a little bit fromthe mic, but thank you.

SPEAKER_01 (00:11):
I do appreciate that.

SPEAKER_03 (00:12):
Yeah.
Do you love to travel?
Do you love road trips?
Do you love finding hiddentreasures in towns all over the
US today?
Hi, I'm Joshua.

SPEAKER_01 (00:28):
And I'm Craig.
Welcome to Treasures about Town.
It's the podcast that exploresunique and chummy towns
scattered through the UnitedStates.

SPEAKER_03 (00:33):
Guided by our love for location-based games like
geocaching.
Join us as we venture into someof the country's most intriguing
destinations.
Uncovering hidden gems and localsecrets along the way.

SPEAKER_01 (00:44):
On today's episode, Josh, it's all about me.

SPEAKER_03 (00:47):
It's all about you.
It's all about Craig.
Craig, the world traveler, orthe US traveler for sure.

SPEAKER_01 (00:57):
Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_03 (00:58):

SPEAKER_01 (01:03):
Okay, that it got there.
There we go.
There you go.
Now you start to sound like TimMinnesota boy.
Um, I I did I did three threedifferent states over a 10-day
cache slash tourist vacation.
Oh my gosh.
So it wasn't all aboutgeocaching, it was tourism as
well.

SPEAKER_03 (01:18):
I am very excited to hear about it because I am sure
this is going to be another oneof those episodes where I am uh
very jealous because I thoughtabout going on this trip, but it
just wasn't in the cards for me.
And then what you did on Sunday,you know my love for this thing.
You did it, yeah, and and I wasnot there because you know my

(01:43):
love for this thing, and I'mreteas you know, I'm sure this
is gonna be towards the end ofthe episode.

SPEAKER_01 (01:48):
It will be at the very end because the Sunday was
the last day before I flew back.

SPEAKER_03 (01:52):
You see, so yes, yes, yes, yes.
But before we get to that, weneed to get to our delays and
upgrades.
Boom boom.

SPEAKER_01 (02:03):
Did you like that?
Do you like the sound I do uh inthe edit, Josh?
You like it?
I like it.

SPEAKER_03 (02:08):
I like it so much.

SPEAKER_01 (02:08):
It's very cool, very cool.

SPEAKER_03 (02:10):
Puts me in the mood, puts me in the mood to get on a
plane and go somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 (02:15):
Exactly.
Uh mate, do you want to startoff with it or do you want me
to?
What's what you like?

SPEAKER_03 (02:21):
I will start with my delay.
Yes.
Because you know, we don't talkabout the weather on this
podcast unless it truly is anupgrade or delay.
And so, Craig, this morning Iwoke up.
I had to go to work early thismorning, worked with a bunch of
eighth graders all day.
Yeah, eighth grade.

(02:42):
Is that your delay?
No, it's not.
They were delightful.
Um, but I had about an hourdrive south.
It was negative 12 degreesFahrenheit this morning.

SPEAKER_01 (02:56):
Negative 12 Fahrenheit.
Well, see, I can't do thenegatives to Celsius ratio
because they're they'redifferent.
They actually do meet, you know,they do meet up, Josh.
So the Fahrenheit and Celsiusmeet up in the negatives.
I think it's about negative 24,but they're actually the same
temperature.
At negative 24, they're the sametemperature.
So yes.

SPEAKER_03 (03:12):
Well, most Americans that are listening to that will
know that's really cold.
It's cold for me.
I I live in Minnesota, it's coldfor me.

SPEAKER_01 (03:20):
If it's cold for me, when 32 Fahrenheit is freezing
point, 32 Fahrenheit is freezingpoint, negative 12 is like
what's that?
You know, that's that's 40, 42degrees or 44 degrees lower than
uh than freezing point.
Wow.

SPEAKER_03 (03:34):
I think Mars might have been warmer today.
I think so.

SPEAKER_01 (03:37):
Yeah, it's quite possible.
We should ask Elon, but uh, butanyway, mate, uh, my my upgrade,
I'm gonna keep that and hold onto my upgrade because my upgrade
itself was this trip, you see.
So uh that was my upgrade.
What was your upgrade, mate?

SPEAKER_03 (03:50):
Well, it was Thanksgiving week last weekend.
Yes, and my son Hayden, myyoungest, who went to college in
August, he had not been homesince August.
So this was the first time hecame home.
He flew home, so we got to haveThanksgiving together.
He was here for five days.
So that was really nice to seeHayden.
He is thriving at WesternKentucky University.

(04:12):
He's really enjoying it, but hewas glad to be home, sleep in
his own bed, have a very full,very full pantry.
Uh, he was really happy aboutall the food that uh we
purchased before he got here.

SPEAKER_01 (04:24):
Like any uh 18, 19-year-old boy would be, you
know, let's be honest.

SPEAKER_03 (04:29):
So it was interesting because some of the
problems came back as he cameback.
For example, things like thetoilet paper disappeared faster.
Uh he drove my car and ran intothe into the grill inside my

(04:51):
inside my garage.
He ran in and scratched a partof my car.
Like these are the things thathave come back.
There are problems too.
There are delays.
But overall, overall, I wasreally happy that he was back.
So that's my upgrade.

SPEAKER_01 (05:05):
Very cool upgrade.
Very cool upgrade.
But I've only got one delay, andthat delay is remember over the
episodes we talked about mychicken coop?
Yes.

SPEAKER_02 (05:13):
The last two episodes we've talked about the
chicken coop.
Muck, muck, muck.

SPEAKER_01 (05:16):
It's still going, it's still going.
It's still under construction.
It's absolutely still underconstruction as well.
And did you notice, Josh?
We actually had a uh a listenerreach out to us in regards to
that too, which we'll talk aboutat the end of the episode.
But there was other another oneuh regarding the uh uh the
chicken coop and chicken math.
And they actually studied, theystudied and found out chicken

(05:37):
math because they studied it atuh Texas University.
Uh and it's still there doing auh bachelor, not bachelor's,
what does it call it, adoctorate or something like that
in in farm science, and uh andthey know exactly what chicken
math is.
So thank you for reaching out uhin regards to that too.
So uh very, very cool.
I had someone on my side, sothere you go.

SPEAKER_03 (05:56):
And basically, basically, chicken math is just
like them multiplying, right?
Or you can do it.

SPEAKER_01 (06:01):
Oh, yeah, because yeah, that's what it is, because
you go, you know, you you roundit up.
You go, you get four, and thenyou go, oh, fours might as well
get five.
You get five, you go, you knowwhat, we can do another five and
round it to ten, like doubledigits.
You get you get ten, and one,then one you know dies or
something else, and then you go,oh, we've only got nine.
Okay, let's get another six, youknow.
That's what you said.
It makes it 15.
That's that's chicken.
So that's how it works.

SPEAKER_03 (06:23):
You can't get enough, can't get enough
chickens.

SPEAKER_01 (06:25):
No, you can't get enough eggs.
The eggs are delicious, Josh.
I'll tell you that right now.
Eggs are fresh, fresh, freshfarm, fresh eggs.
Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 (06:34):
All right, so let's get into this trip.
We are talking about youradventures to the southwest of
the United States.
We have traveled together, we'vebeen in Flagstaff, Arizona
together.
We've we've actually talkedabout like the Grand Canyon, but
it sounds like we've youexpanded your horizons even more
in the southwest.

(06:55):
So tell the people, first ofall, Craig, what what was the
thing that motivated this thistrip, what kicked it off?
Why, why did it happen?
Because I know I kind of knowwhy, but it looks like you, I
mean you expanded it beyond whatwhat the the I think what I
think is the beginning reasonwhy you decided to do it.

(07:15):
So tell us how did how did thisall come about, this trip in
particular.

SPEAKER_01 (07:19):
So uh 12 months ago on the GCPC, the geocaching
podcast, which I'm a co-host ofwith Scott Burks and and Chad as
well.
Um, we all came about, three ofus came about and said, Well,
next next turkey trip, nextturkey uh part, like
Thanksgiving trip, um, everyonewanted to do the ET Highway, the
extraterrestrial highway.
There's 4,000 geocaches in thishighway, in which you are quite

(07:45):
welcome to do the leapfrog thingor you break it up between
people.
And so uh Scott came up with theidea and said, Look, let's let's
do a patron where anyone who's alistener of the show can come
and join us over that period oftime.
Because the the uh Thanksgivingwas on a Thursday, you see.

SPEAKER_03 (08:01):
So they he's it always is on a Thursday, by the
way, just so you know.
It's always it's alwaysThursday.

SPEAKER_01 (08:06):
Oh, there you go.
Well, this is awesome Thursday,yeah.
And so he said you get you hadto take the one day off the
Friday.
So for one day off, you get fourdays off of work, you see.
And so that's what Scott said.
It was a good idea to have oneday off work and get the four
days off and do this turkeytrot, we called it turkey trot.
And so that was the idea and thethe uh the reason I went to sort

(08:27):
of that sort of area.
The ET Highway is north,probably about an hour and a
half to two hours north of LasVegas in Nevada itself.
It is uh literally a lot of dirtroads, I will say that.

SPEAKER_03 (08:38):
A lot of areas, it's the middle of nowhere, it's
really is it there's a certainbeauty in the desert.
We've talked about this, butyeah, it it's it's pretty
there's not a lot out there.

SPEAKER_01 (08:50):
No, no, apart from apart from 4,000 gear, right?

SPEAKER_03 (08:55):
And I'll just say this too, Craig.
You know this.
I have done the ET Highway, butit's I have I'm very it's I have
a I'm ashamed to say, guess howmany I got of those 4,000.
I think you got did you get fiveor ten?
Like 12, 10 or 12.

SPEAKER_01 (09:10):
That's the one.
That's the one.

SPEAKER_03 (09:12):
I did get that old one.
I got that old one that you gotup on the hill.
Yes, that was cool.

SPEAKER_01 (09:17):
That was cool.
Well, yeah, well, I'll I'll talkabout that oldest uh later on in
the show as well.
Because I put it this way, Josh.
I'm almost, almost not heretalking to you right now because
of that oldest.
But anyway.

SPEAKER_03 (09:29):
Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 (09:30):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (09:33):
It's a very rocky, rocky way up there.
I remember that.
Yeah, yeah.
I should I have a video of it.
I should share it with I'll putit in the show notes, but then
the video doing that cash.
Um, but we're getting ahead ofourselves, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 (09:47):
That was the main reason for the trip.

SPEAKER_03 (09:49):
Yes, yes, and so you flew from sweet home, Alabama,
like you always sing on anotherpodcast, yeah, and you flew into
the city, I believe, of Phoenix,Arizona.
Phoenix.

