We've been on a tear with geocaching lately, and we wanted to keep it going. We went after six caches today. One of them had too many people around, so we settled for finding five of them. When we started out, the weather was overcast, but not raining. The forecast called for showers later. It was right.
La
Luna - We found this cache at 10:20am. We took a picture with
the camera in the cache and a string of Mardi Gras beads. We left
a glow-in-the-dark star from the Chamber of Secrets cache in
North Carolina and a toy watch. The trail was quite muddy, and,
by the time we got back to our car, so were our boots. We had
forgotten to bring extra shoes to change into, so we drove to the
next cache with just our socks on.
A
Sunny Day in the Park - Two weeks
ago we had hoped to be the first ones to this cache, but had
problems with the clues. During that search we came right by this
location, and even gave it a cursory search for the cache, but
didn't see it. Dale has been kicking himself ever since he
calculated the true coordinates and realized we'd come so close
and missed it.
We had no problem finding it today just before 11:00. The cache was quite full. We took a picture with the camera in the cache and a string of Mardi Gras beads. (Yes, Dale thought we were getting into a rut, too.) We left a Monsters Inc. spoon.
Ponderosa Cache - As we drove to from Baylands Park to this
one (again in stocking feet), it started to drizzle. The rain
stopped completely as we parked next to Ponderosa School, where
this cache is located. It is hidden in the branches of an Italian
cypress tree at the edge of the school's ballfield. It's
completely invisible unless you poke around in the tree. Chris
spotted this one about 11:25. Dale was looking in the wrong tree.
We took the jar of lip balm an left a pair of clip-on
sunglasses.
Sunnyside - What irony. The rain started in earnest as we
approached a cache called "Sunnyside". The GPS was
pointing along a creek with no good access route. We stood on a
bridge over the creek and looked around. We saw some steps
leading down the bank, but we couldn't get to them without going
across someone's yard. The description of the cache said that we
would have to be "clever" to get to the cache.
Cleverly, Chris decided to stay at the bridge. Not feeling all
that clever, Dale just made his way carefully down the wall of
the gully. (We later decided that it would have been clever to go
into the gully on the opposite side of the bridge and walk under
it.)
Chris, being more clever, stayed near the street while Dale climbed down to the creek. Right at noon he found the cache, attached to a young tree with electrical tape. It was a small container, and he was getting wet, so he wrote a quick note in the log, but didn't exchange anything.
Midnight Memorial - We had to hike to this one. It was still
raining, but we put on our ponchos and headed up the trail. We
weren't going to let a little rain shower keep us from this one.
The trail started out in pretty good shape, but was muddy and
slick for half the hike. The GPS was getting good readings,
though and led us right to the cache.
The cache was hidden last March when there were plenty of leaves on the bushes it was under. It's pretty visible now that the leaves are off the bushes. Someone had covered it with sticks, but the white top shows through if anyone is paying attention. Just as we found the cache at 12:35pm and pulled it out of the bush, we saw some other hikers nearby. They weren't coming toward us, but could see us, too. We let them get around a bend in the trail before we looked at the cache. We were amazed that anyone else was out in that weather.
There wasn't anything we wanted in it, so we took nothing and left a short and soggy note in the log book (which is almost full) and left a new, blank 90-minute audio cassette.
The cache's page recommends hiking up to a lookout for the view. It also mentions a pet cemetary near the trail. Because of the rain and mud, we didn't hike to the top of the hill. The view must have been obscured by rain and clouds anyway. Nor did we look for the pet cemetary. We'll make a point of coming back here during the dry season.
We hid our second cache. This time Chris came along,
and we had a very nice hike on this Christmas Eve. These pictures
show the stuff we put in it and the place we hid it.
Finally we were the first to a cache! This one is easy to find.
Maybe too easy, as it is in a clearing, completely unhidden. But
it's well off the beaten path, so maybe it will be OK. The cache
is a plastic jar inside a plastic box. We dumped about 4oz of
water out of the box, but the contents of the jar were dry and in
good shape. There was a disposable camera in the cache -- still
in it's wrapping -- and
a pair of very goofy sunglasses. The sunglasses had a
tag that said "Take a picture wearing these". We
unwrapped the disposable camera and Chris took a picture of Dale
wearing the goofy shades. We took the stuffed pig kitty toy and
left a Sketchers keychain. Thanks for the adventure, Loma
Costanoan Indian Princesses!
