Double Agent (Livermore, CA)

Double Agent is a remarkable puzzle, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I even enjoyed my mistakes. I got everything I needed from the web, although not exactly the sites hinted at in the instructions.

DT21 &FW @3K (Dublin, CA)

Today, my DNF rate stayed just as high as it has been. At least I found DT21 & FW @3K (N 37° 42.323 W 121° 54.177). It’s a full size cache on the Iron Horse Trail. I was at first focusing on the wrong area, but after getting that straightened out, the cache was an easy find.

IQ Test (Pleasanton, CA)

Last night I worked out the solution to IQ Test, a puzzle cache. Given five defined waypoints, you must figure out a sixth one, where the cache is located. Obviously, there is a pattern to the five. This one went well. The calculations were easy (unlike what I was trying to do in Magic Trig) and the derived coords were spot on. I found the cache immediately. This helps somewhat to console me, since I’ve been having a 75% DNF rate the last few days.

Fisherwoman’s Reprise (Livermore, CA)

As a three-stage multi-cache, Fisherwoman’s Reprise (N 37° 38.670 W 121° 46.844) has a difficult last stage. I managed the first two OK a couple of weeks ago, but spent nearly an hour searching for the last stage, but came up empty handed.

After giving it some extended thought, I was pretty sure I knew how to find it, and that was validated today when I made the find in less than 5 minutes. Woo hoo!

Chickadee (Pleasanton, CA)

Chickadee (N 37° 40.046 W 121° 54.606) is in a park on the west side of 680 (literally). Unlike some of the other bird-themed caches by this owner, this one was not hard to find. I thought the coordinates was just a bit off, since I zeroed out in grass, but it was easy to checkout potential hiding spots. This cache may not make it through the winter rains since the lid is cracked and the contents are already damp.

Bailey 8999 (Pleasanton, CA)

After a couple of days of disappointments (only making finds at about 30% of the locations), Bailey 8999 (N 37° 38.863 W 121° 54.417) was a welcome find. I liked the well-constructed container made just for this location.

No Change Required (Pleasanton, CA)

I had looked here before, but wasn’t thinking about the title, and I let the hint completely mislead me. I finally realized where I should be looking, so went to check today. As I drove up today, I noticed three guys leaving the area, writing in their PDAs and checking their GPSrs. They headed off toward the library.

I was right about No Change Required (N 37° 39.443 W 121° 52.665) and made a quick find. Celebrated with a latte at the nearby Tulleys.

It’s Modern (Pleasanton, CA)

It’s Modern (N 37° 38.629 W 121° 52.907) is an interesting steel structure. The biggest problem with this cache (I think) is finding legal parking. I tried to do a night find here a while back, but couldn’t figure out the parking. Finding both parking and the cache was straightforward today.

An Old Adobe (Pleasanton, CA)

An Old Adobe (N 37° 39.802 W 121° 52.349) is a virtual cache at the Kottinger Barn. Kottinger married into the Bernal family and began farming 4,500 acres received as his wife’s dowry. This is the first time I have ever stopped to look at this old structure. Identification of a large object attached to the south side of the barn is part of the cache.

Tired of Micros (Pleasanton, CA)

I had scoped out Tired of Micros (N 37° 40.662 W 121° 52.245) a couple of weeks ago, but with the number of people around it didn’t seem a good idea to do a search. This morning there were kids in the playground and climbing over and under a large eucalyptus limb that had fallen during the night, but they all seemed to be preoccupied. I found it in the first place I looked--it looked like the most promising place, but it was also a lucky choice.

A dismal day

Actually, the day was beautiful, but the geocaching was dismal. I proposed to the co-pilot (Karen) that we hike at Las Trampas and find a number of the caches hidden there. I didn’t give her enough warning and she had lots of other things already planned. So I went alone, but decided not to go to Las Trampas. I’ll leave those for when she can go.

I only scored 3 out of 9 tries. Man, I hate micros.

Arroyo Mocho (Pleasanton, CA)

Figuring out where to park for Arroyo Mocho (N 37° 40.659 W 121° 54.749) was more time consuming that finding the cache. Turns out I could have parked quite close, but a Zone 7 truck was already parked there.

