Pacific Grove

Yesterday we came to Asilomar in Pacific Grove to attend a meeting. It was sprinkling in the late afternoon, but I looked for Peek of the Course anyway. Got soaked from tall grass and wet bushes, and gave up quickly.

Today was very nice, with blue skies. Had time for a walk before breakfast so we went for Walk the Plank! Found this one at 7:06 AM and this was my 300th find.

On the way back we grabbed Peek of the Course at 7:24 AM, which seemed simple when not raining.

Had some free time in the afternoon, so we walked along the beach trail. Karen wasn’t very interested in caching, so if I couldn’t spot the cache right off, we just moved on. There were a couple that fell into this category.

Sunset Rocks is a virtual, so was a simple find at 2:56 PM. Waves and Change Too! was harder and I used the hint, but couldn’t figure it out. Karen spotted the hint right away. This cache is another rusted out Altoids tin, and after I signed the log at 3:15 PM I couldn’t get the lid to stay on. Since there was a fat wad of logs, I pulled a number of old ones out. I’ll see if the cache owner wants them mailed to him.

Finally, at 3:56 PM I found Here It Is, Deer! in a nicely manicured cemetery.

A Sunday Stroll

Dan caught me just after the first church service ended and asked if I wanted to walk over and grab a new cache--Sticks-n-Stones (And Broken Bones). Of course! So we walked down the Arroyo Mocho creek path and out into the weeds. I went just a slightly different path than Dan and found it immediately. This was my first FTF (First To Find). Now the next find gets me to 0.3K.

Ready for 300

This afternoon I went back to verify the info I had gotten for stage 1 of Dog Years. I had made a mistake in one digit. Off to stage 2, which I found this time. Not sure the hint helped though. Stage three was pretty easy to find, too. I didn’t find stage 4 because it was right in the middle of playground equipment and a lot of kids and parents were out today.

On the way to one of the stages, I stopped and grabbed A Matter of "Defence". This is a walkup.

Later in the afternoon I hooked up with Dan at Annealed Ovum. All three of us looked for quite a while. Janet finally found it.

From there we went to Growl, but even though I knew the fairly precise location, we got a little frustrated because we couldn’t find it. Dan finally pulled on something and it turned out to be the cache. Just as Dan found it, the neighbor across the street came out to see what we were doing (we were right in front of the living room window). We explained geocaching and he was cool with it.

Since Dan had asked David Y to run a program on his PC to crack The Big Picture, he had the coordinates, and a clue. It was a quick find, accomplished even with several muggles around.

Finally, we all went out to Frick N’ End, where this time I walked right up and saw it. I’m sure it was more visible than it had been in the past.

Through the Alamo

Karen had an eye doctor appointment this morniing at Park Shadelands in Walnut Creek, so while she was doing that I grabbed a cache. Sacramento Northern Railroad #4 -- Spreckels was nearby, and after I found a place to park it was a quick find.

On the way home, we stopped in Pleasanton to pick up Just Your Average (Puzzle) Cache, which I solved last night. It was an easy find. The puzzle had me buffaloed for a while. I couldn’t figure out the self-referential hint. Last night it clicked, and I was able to derive a reasonable looking set of coordinates, which turned out to be right.

At lunch-time I debated about going up Pleasanton Ridge, but instead opted for the Tassajara Valley route to Danville and Alamo. The first cache on the way was One-Room School. The school is fixed up better than I last saw it. Don’t know if it was the building and trees or low battery, but I had to search a bit because the GPSr was bouncing around. Found it at 12:48 PM.

Continuing down Camino Tassajara, I stopped at the nice park and bushwhacked up the hill through the grass and weeds to Ho Ho Huh?. I found this one in the first place I looked at 1:26 PM.

I found the right turn off from Diablo Road to get into a subdivision back in a canyon. There are two caches there--the first one I found was The Pits at 2:09 PM. The pits are horseshoe pits. A couple of wild turkeys ran away as I descended to this one. I found this one right away too. The second was Wild Turkey, which I found at 2:25 PM. This is an ammo can and it’s easy to find, if not so easy to get to.