We found this one on
our way to the new cache on the block -- "Under the High Wire".
We took a picture with the cache camera and $2 and left a Hot
Wheels® skate board and a music box that plays "Here comes
Santa Claus". The trails were muddy from the recent rains, making
the footing iffy in spots. The mud also caked our hiking boots,
so we had to drive back home in our socks. Until the rain stops,
we'll have to bring shoes to change into after our hikes.
We started out on this multi-cache with the hope that we would be the first to find it. The cache consists of six clues that tell you where the actual cache is. We were very careful with our observations and our calculations, but the answer we got didn't make much sense. It was 8 miles away from the last of the clues, when it should have been very close by. Dale took a guess at what the answer might be, if it was near the last clue. That answer looked promising, but, when we got close, we discovered it was in the middle of a pond. We looked around the area close by, but didn't see a cache. At that point, we decided to check out the answer we got originally. Checking our map, we saw that it was in the middle of a preserve called Hidden Villa, so we gave it a shot. We found a nice place to hike and picnic, but no cache.
Dale contacted the cache owner via e-mail and told him how we had arrived at our answer. He changed the clues, adding vital information and changing some of the calculations completely. We plugged our observations into the new clues and got a new location. When Dale entered the new location into our GPS software, it turned out to be right where we had been looking when we were near the pond. By the time we found that out, though, two other cache hunters had already found it. We'll go back and log our find another day.
We visited Dale's parents, Ida and Jim, for a long weekend. While we were there, we wanted to introduce them to geocaching. Dale's sister, Theresa, joined us and we set out to find three caches on the shores of Falls Lake.
KBP#2 - This cache is in a nice area next to the Falls Lake
Dam. Unfortunately, the cache was "missing" and 90 feet
from where it should have been. Jim found where the cache should
have been. Instead of a blue and yellow paint can, it was just a
zip-lock bag of small toys someone had left. Dale put in a sheet
of paper in the bag to act as a log. When we got back home and
checked the cache web page, we read a entry from the cache owner
that said it had been removed in August due to water damage.
Colorful
kayaks near our parking spot
Chamber
of Secrets - Just across the lake from KBP#2 lies Chamber of
Secrets. It's a 3 mile drive around the end of the lake. We
didn't have a trail map of the area, and the GPS's made it look
like the cache was off the trail, so we ended up taking a
"short-cut" along the lake shore. After skirting the
water's edge (and managing mostly to stay out of mud) we found
the cache with no problem -- much closer to the trail than we
thought.
This time Dale spotted it. We took a plastic star and a bike reflector. We left two travel-bugs from California: Jailbird and Cache Camera.
That's Jailbird
that Dale is holding in this picture.
Car
Cache - A short two miles up the road from Chamber of Secrets
lies Car Cache. As you might expect, the theme of the cache is
cars. Chris found this one partially obscured by a rock. It is
less than 100 feet off the road. It is in a tennis ball
pressurizer, so it's quite small. We left a plastic car and took
a Hot Wheels skateboard.
There are five caches within five miles of our house and fourteen more between five and ten miles away. We found two of the closest ones and two a little farther away today. The caches were Creekside Trunk Cache, Belgatos (only 4 days old!), Los Gatos Creek Trail, and See the Lake.
We started out about 11:30 and finished at 3:00. The weather forecast said there was a chance of rain, and, sure enough, it started raining while we were hiking from the Los Gatos Creek Trail cache to the See The Lake cache. We were prepared with panchos, though. There were no great treasures in any of the caches, but we did pick up another travel bug. It is the "Cache Camera Bug" - an inexpensive 35mm camera that travels from cache to cache.
This was an "event cache". It was a picnic for geocachers. We met a lot of folks whose geocaching nicknames were familiar. It was fun to put faces with those names and talk about this game we enjoy so much. The gathering included a cache hunt and a raffle. Chris and Dale were the proud winners of five cafeteria spoons donated by the event organizer, Iron Chef. His trademark cache "deposit" is a spoon engraved with "The Spoon of Great Justice", hence the spoons we won. We also picked up the "Jailbird" travel bug. We plan to deposit it in a North Carolina cache when we visit there in December.