Some caches we haven’t seen (Pleasanton, CA)

Some Caches We Haven’t Seen is a puzzle cache that requires information from the web. This wasn’t too difficult to figure out. The cache is hidden in east Pleasanton in a green belt I didn’t know existed. The GPSr did an accurate job and after poking around a bit I just barely caught sight of something. Turned out to be the cache.

Plumbers Other Friend (Livermore, CA)

Plumbers Other Friend is a multi-cache that’s just about like a puzzle cache. After searching around the primary coordinates for the directions that were said to be there, I gave up and went to the owner’s designated backup website. There I learned that the directions at the primary coordinates are no longer available, and the web page must be used for directions to the final cache.

The final coordinates must be derived with some calculations, and while they are simple, I must confess that I made a number of errors. The errors were small so I was in the correct general area, but I was pretty sure where the GPSr was zeroing out was not a good hiding spot. Finally realized my error, and zeroed out right at the cache location and found (fairly quickly) one of the best in plain sight hides I’ve seen.

The cache was last logged as found on April 29 (more than 6 months ago). There was water in the cache and it was so hard to open that I almost gave up. It finally broke loose. Luckily the log was only damp.

Magic Trig (Livermore, CA)

Magic Trig is a puzzle cache (and I’ve got a string of puzzle cache finds going). The puzzle is to find at least 2 and up to 4 satellite micro-caches. Each satellite will contain the distance to the final cache location.

I could only find two of the satellites, and I only looked for three of them. According to the logs of other hunters, satellite 2 went missing because of construction. I couldn’t find the one out in Sycamore Trees Park, even though I looked a couple of times. Still, it is possible to solve this with just two found satellites.

The obvious solution to me is to use a 7.5’ paper map and a compass and draw circles corresponding to the distance. The intersection of the circles marks the location of the final cache. Unfortunately, I don’t have paper maps, and my mapping program doesn’t have the ability to draw calibrated circles.

The cache description suggests using the pythagorean theorem. I tried that for a while, but I have lost the math skills I used to have. I also tried using Excel Solver, but I had trouble at first getting it to converge, and then when it did say it found a solution, it was inconsistent.

In the end, I just used the GPSr to measure distance to each satellite. The circular error was fairly large because the GPSr doesn’t measure with very many significant digits. However, after about 30 minutes of looking and trying to get both distances correct I found the cache.

Comp I/O (Pleasanton, CA)

Comp I/O is a puzzle cache. The puzzle is very straightforward. Derive the coordinates from this:

001101000011001000101110001100000011000100110110

001101010011010000101110001101000011000100110110

Drove right up to the cache location and made the grab this morning. It’s easy when there aren’t a lot of people around, like my last visit on a Friday night. It was very clever how the title of the cache fit the location.

El Camino Viejo Cache (Tracy, CA)

El Camino Viejo is a puzzle cache. The puzzle is:

Solve the following multiplication puzzle:

... F O U N D

x ............ A

__________

= S K I L L

[Note: It turns out there are three possible answers so... I will insist that F may not equal zero. Insignificant numbers are never used in figuring math equations. Bill of Green Achers 12/20/02]

Where:

Like letters equal each other. (L=L)

No number is repeated. (N does not equal D)

There are 10 letters and so each must value 0-9.

Next, use the answer to get the real coordinates...

N37° 38.SFI

W121° 35.LUO

Well, I poked at figuring this out by hand, and luckily chose A correctly so I didn’t have to try too many solutions. Plotting the coordinates on a topo map zeroed it right in for me. Didn’t need a GPSr at all.

Juan Bautista de Anza (Tracy, CA)

I had visited Juan Bautista de Anza on November 5, but couldn’t get to the cache because there were numerous SBC workers right next to it. Today I found it easily. Here’s a picture of the historical marker. All of the land around belongs to the state for development of a future vehicle recreation area.

Still can’t find (Tracy, CA)

After a quick stop at the LLNL badge office, I headed east over Patterson Pass Road. I thought there were five caches I could check on without needing a GPSr.

The general location of Oh Grate! (N 37° 41.846 W 121° 35.355) is easy to find. However, the general area is fairly large. I looked around the grate but nothing was obvious. I’ll try again with the GPSr to narrow the search (I hope).

I went back to Trust Me and double checked where the cache owner said it should be. I had emailed him that I thought it was missing. I believe my double check verifies the cache is missing.