SPEAKER_01 (10:03):
Yes, yes.
So and the thing is that, and asyou said, Josh, I expanded my
trip in terms of I thought,well, I'm not just gonna fly
into Vegas on the Wednesday, youknow, uh, do the the do the
turkey trot, do the 4,000 cachesand then fly out on the Sunday.
No, I wasn't gonna do that.
I thought, no, I'll fly fly intoPhoenix on the Sunday
beforehand, spend a few daystraveling uh Phoenix, Arizona,

(10:27):
along with California, or depthin California, and then back
into Nevada, um, did the ETHighway and then flew back on
the Monday.
Um because the Sunday flightsafter Thanksgiving were very
expensive.
Oh, I'm sure they were.
I'm sure they were.
So I did it for the Mondayinstead.
So that was my trick.

SPEAKER_03 (10:47):
So you got to Phoenix.
Did you do anything in Phoenix,or were you just heading
straight north like the nextday?

SPEAKER_01 (10:52):
Or no, that same day we landed.
I got myself a really nice, abeautiful Hayacar.

SPEAKER_03 (10:59):
Haya car.

SPEAKER_01 (11:00):
There you go.
I was waiting for it.

SPEAKER_03 (11:02):
For those that don't know that, that's a rental car.

SPEAKER_01 (11:04):
That's a rental hair.

SPEAKER_03 (11:05):
That's a rental car.
I I'll do the translation foryou all.

SPEAKER_01 (11:08):
Thank you.
Thank you.
Um, it was a 2000 uh no, yeah,2026 model.
So it was next year's model,Jeep, but it wasn't the big that
wasn't the the Jeep, it's like aJeep smaller looking Jeep sort
of thing, but still it was stillkind of lifted, which I'll tell
you now, was good for the EThighway.

SPEAKER_03 (11:25):
Oh, I'm sure it was.
I'm sure it was.
So, did you drive that beautifuldrive?
I've done it a couple times.
The beautiful drive from Phoenixto Flagstaff, yeah, which where
Sedona is like right there.
Did you go through Sedona,beautiful Red Rocks?
I love that drive.
You did that again.

SPEAKER_01 (11:45):
Yes, yeah, it's a beautiful drive.
I hadn't I hadn't done thatdrive yet before.
Um, because I remember I met youwith Flagstaff.
I was already in Flagstaff whenI met you.
So I hadn't done that.

SPEAKER_03 (11:53):
That's right.
You did not do the wait, you diddo the oh, we met the geocach.
GeoCat.
GeoCat.
And you came down a little bitto the south, but you didn't do
the full drive.

SPEAKER_01 (12:05):
Okay.
So this time I did the fulldrive, all the way up and doing
a few caches along the way, uh,having stopping, grabbing some
lunch, uh, etc.
as well.
So because it's an early flight,and then made it all the way up
into flagstaff.
And I'll tell you, Josh, the theit kind of felt like a little
second home because I'd beenthere for so long in flag stuff.
Yeah, 18 months ago for GiaWoodstock last year.

(12:28):
Yes, I'd been there with my cargetting it fixed, if you recall,
as well, for over a week beforeyou turned up.
So I uh I kind of knew Flagstaffin and out, to be honest with
you, because it's not that hardto have a place uh to go either.
So I showed uh I was a bit of atourist as well to uh to
Jennifer as she was with me.

SPEAKER_04 (12:47):
Uh huh.

SPEAKER_01 (12:48):
And uh I was saying, like, where the uh on the corner
of Winslow, Arizona, where thatsong was actually made in
Flagstaff, not in Winslow,Arizona, it's made in Flagstaff,
Arizona.

SPEAKER_03 (12:57):
So by the hot dog place.

SPEAKER_01 (12:59):
Yeah, but the hot dog place is still there.

SPEAKER_03 (13:02):
So yeah, cool.
Yep.
I really am a fan of Flagstaff.
That would be a place that I Iwould live.
Uh there's there's just manyplaces that I really like in the
United States.
When I visited there last twosummers ago, I really enjoyed
it.
There's the dry air, um, it's alittle bit cooler because it's
higher elevation.

(13:23):
Yep.
I yeah, I really I really likedthat that city, it has a lot to
offer.
So, how long did you spend inFlagstaff?
Did you stay overnight there?

SPEAKER_01 (13:33):
Overnight.
Yep, cool.
Overnight in Flagstaff.
Um, and I'd forgotten Josh aswell.
Because we were there, last timewe were there, it was geo
woodstock sort of time.
So it was a summerish sort oflocation.
And I still recall their beingon the tip of that mountain uh
in Flagstaff.
It was the snow.
Remember, there was still snow?
Yes.
There was boys wore likesnowboarding down in shorts and
no shirt, if you remember thattoo.

(13:54):
So yes.
Well, now we're getting into youknow November, end of November
at that as well.
Oh, it was chilly.
Oh, I'm sure it was.

SPEAKER_03 (14:02):
Yeah, and I'm sure this they weren't in um just
shorts and no shirts.
No, no, not at all, not at all.

SPEAKER_01 (14:08):
And but you can tell it is actually a snow town
because you've got a lot ofplaces there, like uh the
hotels, etc., do have all theracks, etc., at the front, so
you can put your your boots andyour your your skis and lock
them all up out the front so youcan have them off your car and
they're not bring them inside,all that sort of stuff, too.
So yeah, you can tell it's asnow town.

SPEAKER_03 (14:27):
Did you take Jen up to where we were, that that ski
area where the where we went?
Okay.

SPEAKER_01 (14:33):
No, we didn't have we didn't have that much time
because I wanted that it wasonly an overnight stay.
Um, and by the time we got, asyou know, everyone out there,
every listener right now, if yougeocache, you understand that a
two-hour drive is a four to fivehour drive for us.

SPEAKER_03 (14:48):
Yes.
Especially when you're withanother geocacher.
So if you're not late, if you'renot with another geocacher, it's
kind of you feel kind of guiltyand you're like, Yeah, you feel
guilty about stopping.
But if you're with anothergeocacher, they're like, let's
go.
Exactly.
It takes a lot more time.
So, did you visit the GrandCanyon once again?
You were very close.

SPEAKER_01 (15:09):
Yeah, yeah.
Before that's the next day, butbefore I've got I've got to
mention this as well, Josh.
Remember, we always say thatgeocaching takes us to places we
ordinarily wouldn't go to.

SPEAKER_03 (15:19):
I mean, that's pretty much what this podcast is
about.

SPEAKER_01 (15:22):
Exactly.
Guided, guided.
We were we were going up towardsFlagsa from Phoenix, and uh
there was a pretty cool virtual,you know, high favorite point
virtual.
We had to stop at.
Now, the virtual, I had seenthis virtual on Instagram and I
didn't know where it was untilwe rocked up and went, This is
the virtual, or this is thelocation I've seen on Instagram.

(15:42):
What it was was a veteransmemorial.
Okay.
There's in this veteransmemorial, there is uh big
pillars, like concrete pillars.
There's like six or sevenconcrete pillars, and they've
all got like a circle of such inthem at different angles and
different heights.
Now, on the 11th day at the 11thmonth, at 1111 a.m., the sun

(16:03):
shines perfectly through all ofthe holes, and the shadow on the
ground is the eagle and the coatof arms of America.
No, yes, no way unbelievable theamount of work for celestial
work, and that's gone involved,and uh that is absolutely
incredible.
It's it only happens on the 11thof the 11th at 1111.

(16:25):
But you weren't there 1111.
No, you got pretty you gotpretty close, close, close for
no cigar, and it and it wascloudy when we're going through
too and rainy, so there was nosun.
But uh, but I thought to myself,wow, that's I'd just seen it on
Instagram and I thought this isthe place right here.
So the place again, geocachingtakes us, uh, you know, that we
wouldn't ordinarily go to.
Loved it.

(16:45):
I just thought I'd have to saythat one too.
So whoever the CEO is that,thank you.
Big shout out for that.
That was really, really cool.

SPEAKER_03 (16:49):
But that's a really good virtual, that's really
neat.

SPEAKER_01 (16:52):
Yeah, like really, really sweet.
I can just imagine, Josh, howbusy it would be on the 1111.

SPEAKER_03 (16:57):
Oh, yeah.
It's like it's like how it gotcrazy busy when there was like
the full lunar eclipse, youknow, where the cities, the
cities in the path, path oftotality.
It's like they were just likepacked.

SPEAKER_01 (17:11):
I'm thinking it's the same in uh in Pennsylvania
when Punks A Tony Phil gets uhbrought out in the south shadow.
That's sort of busy, I canassume.
So that's right.
But yeah, that's cool.
Uh no, so yeah, stayed inFlagstaff, Arizona, and then we
headed off the next day.
Um, again, we went uh slightlynorth and went along the south
rim of the Grand Canyon, Josh.
This time I drove there insteadof uh getting the training train

(17:35):
like we did too.

SPEAKER_03 (17:36):
I love the train.
Oh, that was so fun.
We did the dome car.
Go back and listen to thatepisode.
Uh it'll be the Geo Woodstockepisode from two years ago.
That we took the train, the theGrand Canyon train to the Grand
Canyon, to the South Rim.
So you're back in the same spotwhere we were, the South Rim.

SPEAKER_01 (17:52):
Almost, almost, because I I started, I I did
like because we had a car, thenwe could actually drive the
South Rim and stop off at somany other lookouts all along
the way.
Oh, neat.
That's neat.
So that was the that was thereally cool difference for me,
was that I actually went toplaces of the Grand Canyon that
I hadn't been to before.
You know, and and that was thatwas for me was the highlight of

(18:14):
that day itself.
So getting all the differentother places um along that rim.
And of course, our Munsies arestill there too, Josh.

SPEAKER_03 (18:20):
Are they still there?
They didn't they didn't leaveus?

SPEAKER_01 (18:22):
No, they're still there on the uh on the south
rim.
I checked.

SPEAKER_03 (18:26):
So good.
Those virtual, I think they werevirtuals, they didn't disappear.
Thank goodness.
Thank goodness some some uhMunsey god didn't pull them
away.

SPEAKER_01 (18:36):
I know, right?

SPEAKER_03 (18:37):
Meaning, meaning you or Rob pull them off the map.

SPEAKER_02 (18:42):
My virtuals got muggled.

SPEAKER_01 (18:46):
That was really cool, and again, there's some
really cool earth caches umalong there and a virtual as
well, so that's really, reallynice.
So after that, Josh, we uh droveall the way down and through to
um uh what was that called?
Oh, I can't hear the place now.
Oh, Seligman.
Have you heard of Seligman inArizona?

SPEAKER_03 (19:05):
Selig Seligman, Arizona.
I have not.
Tell me more.
I have not.

SPEAKER_01 (19:09):
Okay, so this stop, this stop, uh, as you go from uh
from Flagstaff to Kingman,Arizona, you can get off um and
go the Route 66.
It actually is, it's supposedlythe where Route 66 actually
began, in terms of the idea ofRoute 66, was in Seligman,
Arizona.
I got told by an uh fellowMunsey player, Vadotech, to uh

(19:32):
to jump on and have a look atthis place, and he told me to go
here because there's a famousice cream shop that I had to
visit and I had to get ice creamout no matter how cold it was.
So I said, absolutely, we'regonna go there.
So uh we drove into Seligman,and I'm telling you, Josh, I
stepped back, I step back intothe into time, into the 80s, 70s
and 80s, 60s, 70s and 80s.