Finally I wound back around to Stone Valley Road and just west of Monte Vista High School found Oak Creek Park, the home of The 2 Litl Ps MISadventure Atonement. On the way to the cache I stopped to grab a picture of the bronze statue, which is sort of pointing the way to the cache. This was also a quick find at 2:52 PM. Traffic sure does get bad when school is over.

Just a couple today

I tried looking for Annealed Ovum (again--had a try yesterday), but couldn’t find it. However, I scored a Steel Wheels locationless cache that was right nearby. Very interesting to find an old tractor like this in someone’s backyard.

     

So after this, I wandered over to another new fizzymagic hide--Growl. There were two ladies at the cache site, so I drove past a block and parked, watching in the rear view mirror. I finally decided they must be geocaching, so I approached and asked. After 30 seconds of awkwardness while they attempted to disguise their intent from a possible muggle, they revealed they were hunting the cache (well, at least one of them was). Turns out it was SARCRZY. As we were talking, she called a help-line, walked over and made the find. She had kind of figured the hide out, but even so, it is very well hidden. After she signed the log, she handed it to me. I signed it, but I’m still thinking about it. I guess I’ll log it. It’s not much different than caching with Dan and logging a find when he finds it (except, in this case, I had no time to make any effort at searching).

A little later in the day, I went back to Pleasanton for another try at Mars Cope Rift. This time I walked right up and made the find. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. Maybe because it was sprinkling before, I was in too much of a hurry.

With that success, I decided to give another shot at California Quail. Again, I found it in short order. In this case, I know the rain last time I looked discouraged me from a complete search.

Finally, I found the first leg of Dog Years. Boy, did I find it hard to read the coordinates, but I think I got them right. Computing where the second cache should be, I get a very reasonable location. I’ll finish it another time--it was getting late in the day.

President’s Birthday--Monday

It rained a lot during the night, but the morning was better. We packed up, cleaned the house, and headed out towards Cambria for some cache hunting on the way home.

We stopped In Harmony. Looked for a while, used the hint, and looked some more. I think we looked in every place that met the conditions of the hint, but we didn’t find it.

In Cambria, we drove out to look for A Lamp unto my feet. I guess the title should have been enough for us, but we used the hint and found it right off at 10:48 AM.

Green Pastures is at a pull out along Highway 1 right in Cambria. It’s down off the road a bit. It was really soggy, with lots of ankle deep water around. I finally found it 11:19 AM.

Captain Who? aka Tinkerpaws Place is just up the hill from main street in Cambria. You can’t help but find the cache from the description, as long as you don’t get too engrossed in marveling at the peculiar house up here on Nitt Witt Ridge. I found it at 11:47 AM.

There are other Cambria caches, but we were running out of time, so after a stop at the French Bakery, we headed east on Highway 46. The first cache along this road that we stopped for was Jewel of the Coast. An easy find at 12:15 PM with a great view of Morro Bay and the sea shore.

Just a short ways away was EM - Too. Janet just walked up and found this one at 12:23 PM.

After another short drive, Dan quickly found John’s Enigma at 12:32 PM.

Turned off on the narrow road to Cayucos (Old Creek Road) to look for EM - Four. We had to park in a wide spot a little ways away. At the cache location, the road is narrow with no shoulders. Tree cover gave the GPSr fits. We looked for quite a while until Janet found it at 12:50 PM in plain sight on the ground about 2 feet inside the fence. We replaced it elsewhere.

Then we took York Mountain Road and found (New) York Mountain Ride at 1:04 PM. This was a drive up cache.

Our final cache along Highway 46 (and the last for the day) was Coyote Cliff. It was beginning to sprinkle, and this one was up an embankment. Dan ran up and his GPSr led him past the cache. I came up behind and walked right to it at 1:15 PM.

President’s Birthday--Sunday

The weather was better today. No rain until late in the afternoon. We started the day finding Anchors Away! at 10:03 AM. Karen found it.

Driving past the power plant toward Morro Rock, we found Cache at the Dunes at 10:15 AM. It was down a dirt road I’ve never driven on before. Dan made the find just a little ways off the road.