I also went back to Car vs Train (N 37° 42.848 W 121° 28.604) because I had an idea of something I had overlooked. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t find it. I still have this nagging feeling that things in the cache area have been moved around (I know weeds have been recently knocked down by a scraper) and the cache has been knocked loose and lost.

Need my fix

Oh no! I’m without a GPSr. I’ve given my eTrex to Dan (happy birthday Geodanimal). I’ve ordered an eTrex Venture from Amazon, but it won’t be here for a couple of days. What will I do? How will I survive?

Viewpoint (Livermore, CA)

Back on October 23 Karen and I made an exhaustive search of Viewpoint (N 37° 37.342 W 121° 46.288) and came up with a DNF. Turns out the cache was gone and the cache owner replaced it on November 1. This morning I made a quick trip (2 hours door to door) up and found it easily, without turning the GPSr on. I took some pictures. As you can see, it was cloudy and threatening rain (but never did).

Challenging place to hide a cache, huh? Luckily, its not hidden there, but the first time I searched this was within the error circle of the GPSr, and I’d looked everywhere else. It was kind of fun to hang my head over the edge to look in some of those holes.
 

Here’s a view of the VA hospital and the Wente golf course. The haze and overcast makes it a tough picture. It would be nice to have a picture on a clear day so the fall colors of the vineyards would show up brightly. Just off the picture to the right is Del Valle dam.

The rains have already turned the hills green. They’ll probably stay this way through April.

Look at the chain of lakes. Actually, those are the gravel pits, starting with southwest Livermore in the foreground and proceeding west to Shadow Cliffs Regional Park.

Pony Express (Pleasanton, CA)

Pony Express (N 37° 39.872 W 121° 53.966) is along the Arroyo walking path. I was able to park quite close, but unfortunately on the wrong side of the arroyo. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem, but after the recent rains there was quite a bit of water running in the arroyo. On the other side of the arroyo I couldn’t park nearly as close, but it was a fairly short walk and a quick find.

Picoides nuttallii (Pleasanton, CA)

What’s a Picoides nuttallii, you ask? It’s a Nutalls woodpecker, the common woodpecker around here with a red spot on its head. The coordinates of N 37° 39.300 W 121° 52.355 aren’t the location of the cache. Instead they put you at home plate on a baseball diamond. Then you have to look for a suitable home for the woodpecker within 50 paces. Not too many choices, so found it quickly.

Park 3701 (Pleasanton, CA)

Park 3701 (N 37° 39.454 W 121° 51.532) has been unnoticed by me, even I drive by it often. It contains a Vietnam war memorial (first soldier from Pleasanton to die in Vietnam). I let the GPSr settle down, slowly moved to zero point, and there it was in plain sight.

Pleasanton Porto (Pleasanton, CA)

Pleasanton Porto (N 37° 39.703 W 121° 51.129) is an interesting multi-stage cache that makes you learn a bit about port wine. To get the coordinates for the first stage I had to research a number of multiple choice questions about port. I did queries on the internet, and it was fairly simple. The derived coordinates took me to a park where I had to gather information from a couple of signs. This let me calculate the coordinates for stage 2 (the actual cache). I found stage 1 yesterday, but made a simple subtraction error and ended up being led to an obviously erroneous location. After double checking the math last night, and fixing the error, I went back today (and it seemed like the right place).

There were some mom’s and kids at the nearby playground and I was figuring out how to search without being conspicuous to them. Imagine my surprise when Annmarie and the kids walked over to greet me when I got out of the car. She was there with her friend Nina for a play date.

After we visited for a while, I walked over and made the find, which was easy since I used the hint.

Quarter Pounder (Pleasanton, CA)

Passarella iliaca has been bugging me. I’ve looked for it several times, and even though some logs indicate it was found and seen easily, I can’t find it. Today, I had an idea of something that I had overlooked, and thought it would be great to make this my 50th find. But, it was not to be.

I also looked for Pleasanton Porto (N 37° 39.703 W 121° 51.129). I finished the first stage in a light shower, getting all the information down. The second stage coordinates I derived didn’t make sense, however. Later, I discovered I had made a simple mistake, so maybe it won’t be too hard to finish this one.

On the way home, I stopped for Quarterback (N 37° 40.460 W 121° 52.493). I found this one easily in the daylight (had looked before at night). The difficulty is in making the grab, since there always seem to be people around.