(19:53):
This is old school Route 66.
Nothing has changed.
I'm talking the signs are stillthe need.
On.
I'm talking, you know, there'sstuff everywhere.
So the the ice cream shop thatare there, we pulled up uh to
the ice cream shop, the parlorout the back.
It was like this Rue 66walkthrough museum that's just
free and open.
You can just walk through andtake photos.

(20:14):
Um, really weird stuff.
I'm talking about, like in termsof you talking about the toilet
seat museum.
Remember, we went there as well?
Yes.
This had didn't this didn't havethe toilet seat, this had the
entire toilet uh museum.
So there was there was pottieseverywhere that you could all
sit down over, take some photoswith, etc.
That was really cool.
But no, Seligman, I will saySeligman is one of those places

(20:36):
again off the highway where ifyou decide to have a rest break,
have a stop, have grab a fewcaches, etc., this is the place
to go.
But for me, Josh, the ice creamplace had closed full winter.
I know.
The owner was even there walkingout the back, and I said to him,
Is this the ice cream place?
And he said, he said, yes, itis, because it's closed for the

(20:57):
winter.
He closed like three or fourdays before we got there.
I was like, wow.
I said, you don't have anythingthat you can open up and sort of
and he said, No, we don't.
We got rid of everything for thesummer, so for the winter.
So I know, I know.

SPEAKER_03 (21:10):
So Seeligman, if we're pronouncing it right,
Arizona, it's a little town, 700people is a population.

SPEAKER_02 (21:17):
Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_03 (21:18):
I am I am looking at pictures.
If you closed your eyes and younever have been to Route 66
before, and you close your eyesand you imagine what it would be
like, this is it.
It really does.
It looks exactly it looks likeexactly off the movie Cars,
pretty much.

SPEAKER_01 (21:33):
Yes, yeah, and that's what they go from as
well.
And they they play off thatmovie cars as well.
So really, yeah, absolutely.
They've got um like murals andstuff like that too in the town
where they play off uh what's ayeah with the the dump truck guy
and cars and then differentcharacters, yeah.
All the different characters andcars is in the actual town as
well.
So that's really cool, and onmurals and stuff too.

(21:54):
So loved it, loved it, loved it.
Got some really cool photos umin there as well.
So again, spent some time doingthat before heading further to
Kingman, Arizona.
And we stayed overnight atKingman, Arizona.

SPEAKER_03 (22:07):
So are you heading west, farther west in Arizona?
Okay, you're making your way toVegas, baby.

SPEAKER_01 (22:13):
Vegas.
Well, no, we actually made ourway to California first and then
back into Vegas.

SPEAKER_03 (22:18):
Oh wow, the long way around the long way around.

SPEAKER_01 (22:23):
Um, and there was several reasons for that.
Now, uh, first reason is that uhJennifer had never done Arizona,
Nevada, or California.
She'd never been there, nevercatched it.

SPEAKER_03 (22:32):
Okay, so this was the first time that she had seen
the Grand Canyon, first of all.
Absolutely.
What was her I always like totalk to people about this.
What was her reaction when shesaw it for the first time?

SPEAKER_01 (22:46):
She was literally gobsmacked, blown away, couldn't
actually talk about it, stoodthere in awe.
Um, I did I did she did seebecause I never told her about
the trip.
I just said, you know, you comein on these are the dates.
She had no idea where we were.

SPEAKER_03 (22:59):
So you had planned this, yes.
Yeah, okay.
So she didn't know that that washappening.

SPEAKER_01 (23:04):
She had no clue about the trip.
Oh, that's hot.
Apart from the ET Highway,that's all she knew about.
That's all she knew about.
She didn't know where we werestaying, she didn't know the
things we're doing, she didn'tknow the Seligman, she didn't
know the Grand Canyon.
Um, when we were driving to theGrand Canyon, for instance, you
know, uh past uh past Flagstaff,etc.
Yeah, there was signs, and shelooked at me and I went, Oh,

(23:25):
just close your eyes or justforget that you saw the signs.
So she knew you can't, yeah.
She figured it out on the waythere.
But no, I I did say to her, Isaid, you'll see it in movies,
you'll see it on TV, you'll seeit in photos, but nothing beats
being there.
It is like you're standing in athree-dimensional painting.

SPEAKER_03 (23:43):
Yeah, it doesn't look real.
It's hard, it's hard for yourbrain to uh fathom something
that an object that large.
That's why I think it makes ourbrains go, whoa, amazing.

SPEAKER_01 (23:56):
It is, it is, and it's it's amazing, Josh, too,
because I'm gonna uh shout toone of the things we're gonna
talk about right at the end ofthe show, and that is this here
was a natural wonder, and thenright at the end of the uh the
trip as well was a uh man-madewonder that I'd seen too.
And it gave you the samefeeling.
I'll say that.
It gave you the same feeling.

(24:18):
You will I'll get to that very,very soon.
I'm jealous.

SPEAKER_03 (24:21):
All right, overnight stay, Kingman, Arizona.
Yeah, tell me what's what's inKingman?
What is that again?
We're on Route 66 still.
Route 66, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (24:31):
Yep, and Kingman dives headfirst into that Route
66 feeling.
Um, there's the best one of thebest parts of uh of Kingman as
well is the the tourism center,the the visitor center in
Kingman, Arizona.
It really plays heavily into theRoute 66 stuff to the point
where there's another virtualcache uh where there's a

(24:52):
drive-thru Route 66 sign thatgoes over the top of the car.
It's a black and it's got sixRoute 66 on top, and so you can
park the car there and get uhget selfies and and have other
people take your photo and stuffwith your car in between the big
Route 66 sign.
That was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_03 (25:08):
Um that is cool.
I see that.
I saw I'm looking at picturesright now.
Yes, and you know it's reallyinteresting, Craig.
You know, you I feel like youhave seen most of Route 66, but
it hasn't been, I don't feellike it's been in sequential
order.
No, no, it's like differentpieces of it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (25:25):
And I've and you you you we all know that there's
that Route 66 Adventure Lab, youknow, um going across Route 66
or 100 adventure labs orsomething.
I've done like maybe, maybeJosh, 15 or 20 pins, not
adventure lab, not completedadventure labs, actual pins of
the adventure lab.
So you know how there's fivepins per adventure lab, right?

(25:46):
I've done 15 pins.
I have not completed one Route66 Adventure Lab yet.

SPEAKER_03 (25:50):
So I'm sure though you were picking up, and Jen was
probably picking up you know,when you could or when they were
there, or did you ignore theadventure labs?
And there gotta be a lot ofadventure labs.
I mean, for those who who don'tknow, there we've talked to
Scott on the show.
Uh, there's a whole route ofit's a power trail of adventure
labs on Route 66.

(26:11):
Um, so did you do a lot ofthose, or did you kind of like,
oh, there's so many?

SPEAKER_01 (26:15):
We kind of I kind of bypassed the adventure labs a
little bit um because we hadtouristy things to do, uh, more
so than than the adventure labsort of style.
And we did stop for physicalcaches and stuff as well,
because uh, if you are a jigcaching and you know about then
adventure labs do not counttowards locations such as state
um you know uh things and stufflike that too.
So they don't really count apartfrom just you know actual fines,

(26:38):
that's all it was.
So I thought to myself, no,we'll leave it and then one day,
one day, Josh, we'll do theentire Route 66 for the purpose
of doing Route 66.

SPEAKER_03 (26:47):
If that's are you talking about like me and you
will do it together?
Is are you inviting me rightnow?
It's me and you taking the road?
Life is a highway.
I'm gonna ride it all nightlong.
We'll see my shell.

SPEAKER_01 (27:01):
How warm are you in bed, Josh?
Because I was taking the van,just saying so.

SPEAKER_03 (27:05):
Can I bring Goliath?
He can he can sleep, he cansleep between us.

SPEAKER_01 (27:10):
Yeah, he can fit.
Goliath can fit, actually.
I don't know about you, but uhGoliath can fit, put it that
way.
So um, no, King of Arizona,again, it plays high into that
Route 66 feeling.
And speaking of Goliath, too, hewould have loved it.
He would have loved it.
And that's why the reason for itis next to the visitor center,
there's a little dog park.
Inside the dog park, Josh,there's a miniature version of

(27:34):
that same Route 66 sign thatyour car goes under, but for
dogs, so you can sit your dogunder the Route 66 sign and get
a photo.
I didn't have a dog, so I had todo the sitting myself.
So I sat there under the Route66 sign like a dog and uh and
got a photo.
So that's a lot of fun.
A lot of fun, but but no, youagain, Kingman, a lot a place

(27:54):
where you could easily spend twoor three days, you know, doing
the adventure labs there, doingsome caching there, and enjoying
the whole highlights of uh ofRoute 66.
So But Josh, the next daylooking at the next picture
again.
That's uh that's the one I'llput I'll put my picture in the
uh in the show notes as well forthat.
Um uh the next day, Josh,because we stayed in Kingman,

(28:17):
Arizona.
The next day again, Jen didn'thave any clue about where we're
going.
She just got in the caraimlessly and put a seatboard
on, and I drove.
That's it.
We continued along Route 66.
Now we went the old school Route66, and I I even said to her,
This is this is actually Route66, and she's like, really good.
Yeah, the highway's over youknow, half a mile away.

(28:38):
Right, so you can go thehighway.
A highway's got two lanes ineach direction, the whole lot.
The old Route 66, one lane ineach direction.
It's windy, it's bendy, it'sthere's potholes, there's this.
I said to her, Can you imagineback in the day?
This was how you traveled acrosscountry was on this route.

SPEAKER_03 (28:56):
Yes.
Took a lot longer, a lot longer,and a lot more slowing down
through these little towns, I'msure.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (29:05):
And I I even said to her as well, with that with back
in the day too, we didn't havethe cars that are as reliable as
today either.
So you can understand that youknow you would have had to stop
a lot more often, you know, toto fill up with gas and to to if
the car's overheating, if youknow mechanics and all that sort
of stuff, too.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
But there was uh but there's oneplace, Josh, we went to that is
my number one town that I'veever visited in the United

(29:30):
States.
My number one, yes.
Oh, that is that is big.
That's okay.
Okay, and and this town, Josh,there's people who live, it's in
Arizona.
There's people, there's peoplewho live in Arizona their entire
lives who've never heard of thistown.
Wow.
Never heard of this town.
It is Oatman, Arizona.

(29:51):
O-A-T-M-A-N.
Oatman, Arizona.
You go up through the hills onRoute 66, going through
different areas.
You get into the town.
This town, Josh, is uh literallylike a one-horse town.
There is it's wooden um shopfronts on each side through the
main street.
The main street is the onlystreet through town.