Treasure in the Trees is in Morro Bay State Park, but in a part of it that I didn’t know existed. We hiked a ways on a nice trail and then had to hunt a little bit to find it. The cache was hidden in poison oak, which is one of the reasons we didn’t see it right away. We relocated it about 3 ft away in a little bit clearer spot (from poison oak that is). It may not be enough distance. This will likely be a banner year for poison oak. Dan made the find at 10:56 AM.

We drove through the golf course to another part of the park, up on Black Mountain. We hunted a long time for Beware of Low-Flying Golf Carts. We used the hint, but the hint didn’t seem to correspond to where our coordinates pointed. We searched in both places. Of course, there was lots of poison oak popping out, and since it’s still kind of hard to spot, I was reluctant to just grab vegetation to look. Finally, called it quits.

Left there and went to the wildlife museum to look for Lone Pine. Janet found this at 12:11 PM.

Then we did quite a hike to look for Baseball Bear Rides the Turtle. What a fiasco. After walking a ways, Dan read the logs and noticed that a log entry gave completely different coordinates. In fact, we discovered that the directions are at odds with the given coordinates. We followed the directions, which did seem to get us to the top of Turtle Rock. But once there, we could not find the cache, even using the hint. And there was a lot more poison oak.

Bear Behind seemed like it would be easier; at least it was a short walk. There is a large bear statue right at the entrance to Los Osos. Dan found the cache close by the statue at 2:08 PM.

Next we went to Stumped on Bayside Boardwalk. This was right in front of lots of people at the coffee place, but no one seemed to be paying attention. We just let Dan get down on the boardwalk and look. Took a bit, but he finally found it at 2:27 PM.

Mama Turtle’s Terrapin Station was just a short drive away. We had to search a bit. I think our coordinates were off by about 30 ft. Dan found it at 2:45 PM.

The last one we found this day was Morro View, up high on the way to Montana de Oro state park. I found it easily at 3:26 PM. By this time it was starting to rain, we were hungry and tired, so we decided our hunting was done.

President’s Birthday--Saturday

It’s been a rainy day, especially this morning. We started the day with Mud Pie--the only multi-cache in the Cayucos area. The first stage is out on the end of the pier, where we had to find a sign (the only sign, in fact) and convert the first two letters to numbers. Applying the given formulas we derived the coordinates for the second stage. The second stage took us to a building, where we had to get a 4 digit number from the sign. The final stage took us on a short, muddy hike to a very easy find at 10:25 AM.

Since we were in the general area, we next went looking for Hole Hunt. Following the cache directions for parking, we ended up on the wrong side of a raging little stream and had to backtrack, move the car a little bit, and hike again. This was an interesting location among some rocks that had native American grinding holes in the rocks. We found this one at 10:54 AM. Poppys and Lupines were appearing, and in spots the grass was knee high. And it was sprinkling.

Coming back into Cayucos, we stopped for What’s Big, Old, and Yellow? The answer is the gift shop out where Dad and I used to go out fishing (Ruth’s Landing--gone long ago and built up with houses). I found this one at 11:13 AM by touch and pushed it enough that Karen saw it.

We came back to the house in Cayucos for lunch (and to dry out a bit). At a break in the rain we called Mark to make sure he could get to the web cam site so we could log Cayucos Cam. By the time we’d done that, and got boots on, it started to rain again. Finally, we got a break in the rain and walked down to the Shore Line Inn, called Mark, and he captured our pictures. We got this one accomplished at 12:47 PM.

We drove to one of the beach access trails and walked a ways on the beach to Now and Zen. This is on a big rock that can be reached during low tide. Luckily, we were at low tide. Dan scrambled up on the rock to make the find at 1:03 PM.

We drove up a dead end road (I’ve always wondered what was up there) to find Sea View. We walked the last part because the road was pretty messed up from the heavy rains. Easy find at 1:23 PM.

