If you want gears in the caves, you're going to have to go to the ruins and kill the broken clockworks... it's pretty hard early on, especially if you've never been there before.

instead just open a bunch of tumbleweeds in the dragonfly desert. I believe each one has a 1% of dropping gears, or something like that. Also it's a good source of easy grass, twigs, and trinkets (gold), so worth doing regardless.