(30:13):
Um, there's nothing else thereapart from these wooden shops
and people, the the locals thereas well.
But the most important thingthat it's there, uh call they
call themselves uh burrows,Josh.
Have you heard of Burrows?

SPEAKER_03 (30:25):
I mean Wild Burrows Burrow in New York is like a
neighborhood.

SPEAKER_01 (30:30):
Yes, that's a new thing.
No, wild burrows, also known asdonkeys, Josh.
There's wild donkeys roam freeall through Oatman.
Really?
They're just wild?
They're wild donkeys.
They've got names, of course.
The the locals know their namesand they're always walking
around, but no one owns them.
They are absolutely um, you caninteract with these donkeys.

(30:54):
These donkeys are very, very,very friendly because you can't
you can buy food for them, butyou gotta be careful because
sometimes they can be very, veryfriendly and bite.
So there were people gettingbitten on the backs, there's
people having plastic bags thatwere the donkeys that would tear
open the plastic bags, you know,looking for food, that's what
they do.
Um there was two um juniordonkeys there, like the baby

(31:17):
donkeys there with them as well.
And the the babies they can'thave the same food because it's
like it's like a I don't know,it's like a grass hay that you
get, like a greeny hay that yougive the donkeys, and that's
what they really like.
Um the the the young ones can'thave that.
So the locals have stuck a stopsign on their head saying, Do
not feed me, it's bad for me.

(31:39):
And so they've got these littlethese little stickers on top of
their heads saying stop, do notfeed me.

SPEAKER_03 (31:45):
That's funny.
But that's really funny.

SPEAKER_01 (31:47):
But I'll tell you, this is a wild west town.
If you look at old westerns,this is the town that you'd uh
you'd have.
It looked like to me a placewhere you'd pay money to go to
at a uh uh what do you call it,like an amusement park, for
instance.
And there's in the white youride the rickety roller coaster
out the back, you know, and it'sa gold rush.

(32:08):
Because it was born from thegold rush era, you see, so
that's the reason why it'sthere.

SPEAKER_03 (32:13):
Yeah, the minute you get into that town, you hear
this.

SPEAKER_01 (32:22):
Even better, even better, Josh.
Twice a day, every single day,the town stops for a shootout.

SPEAKER_03 (32:30):
Oh, I that's cool.
I love that.
I was gonna ask that actually,yeah, because that makes a lot
of sense.
Yeah, there's like a shootout.

SPEAKER_01 (32:38):
Yeah, a couple of the shopkeepers close their
doors, get up in their theirlittle country, their their
western outfits as well, withtheir chaps and their big hats
and uh and their gunslingers andall that sort of thing, too.
Now I'll tell you, Josh, theseguns that they have, they're
real guns, but they have blanksin them apparently.
So they are loud, they're real,you can smell them like it's

(33:03):
just you know, and they theydon't mind just letting them you
know rip through the crowd, theydon't care.
It's like whoa.

SPEAKER_03 (33:09):
Wow.
I have a question for you.
Remember when we did the trainride and on the way back from
the Grand Canyon train ride, theyes, the the thieves robbed the
we got robbed in the train.
And really, they just like youcould see horses.
It was kind of cool.
The horses were runningalongside the train, and then
the train stopped.
Yeah, and the criminals robbedus, and all they did was they

(33:31):
were just looking for tips.
Rubbed us some tips exactly.
So after the gun shoot theshootout where there were their
tips like hats.
Oh, yeah, they came around withhats.

SPEAKER_01 (33:40):
Yeah, they came around with hats because that's
how that's how they keep thetown uh uh you know running is
is through the donations andgenerosity of the the tourists.
Um that's the only way this thistown survives now is on tourism.
Purely and simply tourism,that's all it was.
But I will say the the cowboysand any the cowboys that we saw

(34:01):
in the uh what do you call itthe the train ride were much
cleaner and much younger thanthe ones I saw in open Amazon.

SPEAKER_04 (34:09):
Oh really?

SPEAKER_01 (34:11):
I'm talking, I'm talking these guys almost had
like a you know a walking frameas they were slinging guns
around and and then uh one onewould hit a wall or something
and dust would fly off hiscostume too.
So it's like it was it was asight to behold, absolutely
sight to behold.
But no, and you can have lunchthere, Josh.
Now the lunch there, oh wow, inthe local hotel.

(34:35):
You know, you've seen themaround the the the world now,
but especially in the US, yougot those old hotels, whatever,
and everyone signs their name ona one dollar bill, and they put
it all up and around the the theall so every wall, ceiling, the
whole lot is covered in theseone dollar bills in this hotel.
Uh, food there was delicious,and they have burrow chips.

(34:57):
Josh.
Weird burrow ear chips.
What that is, is that they sliceup a potato very finely.
Okay, but not too fine.
So it's not like a lays, it'sprobably about five lays put
together, basically, but it's areal potato, so it's not a
potato chip, it's a real potato.
They then fry that particularpotato, and then those are then

(35:19):
next to your your meal, these uhburrow ears, they call them.
So that's absolutely deliciousbecause they were still soft in
the center, but crispy on theoutside, and they're a full like
a belaise-looking chip.
So very different to normalFrench fries.

SPEAKER_03 (35:34):
So yeah, that sounds like it.
Yeah, that sounds delicious.
Yeah, that sounds like a coolplace.
I'm looking at pictures rightnow.
You're it's a wild west town.
It's cool that there's donkeyswandering around.
Yeah, it looks yeah, straightout of the like Back of the
Future 3.

SPEAKER_02 (35:49):
Yeah, right.
Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 (35:50):
Um Doc Brown and Biff Tannin.

SPEAKER_02 (35:54):
Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_03 (35:55):
That's I love that kind of stuff.
That's cool.

SPEAKER_01 (35:57):
That was really cool.

SPEAKER_03 (35:58):
And it's your favorite town of the US now.
It's number one.

SPEAKER_01 (36:01):
One town, my number one.
And the main reason, the mainreason, Josh, it is close to my
heart is because it does remindme of my grandfather, my my late
grandfather.
Um, growing up, all my mychildhood, every weekend I would
visit my grandparents' place andI'd, you know, my grandmother
and I, we're we were the closestuh bonding that you know,
between two sort of you know, uhrelatives there was.

(36:23):
So my grandfather was a bit leftout, but every Saturday night,
because he never used to playcards or any of that sort of
stuff, we used to play cards, hewould be out in the lounge room
watching his Western movies,yeah.
And he'd call out, You guys keepit down in there, I can't even
hear my movie, you know, thatsort of thing, too.
So he was the grumpy old man inthe seat that is still like you
have those memories of him.

(36:44):
And I think to myself, Pop, youknow, look at this.
Look at what I'm seeing, Pop.
Yeah, you know what I mean?
I'm in the movie.
I'm in the movie now.
Like, what would he think ofbeing in a place like that?
He would literally just lose hismind.

SPEAKER_03 (36:58):
So yeah, he would think it's cool.

SPEAKER_01 (37:00):
So that's the reason why I think as well.
It's it's very close to and dearto my heart.

SPEAKER_03 (37:04):
That's really cool.
All right, you went to one ofthe cool oh, okay.
What more thing?

SPEAKER_01 (37:09):
What a full a full adventure lab stage is in there
as well in open Arizona, and acouple of cool caches are in
there, including inside insidethe uh one of the stores, and
you walk in, and and we walkedout, and I'm looking at the
phone, and then she comes out.
The lady comes out, she goes,Are you geocaching?
I said, How did you know?
She goes, Well, you're lookingat your phone's funny.

(37:30):
Of course.
He said, It's in here in theurn, and so it was in like the
caches inside in the urn aswell.
So that's really cool.

SPEAKER_03 (37:37):
You know, I love a good indoor geocache because
they're so unique.

SPEAKER_01 (37:41):
And the fact they put it in an urn, that's exactly
that's funny.

SPEAKER_03 (37:44):
Um, was there a container in the urn, or just
like there you just you lookedin the urn and it was that the
logbook was in the urn?

SPEAKER_01 (37:51):
Just logbook and trinkets were in the urn by
itself.
Well, that's funny.
That's funny because we didobviously we do a geocaching uh
along the way along that routeas well.
Um, and there was one cachelocation there, which was out on
a point that you had to walk outto.
Beautiful view overlooking allof gorgeous Arizona.
Um, but the whole point is likea uh like a cemetery, but

(38:16):
they're all there's no actualgraves, they're all literally
urns sitting on on the groundwith yeah, with their with their
ashes in them and everything aswell.
And and me being me, I lookedand went, oh look at that, looks
like an ammo can.
And I I picked up the lid uh andlooked, no, there's a plastic
bag full of ashes in there.
I went, oh, sorry, my bad, putit back down.

SPEAKER_03 (38:37):
Sorry, sorry, whoever that is.
Sorry, Bill, sorry, Bill.
Put your back, Bill.
Put your back, Bill.
I'm looking for the cash.

SPEAKER_01 (38:44):
Can you point me in the right direction?
But yeah, there was uh so thingslike that again, you won't
ordinarily find though withoutthe hobby which we love.
So um, and one other one wasagain inside.
A cache was inside this uh thisyou know souvenir shop sort of
style, middle of nowhere.
But the best part about it isthat no one really drives this

(39:05):
Route 66 that we're on.
It's very rare to see a car gopast.
We we were there for like maybe20 minutes and one car went
past.
But the best part is right atthe front of this old school gas
station looking um souvenir shopwas an official Route 66 painted
sign on the road.
Perfect photos.

(39:27):
Absolutely, and no cars drivingpast.
You can take as much as youwant, get the right angle you
want, get the right lighting youwant, and you can get a perfect
photo of you sitting on the roadwith the Route 66, an official
Route 66 sign painted right infront of you.
So again, really cool, Josh.
Really cool.

SPEAKER_03 (39:43):
I'm so jealous.
I know I want to I want to do aRoute 66, like I want to do the
whole thing, yeah.
And like and I but I really wantto do it.
I don't want to like rushthrough it like in a week.
I want to like do a month likein a month and like do all the
little silly things.

SPEAKER_01 (39:57):
Yeah, yeah.
Because it's like sometimes itwill Take you about a month as
well because you do stop at allthese little stops.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (40:04):
And it's just like roadside attraction heaven,
really.
And just all this like quirky,quirky and kind of cheeky, uh
touristy things.

SPEAKER_01 (40:12):
So we even spoke about the blue whale, for
instance, is on Route 62.

SPEAKER_03 (40:16):
Yeah, Blue Whale.
I know, I haven't been thereyet.
I blame Minnesota Boy.
Remember, remember why I havebeen there.
Minnesota boy said, Oh, I don'twant to go to a blue whale.
I'm like, yeah, really?
And now then he saw the picturesof it, now he he regrets it.