Drove up the road towards Whale Rock Resevoir. First we got High Windy Highway at 1:46 PM. Then, driving on a little farther, we got Whales Rock!, which I found at 2:23 PM. On the way back we had a little confusion about how to find the access road to Top O’ The World, but finally got it figured out. Drove up a steep, 1-lane dirt road. Karen found this one at 2:24 PM.

After we got back on Highway 1 and headed toward Morro Bay we made a short detour and found Old Hwy. 1 at 2:40 PM. Dan made the find in a bunch of old concrete blocks.

Karen wanted to get Cowboy Cookies (yummy chocolate chip) in San Luis Obispo. The bakery is just half a block from the old mission, and Moon Tree is in the park area around the mission. The moon tree (a redwood) is called this because the seed it germinated from traveled to the moon and back on an Apollo mission. I found the cache at 3:35 PM.

We walked to the movie theater (and Starbucks and Barnes and Noble) and looked for A Reel Good Time. We had a good idea of where it would be hidden but the GPSr was thrown off by the high buildings. After I let it settle I finally found the right place and made the find at 4:00 PM.

We walked a couple more blocks and I found Seven Sisters at 4:14 PM.

As we drove out to Madonna Road to go to Los Osos, we detoured just a bit to a cemetery and found Big Bill, which is a large cannon commemorating civil war veterans buried in San Luis Obispo cemeteries. Dan made the find at 4:36 PM. Then we detoured into a large shopping center and grabbed U GOTTS 2B SNEAKY at 4:50 PM.

Before going for dinner at The Hofbrau in Morro Bay, we hiked out to Treasure in the Oaks. Tree cover made this one a little harder to find, but I grabbed it at 5:23 PM.

So, we totaled 16 finds today, some of the time dripping wet.

Traveling to Cayucos

For President’s weekend, we went with Dan and Janet to Cayucos, so we traveled south on Highway 101. We needed to take a break just before Paso Robles, so we stopped at the rest stop near Camp Roberts. When I turned on the GPSr, it indicated a cache (Binary Blues) within 0.1 mile, so we all grabbed flashlights and headed off into the night. Our GPSrs didn’t settle right away so we were searching under the wrong bush. When my GPSr settled down, I found it right away. This was number 250 for me.

Pole-R-Bear

Saw Pole-R-Bear pop up as new this morning, but couldn’t go because I was expecting a contractor. Turns out he didn’t show up until much later so I would have had time to go and get back. Probably doesn’t matter--I expect fizzymagic would have still be there first. I found it at 1:21 PM. This was the first time I’ve seen the geocaching.com micro container (I was given one as a Christmas present) used.

Castro Valley

My first stop of the day was Take a Picture to verify that I had in fact signed the log (I did). I realized today that I had never logged it (found it on January 29, 2005).

Took Cull Canyon Road, and immediately stopped at Bay Trees Park. Found The Balls of Bay Trees Park fairly quickly.

At the other end of this park I found CITO at Bay Trees Park. The trail is very tree covered, so the GPSr wasn’t very accurate when I arrived and it was pointing into an area where I really didn’t want to go. After looking around for quite a bit, I spied the cache. Then I took the GPSr out into the open, let it acquire all the satellites, and it pointed to the right area.

From here, I drove farther up the canyon to Cull Canyon Regional Park. I hiked to several caches from here. The first was Clunky Coplanar #38. I had to hike up the hill to get access to the right trail (walked up Columbia). I missed the trail and got onto Center Street, but finally got access from there. Probably walked a bit more than necessary. Had to look and poke around for this one for a while. I poured the water out of the container. The log was only damp.

As I backtracked toward the parking lot I came to Clunky Coplanar #17. This one actually didn’t take too long to find. This log was soaked.

Then I headed north to Cull Tech. The trail was slippery in spots, but the real killer was the last 200 ft bushwhacking up a very slippery, steep slope. Once I got up, I found the ammo can cache in short order. This hillside collects golf balls--it’s littered with them. I thought the climb was worth it just to get these pictures of colorful fungi.