LPFD #1 (Pleasanton, CA)

LPFD #1 (N 37° 39.980 W 121° 51.513) is close by a new fire station. Lots of people were quitting work and driving by, but I just sat at the picnic table while I took stock of things. I used the hint, and I’m glad I did. I think this was seriously hidden.

Pat’s Bench (Pleasanton, CA)

Pat’s Bench (N 37° 39.587 W 121° 51.956) is a two-stage multi-cache that I first attempted a couple of weeks ago. I couldn’t find the first stage. Today with a bit of experience it was easy to find stage 1. Stage 2 was close by, and close to Pat’s Bench, which is a very interesting and unique mosaic tile bench and I also found that one pretty quickly.

Hidden Meadow (Pleasanton, CA)

After eating at On the Border last night, Karen and I looked for Hidden Meadow (N 37° 41.839 W 121° 51.585) last night. It was hard to see, even with flashlights, and we had a dog walker at the other end of the park who probably thought we were up to no good. Today it was much easier, even though it was well hidden. Perhaps I was lucky.

Tri Valley Travel Bug Hotel (Dublin, CA)

Tri Valley Travel Bug Hotel (N 37° 42.193 W 121° 50.974) is just off 580 and just for travel bugs. Since I needed to get light_my_way_2, which I had picked up in Del Valle Regional Park, on its way, this was an appropriate find. I parked within a couple of feet, but thought the cache was cleverly placed.

Tooling Down Doolan (Livermore, CA)

I’ve lived here for over 35 years and I’ve never driven on Doolan Road. What a pleasant little valley. Tooling Down Doolan (N 37° 44.293 W 121° 50.293) is just a couple of miles from the freeway, but the transition into a little ranching valley is remarkable. I’m learning the search techniques, so I found this one quickly.

Sunday stroll (Livermore, CA)

Dan (geodanimal) and Janet wanted to go trekking this afternoon, so we headed out to Del Valle. On the way we stopped to try Joaquin’s Watering Hole (N 37° 39.560 W 121° 44.066). This is a two stage cache and I had already solved the coordinates for the second stage, but I let them also figure them out for a double check. It was just a short walk to the second stage coordinates. This was a well hidden micro that I had been unable to find on two previous visits. This time I was more inquisitive, exploring locations by touch as well as sight. This paid off, and I located the film canister.

Then we drove to the ridge before getting to the Del Valle entrance kiosk, and I let Dan and Janet find Updraft, which I had found on October 30. They found it easily. There is a great view from the peak, but it was fairly hazy today.

From basically the same parking area, we embarked on a loop trip that took us to two more caches. First we headed for The Old Tree (N 37° 35.286 W 121° 41.836) which, if you chose to drive in and pay the entrance fee, would be fairly close to the boat launch parking. We, however, took a fairly direct cross country route that included fire road, single track, cow path, and bushwhack (except there really weren’t any bushes to whack through). We dropped steeply down right on to this cache, and I wouldn’t want to try to climb back up. So, we walked out to the parking lot by the lake and then followed the lakeside trail to the next cache.

This was Blue Briefcase (N 37° 35.718 W 121° 42.878). This included a climb up from the lake to the Ridge Trail. These plastic briefcases sure don’t seal as well as an ammo can (like at The Old Tree). The contents were damp. By this time, a beautiful sunset is developing and we’re still a couple of miles from the car. The cache had a travel bug which I took (light_my_way_2). It was a small working flash light, so we could feel prepared for darkness. Actually, we made it just fine. The sunset had completely faded, but we had plenty of light.

Ptown quickie (Pleasanton, CA)

This morning I needed to go to Pleasanton to buy some things for Audree’s birthday party, so I left early enough to hunt for a couple of caches.

First, I went back to Home Run (N 37° 40.670 W 121° 53.784), which I had unsuccessfully searched for on the night of October 29. This is the first time I have collided with another geocacher, so I discreetly waited out of sight until he had signed the log and replaced the cache. (From the geocache.com logs, it must have been Wacka) This micro is well disguised, but I had a good idea that I had been looking in the wrong spots before, and sure enough, I spotted it fairly quickly.