SPEAKER_01 (40:34):
Yep, that's what I mean.
There's places like that allalong Route 66, but uh, but now
we then headed off intoCalifornia.
The reason for California was uhJoshua Tree National Park.

SPEAKER_03 (40:47):
Oh, okay.
So before you begin, I'm justgonna say this.
I've been to Joshua Tree.
This is one of the most magical,like mysterious, very different
uh national parks.
Like it's unlike anything.
The trees are like these, itlooks like something out of a
Dr.
Seuss book.

(41:07):
Like the trees and the rockformations.
Uh Joshua Tree is a reallyunique, interesting, deserty
national park.
And I'm so glad.
Is this the first time thatyou've visited uh Joshua Tree?

SPEAKER_01 (41:20):
Okay, cool.
I'd never and that's anotherreason why we wanted to go
because we're kind of so closeto it anyway.
And I thought, what's anothernational park that I haven't
visited?
And it's Joshua Tree NationalPark.
And that's been that's been highup on my to-do list.
Um, my my son's name's Joshua aswell.
Uh and so uh that's been high onmy to-do list for years and
years and years.

SPEAKER_03 (41:38):
So yeah, what a great name.

SPEAKER_01 (41:41):
What a great name.

SPEAKER_03 (41:42):
One of your closest friends is named Joshua.
It's all making sense now.
It's all making functions.
Why we're friends, yes, it'smaking sense why we're friends.
You're really attached to theJoshua, yeah.
Um so unique landscapes, thetree, the ja the actual Joshua
trees are just really unique.

(42:02):
I mean, look if you've neverseen them before, Google Joshua
Tree trees.
They're it's almost like adoctor's, you're walking into a
Dr.
Seuss book, and when I went, Ihad to play the U2 album Joshua
Tree as I'm driving through.
I had to.
I had to.
It just I don't know, it seemslike the right thing to do.
But tell it, tell me about yourexperience there.

SPEAKER_01 (42:23):
Well, yeah, we did the we did the drive-through uh
the the national park as well.
But we what I loved about it isas you said, Josh, they are like
Dr.
Zeus movies, the treesthemselves, but no tree looks
the same.
They are all in differentangles, different designs, and
different heights.
There are ones that look a bitsick, there's one that's look uh
look okay.
Um, and some of the earth cachesthat are there make you get out

(42:44):
of the car and have a wanderaround the particular rock
formations to do the earthcache.
And while you're doing that aswell, there's a few that are
have been downed, like theactual Joshua trees are down and
they're dead, but the skeletonshave you seen a Joshua tree
skeleton, Josh?

SPEAKER_03 (42:59):
Well, I know there's a a rock formation called
skeleton rock or skull rock.
Did you go did you visit did youvisit that?
I think that's an earth cache.
Did you do that?
Yeah, it's that's it's a rockformation.
It looks like the gooties likeskull.

SPEAKER_01 (43:12):
It does, and you actually can climb up into the
eye.
Yeah, climb up and get photos inthe eye of it.
That's really cool.
Um, the skeleton of a Joshuatree itself is because it's uh
it's more like a cactus to acertain degree.
Um, so it's very light, veryflimsy, very, you know, and it
it kind of looks very um mosaicsort of style with the way the

(43:33):
skeleton is, and it's very it'sgot like holes in it, very woven
basket sort of style, too.
Looks um I nothing like Ithought about would look.
I thought it'd be you know aJoshua tree, so it'd be a log or
a bit of wood.
No, it's all hollow inside, soyeah, very, very unique.

SPEAKER_03 (43:51):
There's also a very unique cactus there, and I'm
gonna mispronounce it.
I'm sure you saw a lot of it.
It's the it's well, it's spelledC-H-O-L-L-A.
Uh the chula uh chola, chula,chola.
People are gonna write us.

(44:12):
But it's a really unique cactus,and I remember when I was
visiting there, it's like thesunsets at Joshua Tree are just
amazing, and how the sunsetslike like uh go through these
cacti.
It's it is a beautiful place forsunsets and with the with all
the trees and all this stuff.
So yeah, it's yeah, if you everget that way, it's worth just

(44:34):
driving through.
It you don't you don't need tospend like you don't necessarily
need to camp there, it's adesert.
You could camp there, but it'sworth it's worth just driving
through, yes, especially if youare doing it um during sunset, I
think.

SPEAKER_01 (44:49):
So or even sunrise too.
Sunrise is beautiful as well.
Either those two, the the thegolden hours are really, really
nice.
So uh yeah, so we know we drovethrough uh the Joshua Tree
National Park.
Um we stayed the night at JoshuaTree as well, stayed the night
there too.
A um an old it's an old hotel westayed at, or I should say old
motel, but they'd beenrefurbished and done up.

(45:11):
Now, uh because of Joshua TreeNational Park, uh, there's a lot
of rock climbing there too.
So inside every one of theserooms is all rock climbing gear
where you can hang your ropes upand all that stuff.
Oh, yeah, it was it was veryunique.
Even even the uh even behind thethe bathroom door where the the
toilet paper is, the toiletpaper was was slung about with a

(45:33):
uh like a bungee cord.
That's funny.
Very, very cool, very, very coolindeed.
So that was really awesome.
Um so we yeah, we stayed thereand then moved on back up north,
back to Vegas.
Now, on our way back to Vegas,on our way to Vegas, because
again, it's not that far fromJosh Tree National Park to
Vegas, it's like three hours,three and a half hour drive.
Um, but on our way back, westopped in at this really random

(45:58):
roadside stop.
Again, there was a really coolcache inside inside the road
stop as well.
Uh, it was like a this uh bigCoke bottle, um blow-up coke
bottle, and you had to you pickup the coke bottle underneath
was was like a number thing thatyou had to get a number for, and
then the the combination codewas there.
So it was a lot of fun.
Oh, that's cool.
But the best part was, Josh, aswe walked out, we heard this

(46:20):
coming through.
Well, what the what's that?
Looked up.
A plane is landing right next tous.
A plane.
Why?
Like a little like a littleplane, and someone's flew their
plane and landed it to get likesome things from the store in
their plane.
Oh my gosh, that's funny.

SPEAKER_03 (46:37):
And where was this?
Was this it near Joshua Tree?

SPEAKER_01 (46:40):
Yes, just north, just north of Joshua Tree on
Route 66 still.
So we're still on Route 66,we're back on Route 66.
So that's funny.
The other thing Route 66 doeshave is very much like um the ET
Highway.
They do have thousands ofgeocaches along Route 66 as
well.
So there are like physicals,traditional, so thousands along
there too.
So but no, headed back up andinto Las Vegas.

SPEAKER_00 (47:05):
Viva Las Vegas, vivo Las Vegas.

SPEAKER_03 (47:10):
Sorry, yeah, but last year.
I did back up a little bit fromthe mic, but thank you.
I do appreciate it.
Oh, viva Las Vegas.
I've been to Vegas, uh just sowe can relate here.
I've been to Vegas like I think,gosh, I've been there two times,
I think.
Yeah, uh, two separate times uhfor different reasons.

(47:31):
But you drove in and all right,tell us, tell us.
I mean, tell us what you cantell us because everybody knows
their slogan is what happens inVegas, what happens in Vegas
stays in Vegas.

SPEAKER_01 (47:43):
That's that's true, that's true.
And and and funnily enough, um,yeah, Jen, she was talking to
her kids throughout becauseshe's got a 17-year-old daughter
and an 18-year-old son, and uhshe was saying, like, you know,
oh we're we're going to Vegasnow, and the daughter was very,
very unhappy.
Why aren't we there?
I want to be there.
And she's like, You don't seeyour cash, they want to see
Vegas.

(48:04):
And uh, and then the daughterturned around and said, Well,
what happens if Vegas stays inVegas?
And Jen's like, Where did youlearn that?
It's their it's their actualtown slogan, slogan.
That's what I thought.
So um, we did the whole we didthe touristing in Vegas.
So we we went we only stayed theone night before we headed up to
uh headed up to PT Highway.

(48:25):
So we did the touristy thing inVegas.
We stayed at the Luxor Hotelbecause you know that's actually
one of the cheapest hotelsthere, I'll be honest.

SPEAKER_03 (48:32):
Interesting.
Okay, I'm just curious, what isuh just a typical a typical room
at the Luxor?
Like on a like what how much isit?
$20.

SPEAKER_01 (48:42):
$21 a night at the Luxor.
But but they want you to gamble.
No, yeah, but you gotta pay$50 anight in hotel fees, like uh the
the the resort tax, they callit.

SPEAKER_03 (48:55):
And and probably parking and like they probably
nickel and dime.

SPEAKER_01 (48:59):
20 20 bucks a night for parking.
So in the end, one night at theLuxor was 91 bucks, including
parking.
Not bad.
It's still not bad for for thehotel in which it is, it's it's
pretty, pretty good.
So and I've never I'd never I'venever actually gambled at all in
the US um since I've been herefor the last four years.

SPEAKER_03 (49:15):
Did you do any gambling?
Did you put anything in a slotmachine?

SPEAKER_01 (49:18):
I put some money in the slot machines, and that
lasted five minutes, and then weleft.
And then I left.
That was it.

SPEAKER_03 (49:25):
So um you could have, you know, it would have
been better just to go into theuh give them five bucks, uh go
in the back room and get kickedin the nuts and call it a night.

SPEAKER_01 (49:34):
Pretty much, pretty much.

SPEAKER_03 (49:36):
It's pretty much what it feels like to lose money
gambling.

SPEAKER_01 (49:40):
But in saying that, we we were there with other
Giacachi friends as well.
Uh Shane and their name.
Oh, yes, we of course.
We yeah, we were there with thembecause they had to be in our
car to do the ET Highway becauseof the way we do the highway.
Um, so we met them in Vegas andthey had already been there for
a couple of days beforehand.
That morning, Josh, theyactually went into a poker

(50:01):
tournament, like a player pokertournament or whatever.
Shane won the poker tournamentin the casino, Las Vegas.
He won.
What?
How much and he won some decentmoney in the tournaments.
So he didn't tell me, so I don'tknow exactly how much it was,
but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (50:18):
We're talking about it's probably thousands, I'm
guessing.

SPEAKER_01 (50:21):
But yeah, yeah.
So they they they he won that.
And uh and Garnet, she cameninth, apparently, so eighth or
ninth.
So an actual fact, Shane knockedher out uh in ninth position.
So she wasn't having that.
Exactly.
You're on the lounge tonight,you're on the couch tonight.
Um but no, so yeah, they arevery good at poker, apparently.

SPEAKER_03 (50:43):
That's really cool, and that's interesting because
you know, a lot of not a lot,several geocaching events have
poker, they have poker runs, butthey also have poker tournaments
that people gamble geo coins.
So I bet that they do some geoWoodstock.

SPEAKER_01 (50:56):
Geo Woodstock this year in uh the Giga, the Giga
event this year, they had thethe night after.
Remember when we were doing theon stage with uh the family
feud, they were actually havinga poker night with Geo coins
there.
Yes, that's right.
Shane won.
Oh my gosh, he won he won over40 Geo coins that night.