Yesterday I planned the cache hunt. There are four caches in this park, and I wanted to find them all. Three of the caches were placed by the same person back in August. As of noon yesterday, two of them had yet to be found. I was looking forward to being the first. However, before I left for the park this morning, I checked e-mail and there were four notifications from Geocaching.com. All four caches had been visited the day before by a cacher who calls himself Iron Chef. I wouldn't be first, after all.
Chris was working on a project for Pottery Barn and still nursing a sore back, so I took off on my own. I got an early start and reached the park at 8:15am. By 8:30, I was on my way. It was chilly, so I changed from my shorts to my jeans. I didn't know how hot it was going to get, so I put the shorts in my pack.
8:45am - Rest
Cache - Not a long hike, but a steep one. It was only 8/10 of
a mile from the car, but a 700-foot climb. I was getting good GPS
reception and found the cache easily. I took a Hot Wheels car and
left an Oakland A's lapel pin and a kayaking Smurf toy.
9:45am - Knob
Cache - 1.1 miles of steep uphill trail that climbs nearly
1000 feet from the Rest Cach is the top of Nibbs Knob, the
location of this cache. Halfway up I was sweating profusely, so I
changed into my shorts, stowing the jeans in my backpack. Again I
was getting pretty good GPS reception, but I had to look around
for this one. I found it under a fallen log. I took a pack of
Oreo cookies and left a band-less Casio watch.
11:15am -
Contour Cache - This cache is on a different trail from the
first two. I descended the 1,700 feet back to the car, left my
jeans there, and headed back up. Another 700-foot climb and I was
in heavy tree cover and between some high canyon walls. The GPS
was still getting decent reception, though, and I found the
cache. This time I didn't take anything from it, but I left the
red wind-up crab we found in Hawaii on September 25. I'll e-mail
the originator of the crab and let him know where it is.
12:00pm - Uvas
Cache - I was glad to see that there wasn't as much climbing
for this one -- only about 200 feet. However, with the trees and
narrow canyon walls, my GPS was having a tough time keeping
satelites in sight. It was varying between 60 and 200 feet of
accuracy, sometimes loosing itself altogether. I walked right by
the cache, ending up about 80 feet down the trail. I had printed
out the cache page, with its encrypted clue and a photo clue and
had it with me. After looking around and having no luck, I
finally decyphered the clue by hand (and it is four lines of
printed text!). Armed with the clue information and the picture
clue, I found the cache in less than 5 minutes. I took a keychain
with various blades on it and left a PG&E disposable flashlight
in its place. Then back to the car via the continuation of the
trail I had come up on, making a nice loop.
I did not see a single other hiker from the time I started at 8:30 until I was 1/2 mile from the car on my way down from Uvas cache. I made it back to the car at 12:45pm. All in all, I hiked nearly 7 miles, climbed and descended 2,600 feet, and found four caches in just over 4 hours. I'm taking the rest of the day off.
We went looking for
this, the only registered cache on Kauai while there on an Intuit-sponsored vacation.
One of Dale's co-workers, named Leslie, went with us.
Dale and Leslie
Our friends Heath and Mini invited us to go
hiking, so we turned it into a cache hunt. This was our first
trip to Quicksilver Park, but we'll be back. It's close to home
and has lots of great hiking trails. We found the cache location
easily enough, but it took a while to actually locate the cache
itself. It was inside a "hotbox" used to smelt mercury from ore
mined on this site long ago.
Here's Mini.
We couldn't find this one. Until we saw a message from
the day before our hunt, we were convinced this cache had gone
missing. We were in Gualala for one night and tried to find this
cache this morning before heading home. We looked around the
location as reported by our GPS (lots of trees!). We also
followed the directions on the cache page (we think), but
couldn't find it.
There is another cache in this park, too. It is the Gualala Point cache. From the cache description, it looked like it was too close to the bluffs for us to safely reach it, so we chose not to try to find it. We went close to it, though. That is where we took this picture.
Oh, well. We got some good pictures of the coast in the fog during our visit, so we still enjoyed the hunt.
This was another motorcycle
trip, but not as far as the one we took two weeks ago! We were
joined by our friend, Heath. It was his first cache hunt. It was
pretty easy. The cache was right where it was supposed to be and
marked with a rock. We realized late that we hadn't brought
"trade goods", so we put a whistle in the box and took a tin of
cinnamon Altoids.