Next, I went after Western Scrub Jay (N 37° 40.576 W 121° 53.980) which was just across the street. Not realizing that, I drove over, which I’m sure took twice as long as walking. This one was on the back side of a bunch of tennis courts, which were very active on a Saturday morning. Nevertheless, everybody on the courts is completely focused on the ball, so I could rummage around in the bushes without attracting attention. Surprisingly, this one took be a little while to find (although I did find a tennis ball rather quickly).

Freeway bugs, (Mountain House, CA)

On the way home from the valley, I stopped for Travel Bug Inn (N 37° 44.485 W 121° 35.149) which is conveniently located very near Highway 580. A lot of people seem to stop here for various reasons, but nobody seems to pay much attention to anyone else. Before I found the cache I found a Nissan hubcap in very good condition. It would have made a great addition to the hubcap collection I never started (thank goodness) many years ago. This cache only contains travel bugs.

Uh oh, these were hard, DNF (Tracy, CA)

Car vs Train (N 37° 42.848 W 121°) 28.604 is, rather obviously, near a railroad crossing. The coordinates of the only reasonable hiding spot were off by maybe 50 ft. I probably made some assumptions that were wrong. It appeared to me that the car had been recently pushed by a bulldozer, and I assumed after not easily finding the cache, that it had been destroyed or lost. Now, I’m not so sure, and I need to go back and check something. At least you can drive right up to it.

I couldn’t find Trust Me (N 37° 42.994 W 121° 31.676), but I looked for a long time. This one was along the California Aqueduct and was just a couple hundred yards from I5. I think I looked in every conceivable place, taking into account the hint that was given. I later emailed the cache owner (Bill of Green Achers) with a description of all the places I looked. Basically, he agreed that I had looked where it was hidden. Now, I suppose there is some slight possibility that I have still overlooked it (given my current record with micro-caches). Next time I go out that way, I’ll go look again, unless Bill beats me to it.

Choosing sides on the aqueducts (Tracy, CA)

From the Corral Hollow area I moved out into the valley around the Tracy Airport. There are two major canals (aqueducts) that run through this area, and the key was to figure out which side to be on.

Green Grizzly (N 37° 41.510 W 121° 27.557) is along the Delta Mendota canal. It seems like its in the middle of nowhere; no rocks, no trees. It was a pretty simple find, but not so simple to sign the log. The container is not watertight, and the contents were very wet. In fact, everything inside was kind of fuzzy from the mold. Finally got the log dry enough that I could write on it.

Timber Wolf (N 37° 41.778 W 121° 28.709) is claimed to be the same type of cache by the same cacher. But what I found was completely different. Afterwards, in checking the logs, it was evident that the original cache was destroyed in a controlled field burn, and someone substituted a new container hid in a different manner. And, as one of the previous log entries states, "Why did any one want to come to this spot for a cache?"

Chameleon (N 37° 42.798 W 121° 30.307) is another cache along the Delta Mendota canal. I guess I could have driven along the levee bank right up to the cache area, but I chose to walk because it was such a nice day. There is a reason this one is called Chameleon, but I have seen this type of hide once before. Didn’t take to long to scout it out.

Corral Hollow Hunt (Tracy, CA)

Friday afternoon was a good time to head east into the Central Valley. Corral Hollow is a little canyon that’s now dominated by Lawrence Livermore Lab’s Site 300 on the north and Carnegie State Vehicle Recreation Area. Around 1970 I used to ride my Kawasaki 250 Scrambler on the trails. I stopped riding before the state acquired the land.

Juan Bautista de Anza (N 37° 38.421 W 121° 35.625) was the first cache location I came to. I’ve driven by here uncounted times and never realized there was a historical marker. Unfortunately, there were a couple of SBC trucks and several workers right where I’m sure the cache is located, so I just looked at the monument and drove on.

4 X 4 Dad (N 37° 38.158 W 121° 33.843) was inside Carnegie SVRA. Although it was a very pleasant day for riding, there weren’t any riders around this location. I like ammo can caches. This one hadn’t been logged since late April.

Home Town Cache (N 37° 37.631 W 121° 31.40) was at the other end of the park. A motocross track was a few hundred feet away, so there were quite a few riders around, although they were busy keeping their eyes on the track. There was also a big work crew repairing a fence. I drove around a bit figuring out the most discreet approach to this one. Once that was done it was pretty straightforward. This also hadn’t been logged for 7 months.