(51:18):
So there you go.
Over$400 of geo coins.

SPEAKER_03 (51:22):
Wow, he's he's a decent player, he's legit.
He's he's like pro.
Is he pro or is he like semi?
Is he a pro?
Like no, no, he's got a realjob.

SPEAKER_01 (51:30):
He got he's got a real job.
I think he plays a lot, but he'sgot a real job.
But anyway, we picked him upthere.
Um, we had dinner with him aswell.
I will say the dining andentertainment experience in
Vegas, yeah.
It is pricey, Josh.
I will say, it is pricey.
You're gonna have to take yourwallet and your credit card, but
I'll tell you now, we hadVietnamese the first night they

(51:51):
were there.
Yes, it was like you know, 75bucks a head for this Vietnamese
food, so it is pricey, but itwas delicious, Josh.
It was to die for, and yeah,yeah, we're talking about the
the Wagyu beef stuff and likeall these different sushis, and
oh man, like it was delectable,absolutely delectable.

(52:11):
And um, so there was that.
Uh yeah, make sure you take yourwallet.
That's all I'll say.
I mean, yeah, you can't you canyou can buy, you know, there's
the$25 hot dogs, for instance,in there too.
Nathan's hot dogs and stuff likethat.

SPEAKER_03 (52:24):
I feel like because of the accommodations are fairly
decent, I I think it ends, itcan be a pretty reasonable,
especially if you don't gamble,it can be a pretty reasonable
reasonable location.
Oh, yeah.
And I've I've thought abouthonestly taking just a day trip
to do what you did at the endend of your trip, just to do
just to do that, because that'ssuch a unique thing.
Again, we're teasing it, we'reteasing it, we're teasing it.

(52:45):
It's coming, it's coming.
But let's move on to the EThighway now.

SPEAKER_01 (52:49):
The ET Highway.
So the next day we drove up tothe ET Highway.
As I said before, it's about twoand a half hours uh starting.
Start the ET Highway is two anda half hours north of Vegas.
And uh, once you get there, itsays extraterrestrial highway.
There's stickers all over thesign there for it and stuff as
well.
It's really cool.
And that's where ET0001 begins.

(53:11):
I need that cache.

SPEAKER_03 (53:12):
I need that cache.
You know, I've done the ETHighway.
We never got to that cache.
You never got number one.
That number one is like that'sat the sign that's like iconic.
We I didn't get that one.
I need to go back.
I need to go back.

SPEAKER_01 (53:25):
Yeah, but you started there.
We still we well, we didn'tstart there because what
happened is because we we hadnine cars in total.
Now, instead of doing peoplenormally do it with two cars and
they do the like the leapfrogthing.
So one car will drive around,they'll pick up the cache.
Now, these caches are designed,they're designed for to never
have a DNF.

(53:45):
What you need to do is you haveyour own containers with your
own logbooks in your containers,for instance.
As you go to one, if it'ssmashed or it's broken or it's
not there, you then replace itwith a brand new one and you log
the find.
If it's there, you pick it up,you still replace it with a new
one, you take it back to thecar, and as you drive to the
next one, the person next to youbehind you is stamping or

(54:06):
writing the names down in thatlogbook and you replace the next
one with that one, replace thenext one with that one.
And that's how you do it.
It's so smart.
Normally you do it with I saidtwo or three cars, and you do
the log property.
Nine, nine cars.
Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 (54:20):
Okay, I'm really curious about this.
How did it work out?
Did it work?

SPEAKER_01 (54:25):
Perfectly.
It worked perfectly, perfectly.
So, Chad, from one of the uh theother co-hosts on the GCPC, he
organized um these in littlesections, sections about 80
caches per section, and you hadlike three sections per car per
day.
So you're finding, you know, 200caches in a day, which is very
easy to do when you're in thesecars.

(54:46):
You just got driving between thesections, but three sections a
day is very easy, and um, andliterally you are 527 feet,
whatever they are, apart, onetenth of a mile apart, literally
one tenth of a mile apart.
You're going in and out.
Sometimes you don't even getback on the road, you just you
sit on the shoulder, just drivethe shoulder.
Um, you know, sometimes ifyou're in a car with uh you can

(55:07):
actually leave the door open,for instance, and just go jump
in and if you're in one of thosecaravan, like the people who you
just jump in and out of the van,you know, that sort of thing,
too.
So yeah, it worked out very,very well.
We then stayed in uh Tonapar,the uh town there, which is
closest to it.
The closest biggest town wasTonapar.
We stayed there for the twonights.
Well, and that was our that wasour junction, our home par base.

(55:29):
We'd have an event in themorning, like a coffee event,
and then we'd have an event atnight, so you know, for dinner
and stuff, uh, including the uhthe Thanksgiving night.
We had dinner there too, and wehad this dinner at the most
haunted hotel in USA.
The number one haunted hotel inthe USA.

SPEAKER_03 (55:53):
Where is it?
Ms.
Pa Hotel.
Oh, it's not the one I wasthinking of.
That's the other one I wasthinking of.

SPEAKER_01 (56:00):
No, no, this is this is we're talking about this is a
hotel where you go in, there's abar.
Uh it used to be um, like itused to have a bank downstairs,
and you can walk through theactual safe still.
Like it has it all open, it'sbeautiful, it's got uh carpet
area.
Um, you know, they've got abrewery, a local brewery there,
so you can get local beers aswell.
Um, and they do have a fairlydecent uh meals there, like a

(56:24):
bistro sort of style meals,which is good.
We did have um like a turkeydinner.
The four of us did have like anice turkey dinner on Thursday
night.
So it was it was nice, but theuh America's most haunted hotel,
famous for its lady in redghost.
She is seen several timeswalking up and down the stairs,
and apparently she was aprostitute murdered on the fifth

(56:46):
floor back in the day.
Whoa, that's creepy.
Some of the other spirits arevery playful, including the bank
robbers that come out of thebasement because bank robbers
got shot in there there as well.
So there's still bank robbersthat are in the basement,
apparently.
Their spirits are in thebasement there, too.
Um, other unexplained phenomenathat happens around as well, but
it's it's it is quite luxurious,Josh.

(57:07):
It is done up really nice.
It's got the old school sort ofaxe minster carpet uh you know
on the floor and you know thatsort of thing, too.
So very cool indeed.
Uh Mizpa Hotel.

SPEAKER_03 (57:18):
I'm looking at the building, right?
The building is cool.
Oh, yeah.
This isn't a rundown place, thisis a nice place.

SPEAKER_01 (57:26):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (57:27):
You so you stayed here.

SPEAKER_01 (57:29):
No, no.
We just oh you just you justvisited.
We just stayed, yeah.
We just we just visited fordinner one night and stayed in
an Airbnb.
It's classy.
It's classy.
It is.
I probably wouldn't stay therebecause of the spiritual
activity.
But that's just that's just me.
Um but Josh, what you werereferring to is literally two
blocks down the road.

(57:50):
Two blocks down the road, it ishome to the clown motel, the
infamous clown motel.
Josh, what do you know about theclown motel?

SPEAKER_03 (58:01):
I just know that it's a clown-themed hotel.
I was actually thinking aboutgoing on this trip, and I was
wanting to actually look at someof the rooms.
And there's like different themerooms.
It looked like there was apennywise room.
It was fun watching some of thelive footage that was coming out
of the trip here because ScottBurks was like going into the
rooms and showing a little bitlike what the rooms look like.

(58:22):
I mean, it's not like a super,it's a motel.
It's not like a super fancy, butit's it's uh it's exactly what
you would probably envision itto be.
It was kind of you know, I don'tthink it was run down, but it
was like, but yeah, it is text.

SPEAKER_01 (58:37):
There's text in the carpet, you know, to hold the
the corners of the carpet down.
There's you know, that's allpart of the parcel of the theme
of the whole place.
Um but you go in, you go intotheir uh the the area where you
check in, etc.
as well, and they've got like alike a museum and and gift shop
in there as well.
And it's now home in the actualgift shop itself, it's now home

(58:57):
to over 2,000 clown statues anditems inside the the lobby
itself.
Over 2,000 now.
They started with 150 clownfigurines, and now they've got
over 2,000.
Um I think it was opened in 1985back in the day.
So uh there, there you go.
So the clown.
But one of the best parts aboutthe clown motel, next door to

(59:19):
it, there's a chain link fence.
You can see the chain link fencefrom every single room.
In that chain link fence is oneof the oldest cemeteries in
America.

SPEAKER_03 (59:32):
It's funny because I did a Google Earth search
because I wanted to see what itlooked like from the air, and I
was like, oh my god, I saw that.
I was like, oh my gosh, there'sa cemetery next to it.
Of course, there's a cemetery.

SPEAKER_01 (59:42):
Absolutely.
Um, again, a pretty cool umadventure lab at the clown motel
and the cemetery as well.
But what I loved about thecemetery, Josh, is that so this
again, this was was an oldmining town back in the day, and
we're talking, I'm talking backthen, I'm talking 200 years ago,
Josh.
There's people buried.
In there from 200 years ago.
But every single one is prettymuch, you know, the uh the the

(01:00:06):
railroad um um pillars that whatdo you call sleepers, railway
sleepers.
They're like old railwaysleepers that are in this the in
the crossing, like in the signof a cross for signifying each
each one, each but there's a ametal, an old metal plaque in
the the middle, like nailed in,and in that metal is a metal

(01:00:29):
stamp of the person's name anddetails and how they died.
So this is Bill.
Bill dropped dead out the frontof the local chemist on the main
road.
Then this is this is Sam.
Sam fell off, Sam fell off theuh a what do you call it, a
carriage and then was run overby a train.

(01:00:50):
You know, that's that's funny.

SPEAKER_03 (01:00:54):
That's funny because in the movie Back to the Future
3, Doc Brown uh he sees hisgravestone, and that's why
that's why Marty has to go backand save him because he realizes
he gets shot.
But the tombstone says, herelies Doc Brown, who is shot in
the back by Brewford Tannen fora 50 uh over a dispute of$50.

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:16):
So I didn't realize that that's a real thing.
That's a real thing.
That is a real thing.
Like these things happen.
Um, and even to the point, Josh,we're talking, I said, it's 200
years ago, okay?
So there were there were crossesthat were on the the edge of the
chain link fence on the otherside, and it didn't say here
lies, it said uh like all theAsian community that died in the

(01:01:40):
area are not buried in thatcemetery, they're buried over
the fence, and they just saidover the fence lies Chin Li or
like the Asian names becausethey weren't allowed to be
buried with the rest of them.
So yeah, yeah.
200 years ago things weredifferent back then, remember?
Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:00):
Wow, okay.
So that's that's reallyinteresting.
Are you do you regret do youregret that you didn't stay in
the clown motel, or do you feellike there was an event there so
you got a sense of like what itwas like?