We combined this cache hunt with our first
overnight motorcycle trip. To get to the trail that leads to this
cache, we had to traverse 13.5 miles of packed-dirt road. Riding
a sport-touring motorcycle up and over Tassajara Road is quite
challenging! It starts at 2000 feet above sea level and climbs to
nearly 4900 feet. Then it descends back to 2200 feet at the Horse
Pasture Trail head. There are plenty of hairpin turns, and we
averaged about 15 MPH over the whole course.
We found the trail head easily and parked the bike in the shade. Had a picnic on the trail and found the cache with no trouble. We didn't remove anything, but left a house-shaped tape measure from a furniture store in St. Louis, MO. It was hot, and we drank all the water we brought in with us, even though the hike was only 2.75 miles and we were on the trail for only 2 hours, including lunch and resting at the cache.
After the hike, we again rode Tassajara Road. We wouldn't say the ride was fun, but Dale certainly felt a sense of accomplishment -- not to mention relief -- when we were back on pavement. After that we drove around to Big Sur and stayed there overnight.
We'll go back to Los Padres (in a car) for more hiking.
Our first failure! We couldn't find the cache, even though we triple-checked the GPS and searched high and low. There's a note on the cache page from yesterday from another geocacher who couldn't find it either. We suspect it's been stolen.
Aug. 12, 2000 - Update: We contacted the person who hid the cache. He told me that it was on the other end of the bridge from where Dale is looking in these photos. He did look around that end of the bridge, but not as thoroughly. The hider was planning to check on it this weekend and replace it if it was gone.
Aug. 19, 2000 - Update: The cache hider says that the cache had been moved about 25 feet from where it had been hidden. He has replaced it in its original location. We'll look for it again soon.
We're enjoying this game so much,
Dale decided to participate more fully. He hid his own cache just
off of a little-traveled, but very nice trail in Butano State
Park.
"It's right here."
You really can see it if you get close enough
This was a different kind of cache from the ones we had been seeking. It's a "multi-cache", meaning there are multiple places to seek. In this case, we had to go to five locations to get clues that we used to "build" the coordinates of the final cache. We used the motorcycle today. That made if fun at the beginning, but parking the bike, getting the clues, then getting back on the bike got old. We finally found the cache after a strenuous climb that took us up 1000 feet in 1.3 miles. Because of the multiple locations, it took us a total of seven hours -- from leaving home to returning -- to complete the search.
Chris on a nice little bridge
we had to cross
Success!
Our
second cache of the day (first was Born Free). Wow! This box is
really full! Chris spotted it about 12 feet from where our GPS
said it should be. Nice location. We hadn't been on these trails
before and were impressed with the view of the valley from here.
We left a book of matches and took the hockey puck. The message
on the puck says it was taken from the "End of the Road" cache in
April. We'll move that on to the next cache we find.
Great location! With all the trees disrupting the GPS, it took us
about 10 minutes to find it. Looked under the wrong fallen tree
at first. Judging by the path around it, we weren't the first
ones to check it, either! We didn't trade anything, just left a
log book entry.
The fog was pretty thick this morning, and the trees were wringing the water out of it. We were pretty wet by the time we got to the cache. Got some great pictures of the foggy landscape, too.
I rode my bike to work nearby, so a co-worker
and I both rode out to this cache after work. Lots of wind
against us on the way out, but it helped us on the ride back. We
found the cache about 12 feet east of where my GPS said it should
be. Didn't remove or add anything, but did take 2 pictures with
the disposable camera in the cache.
Our first
time out GeoCaching! We had a nice 5.5 mile hike (round trip) and
actually found the cache. The trees interfered with the GPS
signal, Chris stood in the clear with a compass and used the GPS
to get the bearing from her to the cache. We had to look for it
for about 30 minutes.
We would have found it faster, but Dale adjusted the wrong way for magnetic north once we started using our compass. He adjusted the it 17 degrees west instead of 17 degrees east, so we were looking 34 degrees east, or about 50 feet from the cache. He didn't realize the mistake with the compass until we had found the cache and noticed how far off the direction had been.
Dale ended up just walking around with the GPS until the distance decreased. When it got to 1 foot, he looked around and saw it. We took a black cat pepper shaker. We left a deck of cards and a Sierra NV Pale Ale bottle cap. We didn't drink the beer there, just water.