SPEAKER_01 (01:02:12):
So I can throw it, I can throw them under the bus,
and that is this that uh weorganized our trip at Tuna Par
and stuff as well.
We organized it with Shane andGarnet.
So the four of us were thereorganizing our trip.
Uh, and we're gonna staytogether, we drove together,
that sort of thing as well.
Uh Shane is totally, and he'sthe winner of all the poker
tournaments, but cannot standlooking at a clown, has clown

(01:02:35):
phobia, but he braved it out andactually walked in.
We did actually did a to alittle tour of the clown motel,
and he walked in to the clown,and I could see Josh, the hair
on the back of his neck stood upso stiff, and I thought he had a
mullet for one second becausehis hair on his neck was so
stiff out that he was so likeand he's his fists were clenched

(01:02:56):
the whole time he was inside.
So it is a real fear.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:59):
Um it's chlorophobe, it's called chlorophobia.

SPEAKER_01 (01:03:03):
Chlorophobia.

SPEAKER_03 (01:03:04):
That's not that's not when you drug someone and no
that's chlorophyll, that'sdifferent.

SPEAKER_01 (01:03:09):
There you go.

SPEAKER_03 (01:03:09):
Chlorophone chlorophobia.
Wow.
So yeah, there's no way he'ssleeping there.
No way.

SPEAKER_01 (01:03:16):
He said he said he'd rather sleep in the cemetery
next door than anywhere near theclub hotel.
So that's uh that's a realthing.
So but no, we actually stayed westayed in a beautiful Airbnb
with a with a log fireplace, andit was a TP style.
Remember how we stayed in the TPstyle one in when I say TP, I
mean like a pitched high-pitchedroof in Flagstown?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was like that.

(01:03:37):
It was like a nice high-pitchedroof.
So it was really cool.

SPEAKER_03 (01:03:40):
That's cool.
So before we move on from the EThighway, how many caches did you
act find?
Did you find them all of all4,000?
Or did all 4,000?

SPEAKER_01 (01:03:52):
Yeah, over over 4,000 have been found and have
been logged.
Wow, that's what happens whenyou have nine cars.

SPEAKER_03 (01:03:59):
How uh did it take two days?
Was it two days?

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:01):
Nine cars, two days.
Two days, nine cars.
There was some issues along theway.
One car got a flat tire, anotherone, another car got stuck in
mud as well.
Um and had to be sort of andthey can't be winched out, you
know, there's nowhere to winchbecause you're in the desert.
So yeah, things like that werehappened.
And so there was some somepeople stayed back because I was
staying back on the Saturday.
Some people stayed back and didthe extra bits that that weren't

(01:04:23):
covered, so in the in the twodays.

SPEAKER_03 (01:04:25):
So yeah, so yeah, you really did the whole thing.
That was that's impressive.
Have you logged them allalready?

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:31):
I have not yet.
Um, but apparently, apparently,you can log them all on G SAC,
but GSAC is only on PCs, not theMacs.

SPEAKER_03 (01:04:39):
Yeah, so that's tough.

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:40):
That's tough.
Yeah, so I've got to findsomeone with a PC.

SPEAKER_03 (01:04:43):
Or a lot of or a lot of time.
Okay, so then you went back toVegas, babies.
Vegas, a little bookend.

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:51):
This is what we're referring to in the beginning of
the show.
Are you ready to do that?

SPEAKER_03 (01:04:54):
I don't even want I don't even want to hear it.

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:56):
Okay, again, remember Jen had no idea that I
had organized any of this.

SPEAKER_03 (01:05:01):
Oh, she was probably so excited to see this.

SPEAKER_01 (01:05:04):
Well, she didn't even know, so she wasn't excited
because she didn't know aboutit.

SPEAKER_03 (01:05:07):
Yeah, but one, but what I'm saying is when you
approach the thing, when youapproach the man-made wonder
thing.
I'm then she was like, Oh mygosh, we're going here.

SPEAKER_01 (01:05:18):
Well, the best part about Vegas, Josh, is that you
can't see much apart from what'sin front of your face.
And we walked, so where theLuxor is, the Luxor is down near
the southern part of the actualstrip itself.
So we walked north from theLuxor.
We took our entire, because weleft there at like, you know,
nine o'clock in the morning.
I said to her, we're gonna bewalking a lot today.
So we walked north all the wayup the strip, crisscrossing the

(01:05:40):
strip, you know, going throughall the different hotels and you
know, going through the thehotel where there's the gondolas
inside the hotels, and you know,having a cup a cup a cup of
coffee in like an Italianrestaurant there, and you know,
you hear the the gondolassinging in the background, and
there's the fake sky above yourhead, and all that sort of
stuff.
So she's I like that.
She's mesmerized, Josh.
She's mesmerized by everything.

(01:06:01):
So she had no clue about whatthe finale was.
The finale.
We walk around the corner, andthere it is, in all its glory.
Yes, known as the sphere.

SPEAKER_03 (01:06:11):
Yes, the sphere.
And you're thinking maybe, youknow, the sphere has concerts,
the sphere has you know, I thinkthere's tours, but there's a
very special thing happening atthe sphere right now.
And you guys know if you listento this podcast for any amount
of time, I have a love for thismovie.

(01:06:33):
You saw a movie in the sphere,and we're talking like uh
observing seeing a movie unlikeany movie you've ever seen in
your life.
Sure.
Ever seen.

SPEAKER_01 (01:06:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
And the thing is, though, Icouldn't keep it a secret from
her because it's on the outsideof the sphere in the promotion.
So yeah, absolutely.
You know, of course.
The movie is The Wizard of Oz.
Classic.
The Wizard of Oz, absoluteclassic.
So as we're walking up, thissphere is glowing, and it's
glowing in the old sort ofschool, um, you know, that that

(01:07:05):
orange tinging dusty look, andthen you have that and she's
riding her bicycle with Toto onthe back around the sphere, like
it's incredible.
That's the one, that's the one.
But uh, but no, so you she knewstraight away then.
She's like, Oh, we going to I'mlike, okay, we you got it in

(01:07:25):
one, so yep, no worries.
Um it's very Josh, I'll tell younow, it there's not not one bad
seat in this place.
Oh, I'm sure you know, you canget the cheap seats, the cheap
seats are over 250 bucks for thecheap seats.
Yeah, the expensive seats areover a thousand dollars, and
you'll see just as much for eachseat as you will.

(01:07:45):
So it makes a difference.
It's a big screen.
My suggestion is you know, payfor what you can afford if you
want to see it.

SPEAKER_03 (01:07:53):
So it's gonna be a cool experience regardless.

SPEAKER_01 (01:07:56):
Yeah, 16k resolution.
This thing was 16k resolution.
Now, as you can understand, ifyou're looking at a TV screen,
Josh, and the TV screen is youknow, a normal TV screen, think
about this.
It showed the actual movie onthis screen.
The actual movie was shown, butin order to show the actual

(01:08:16):
movie, they had to get AI tomake up the rest of the screen,
including the ceiling behind youand around you.
So now, if you don't want toknow any more about it, then I
suggest uh you know, you justsay, you know, thanks for thanks
for listening and off you gonow.
Thanks for being patient.

SPEAKER_03 (01:08:33):
Bye.

SPEAKER_01 (01:08:34):
I'm gonna be some spoilers, exactly.
Because I'm only gonna dospoilers though, because I I
need to tell you, Josh.

SPEAKER_03 (01:08:39):
Well, I know I I know because I see these on
social, I know a lot of thespoilers, so you're not I know I
know because what I when youright before the day, I knew the
day you were going, I texted youand I said, Grab an apple for
me.

SPEAKER_01 (01:08:52):
Yeah, that's all that's it.
The first thing you your firstthing you see is obviously the
size of the screen and theeverything, and you're just in
awe of it all.
And you're looking around, yourneck's like getting sore.
You're looking everywhere youlook, you can see.
Um, the second thing was whenthe tornado hit, Josh, it
started the tornado startedcoming, the seats were rumbling,
Josh.
You could actually feel thevibrations through your seats.

(01:09:13):
It got chilly, like it all of asudden the temperature dropped
by I'm talking 15, 20 degrees.
The temperature dropped.
So cool, the wind startedblowing, pieces of paper started
flapping everywhere.
Leaves, leaves started flappingeverywhere, and everything was
flying everywhere, like you wereactually in the middle, and the
the tornado actually came up onscreen like the eye of the

(01:09:34):
storm, and it went really soft,and then you hit again and it
came back again, too.
Like you actually felt like youwere part of the actual tornado.
Wow, it was absolutely insane.

SPEAKER_03 (01:09:44):
So unbelievable, unbelievable.
Yeah, it's I've seen TikToks ofthis of people's reactions, like
they get their they're showingit, but they show themselves
experiencing it.

SPEAKER_01 (01:09:54):
You're right, like it's like they they're in a
storm, they're they're in thestorm.
Uh you got so it's they class itas 4D, uh four-dimensional
feeling, right?
So the you got that, you got thetornado coming through, and but
I I just thought, you know,that's pretty cool a tornado
coming through, but no, there'smore, Josh.
Oh, yeah.
Um, when there's when there'sthere and there's the um the
snow starts falling in the movieitself, yeah, it snows on you in

(01:10:19):
the cinema.
When the apples start fallingfrom the trees, the apples fall
from the roof of the cinema.
Like obviously they're not real,but uh, you know, the apples
actually fall from the roof ofthe cinema.

SPEAKER_03 (01:10:30):
Did you catch one?
Did you catch any of them?

SPEAKER_01 (01:10:31):
No, we didn't catch one.
Oh, bumper.

SPEAKER_03 (01:10:33):
There's only there's only like a handful of it wasn't
that many, but there was it waslike you were aware, you were
aware that they were falling,but you didn't grab one.

SPEAKER_01 (01:10:40):
Yeah, there were that many.
But Josh, what I thought wasamazing was you know the uh the
winged monkeys in the movie.
Everyone loves the wingedmonkeys.

SPEAKER_03 (01:10:49):
The flying monkeys, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:10:50):
The flying monkeys, the fly, everyone loves the
flying monkeys.
Well, they had all these flyingmonkeys come out on the screen
as well, which is all reallycool and stuff as well.
They have real flying monkeys,Josh.
Yeah, I'm talking 12-foot sizeflying monkeys, amazing,
literally flying around overyour heads and buzzing around.
And what they are is actuallythey're drones because they're

(01:11:11):
not actually attached toanything.
What they're not attached tostrings?
No strings.
There's no strings.
I didn't know this.
I didn't know that.
They are drones because thenthey all they all go when they
go down the bottom, they go downand they land at the bottom.
They all land one after theother.
Actually flying, actually flyingmonkeys, real flying monkeys.

SPEAKER_03 (01:11:35):
I gotta, I gotta do this.
I gotta tell you, I gotta grab aI gotta take the day off one day
and get a cheap$50 allegiantflight.

SPEAKER_01 (01:11:44):
Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_03 (01:11:44):
Go go to the movie and then go back to the airport
and go home the same night.
It sounds like that's worth it,especially if you like Wizard of
Oz.
I mean, you know, when we werein the Space Coast, I was like,
hey Craig, can we go to theWizard of Oz Museum?
That's right.

SPEAKER_01 (01:12:00):
That's right.
Yep, exactly, exactly.
So yeah, you I'm telling you,Josh, you need to do it.
And it is it is exactly the samemovie, there's no difference.
I did watch on YouTube themaking of like a bit of the
making of it, like emotional,and they show you how the AI
figures out the actor and howthat person acts in real life,
and then when they walk offscreen, they don't actually walk

(01:12:21):
off screen in this in the spherebecause the screen is so big,
they stand in the doorway thatwould have been there, and they
still act like they normally doact.
So it's the AI makes them act,you see.

SPEAKER_03 (01:12:32):
So it's so funny because there are I've watched
some of that documentary too, orsome of the behind the scenes on
that, and there's some filmpurists that are don't like this
idea because they're like,you're messing with you're
messing with art.
And I'm like, you know whatthough?
This is a whole new thing, art.
You still have the movie.

(01:12:53):
The movie, if you want to watchthe movie, you can watch the
movie, but this is just like anenhanced fun thing.

SPEAKER_01 (01:12:59):
But the thing is about the movie, the movie's not
altered in any way, like it'sthe actual original film.
Same actor.
Yeah, yeah.
Judy Garland back to life again.
And I think they even asked JudyGarland's uh grandchild or
grandchildren, um, and beforethey even did it, and the
grandchildren agreed and saidno, yeah, she would have loved
that, so yes.
You know, so that's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 (01:13:19):
You know, speaking of Judy Garland, Judy Garland,
he she plays Dorothy, right?
And at the end of the movie, shegets back to Kansas by saying,
There's no place like home.
And you know why she says that?
She says it because she's proudof her town.
And that is a rare thing thesedays.

(01:13:41):
It's a damn rare thing thesedays.
She's proud of that Kansas townthat she lives in.
She's she lives in the country,but I was I was wondering how
you get that in.

SPEAKER_01 (01:13:48):
You know that, don't you?

SPEAKER_03 (01:13:49):
Uh the whole time.
I was thinking about it thewhole episode.
I was I was waiting for Dorothyto say there's no place like is
it?
Was it that's a creep?
Come on, you gotta admit, Craig.
That was creative.

SPEAKER_01 (01:14:00):
That was very, very creative.
Because you even got me for alittle bit too for a second
there.
I thought I was like, wow.

SPEAKER_03 (01:14:05):
I know you were like, where is he going?
Usually you're like, okay, hereit comes, but this time you're
like, what are you talkingabout?

SPEAKER_01 (01:14:11):
Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 (01:14:13):
Anytime you're like wondering what what's anytime
you're wondering what's goingon, usually I'm going in the
direction of saying the phrase.

SPEAKER_01 (01:14:20):
Oh, yeah.
You're saying your phrase,exactly.
Uh, one thing I will say aswell, um, is that after we saw
that, we stayed one more nightat the Luxor as well.
Luckily, we're at the Luxorbecause Luxor is right near the
uh airport.
Why?
We had to have a two-flight triphome, including a layover in
Houston, because you know,Pensacola doesn't have direct
flights.

SPEAKER_03 (01:14:38):
Yes.

SPEAKER_01 (01:14:39):
All well and good, everything's fine, no dramas.
You know, we woke up in themorning, we had time for
breakfast and everything aswell.
Except, Josh, we were sitting atbreakfast and I got a text
message saying your flight isdelayed.
And it's delayed to the pointwhere you've got five minutes
after landing before the nextone takes off.

SPEAKER_04 (01:14:56):
Oh boy, stress.

SPEAKER_01 (01:14:57):
And says it says, What would you like to do?
And of course, there's one theresays, you know, oh, you can
leave later tonight and get thered eye through Chicago and then
land the very next day inPensacola.
I'm like, that's that's that'slong and that's late.
Or Josh, come early and get theearlier flight to uh Houston and

(01:15:18):
have a longer layer in Houston.
That's all well and good, exceptit was one hour away, and we
were sitting at breakfast.
So guess what I did, Josh?
We took it.
I said, let's do this.
We've got an hour, let's go.
And so we did like a we thoughtwe were um I made it fun, like
we're on the uh amazing race.
Yeah, we're gonna go back to theroom, get the bags, get the

(01:15:40):
bags, go, go, go, get the get tothe Uber, send to the Uber.
We've got like 50 minutes to getto him.
He said, No worries.
He sped there, Josh.
He was really cool too.
He was excited, sped there, wentthrough, had to do a bag drop
because we had to buy an actualsuitcase because we had so many
souvenirs.
So wow.

(01:16:00):
So we did a bag drop as well,sent to the guy at uh at the uh
the uh United, uh, you know,urgent, do a bag drop.
Yep, no worries, just go, go,go.
He says we had to go throughsecurity.
Luckily, I'm TSA, so we gotthrough TSA line instead of the
other line.
Um, but even worse, we weren'tin the right terminal, so we had
to then get a like we had to geta bus thing from the terminal to

(01:16:21):
the terminal we were through.
That's the terminal.
Oh, I tell you.
We made it as we got to thegate, they were calling our
names.
Yeah, they're like, where arethese people?
And we would come running to thegate and they're like, Oh,
you're here.
And so that was cool.
So so yeah, it was like theamazing race, and then we had a
five-hour layover in Houston.

SPEAKER_03 (01:16:40):
Yeah, sounds like that was the best option.
If you wanted to, you could haveleft the Houston Airport and
taken Jen to the beer can house,the greatest location in
Houston.

SPEAKER_02 (01:16:53):
Love that we love that beer can house.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16:55):
That's right.
There's an episode about thattoo.
So go back and listen.
But uh, but anyway, Josh, sothat was my entire trip.
Thank you very much forlistening, and thank you to
everyone for uh out therelistening to my my adventures
this time and my trip.

SPEAKER_03 (01:17:07):
Yes, that's really cool.
Yes, it sounds like a lot offun.
There's many aspects I was veryjealous of.
Yeah, but it is what it is.
I got to see my son.
Family's more important.
Um, so that was the rightchoice.
It might maybe wasn't as maybeas fun, but it was my right
choice.

SPEAKER_01 (01:17:25):
Well, when your car gets dented instead, so it's
like Yeah, and all the toiletpaper's gone.
But it is it is what it is.
You know, you gotta do thisthing sometimes where you've got
uh Thanksgiving isn't just aboutfamily, it's about friends
sometimes too.
So this is true.
This is true.
We had we had friends giving uhfor this year instead.
This is true.
Speaking of our friends, Josh.

SPEAKER_03 (01:17:46):
Yeah, speaking of our friends, yeah, if you're
enjoying our podcast, we reallyappreciate your support.
By supporting us, you're helpingus create even better content
and keep it free for everyone.
We don't have any commercialsyet.
So please consider joining us onour Patreon.
It's at patreon.com backslashtreasures of our town.

(01:18:07):
And we just want to thank allour patrons for all their
support.
A big bill did come recently foruh our Buzz Sprout high uh Buzz
Sprout thing, and so we're we'renot you know it it fluctuates,
and I think we're at a littlebit of a lower level right now,
so uh we surely do appreciateyour support.

(01:18:28):
So check us out on Patreon.
There's golden nuggets there.
We give little bonus footfootage or clips every once in a
while.

SPEAKER_01 (01:18:35):
Absolutely.
Uh Josh, we did have uh Brianfrom Texas, he's the one that
reached out in regards to thechicken math.
Yeah, Josh, one of our uhlisteners who reached out to us,
uh 2XR Cody.
Now it was a long email, butI'll basically summarize, and
that is I'm catching up on olderepisodes.
I just listened to the one whereyou visited Floresville for
Texas Challenge.
Remember the Texas Challenge,Josh?

SPEAKER_03 (01:18:55):
Yes, I remember it very well.

SPEAKER_01 (01:18:57):
That was a really fun trip.
It was, and you mentionedstopping by Sunshine Coffee
House in Jordenton.
Remember because I love mycoffee, Josh.
I think that's what it was, too,because I love my coffee so
much.
And this was a pop.

SPEAKER_03 (01:19:09):
Yes, and there was a geocaching event uh hosted by
Captain Math.
Remember?
That's true.

SPEAKER_01 (01:19:14):
That's true, that's true.
Um, he said that moment hit me alot harder than I expected.
I'm like, what?
And I had to look through.
Interesting.
Sunshine Coffee House is ownedby my best friend's mum.
My friend passed away a littleback in 2017, and I haven't
really been the same since.
She opened the coffee house inhonor of her two children, and
hearing you recognize it, evenbriefly, felt like the world

(01:19:35):
acknowledged his story in histiny, unexpected way.
I was actually at work when Iwas listening and had to step
back for a moment and take itall in.
Uh completely caught mecompletely off guard.
Um, but it was really mean in ameaningful way.
So thank you very much.
If you ever want to know moreabout the heart behind that
place and their story, he gaveme uh the shuttle
shinecoffeehouse.com and thestory about it too.

(01:19:57):
Links are in the description.
And thank For your kindness andattention to you give to all the
small towns and the people whomake them special.
This episode found me on a day Ireally needed it.
So there you go.
Thank you, Cody, mate.
Thank you, buddy.

SPEAKER_03 (01:20:10):
That's awesome.
That's that's that's why we dothis.
I love that that idea.
I love that idea of uh I Iappreciate that he acknowledged
that we focus on small towns.

SPEAKER_00 (01:20:21):
Yes.

SPEAKER_03 (01:20:22):
And um and so that's that's really cool.
Thank you so much for sharingthat with us.
And speaking speaking of smalltowns, uh, right now I am
talking to a guy that has a webseries where he features he
features small towns.
I'm in conversation with him.
It's not locked in yet, but verypossibly possibly soon.
The next the next episode willinvolve this gentleman as he

(01:20:44):
talks about as he travels tosmall towns and really he really
features the treasures that areof these small towns.
We might talk to him, might talkto him in the next episode or
coming up.

SPEAKER_01 (01:20:56):
And if you've got a if you've got a question for him
or for Josh or myself, how canpeople contact us, Josh, if they
wish to?

SPEAKER_03 (01:21:01):
Yes, feel free to reach out to us at treasures of
our town podcast at gmail.com.
Or you can follow us onFacebook, Instagram, YouTube, or
our Buzz Sprout site.

SPEAKER_01 (01:21:09):
So that's it for our show today.
Please subscribe, rate, reviewon your favorite podcasting app.

SPEAKER_03 (01:21:14):
And as always, Josh, may your travels always lead you
to the most unexpected andamazing hidden gems around the
world.
See you next time.

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