I hiked up farther north, trying for Clunky Coplanar #43. Alas, I was on the wrong side of the creek, and with the rains I didn’t see how to cross the creek. So I went back to the parking lot, and drove up Cull Canyon to this location. I had to search here for quite a while, even though the description says the cache is a magnetic key holder.

As I was driving back I thought I could get on Center Street by taking Columbia. Well, I didn’t. But, I got close enough to Iridomyrmex humilis to go look for it. Looked in 4 or 5 places before I found it.

I also looked for Clunky Coplanar #59, but the approach was through a meadow that is now a marsh. Spent quite a bit of time checking on Juan Pickens (revived). I have an idea, but it will have to wait for another time.

When I got back to Livermore I stopped and made a quick grab of Fast Food VI.

Some puzzles n’stuff

Last night I had worked on a puzzle or two, so this afternoon I headed to Pleasanton to try for them, and some other new ones that have popped up recently.

Mars Cope Rift has had me stumped. I could easily figure out some of the coordinate digits, but I didn’t know how to get them all. Recently posted hints clued me in on the method. I’m pretty sure the coordinates I have now are correct. When I got to the site, it seemed like a rift to me, but I didn’t find the cache. As I was leaving this area it began to rain.

Fuzzy Friends #2 was next on my list and it’s just down the street from where Dan works. The animal shelter was not open today, but there were cars in the parking lot and lights on inside. The cache is rather cleverly camouflaged, and just as I had taken it apart and gotten the log out two women arrived and went inside. I’m sure they wondered why I was standing in the rain reading their bulletin board.

Then I went looking for n2books2 new cache California Quail. By this time it was sprinkling fairly good. I poked around for quite a while and didn’t find it. Not sure I get along with this terrain and kind of hide.

I was eager to get to Red, Blue, and Green, which is a regular cache that has a geometric puzzle in it. Solve the puzzle (in two different ways) and send Jimswim the pictures and he sends back coordinates to two more caches. By copying the picture of the Green puzzle solution from the cache page and cutting out the puzzle pieces, I was able to solve both Red and Blue puzzles at home. I found the cache in short order, took it to the truck out of the rain and took the required pictures.

Stopped by Peoplesoft (oops, I mean Oracle) to grab LECBIH. Real quick.

Next I went to Tassajara Creek park to get a cache that’s been out of commission for quite a while. Relatively quick to find, but got sprinkled with more rain.

Midweek

Midweek is just down the street--closest cache to home. In my opinion, it’s a very poor ivy hide, maybe because it frustrated me so. Yesterday it was found, so Dan and I decided to give it another shot. It’s just tossed in the ivy close to a backyard fence with ferocious sounding dogs that go berzerk when they hear anyone. Dan made the find. I’m just glad it’s off my radar screen.

Mostly Manteca

This week I’ve been fighting a cold, but today I felt reasonable enough to get outside, so I headed east. As I was heading up the Altamont, I realized fizzymagic’s Signs and Wonders was on the way. Went off on Grant Line Road and this was a drive up at 11:37 AM. But, this is the smallest cache I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t hard to find, but it was so small it took a while to open it, get the log out, sign the log, and then reassemble it. As part of the cache log, I needed to upload a wacky road sign.

The bridge is very close to 280. In fact, you can see it from the west bound lanes, but getting there... well, that’s another story. Good thing I was driving the Honda today. The navigation system maps came in handy. Once at the bridge (a railroad overcrossing), I had to hunt a bit, but by finally ruling out where it couldn’t be, I narrowed it down and found it at 12:53 PM.

Jaywalk was just off Yosemite Avenue on the way into Manteca. It’s a multi-cache that spans a road (hence jaywalk). I thought the coordinates for the first stage were off just a little, but the hiding place seemed obvious. The final stage was also a quick find at 1:24 PM.

MANNNNN-Teca is an old Ron Streeter cache. It hasn’t been logged since June 26, 2004. The cache is hidden along the Tidewater Bikeway. It was actually a quick find at 2:46 PM.

A couple of miles away on the same bikeway is Manteca Bike Trail. Found this one at 2:46 PM.

Had dinner tonight at Chili’s, and on the way home thought I’d stop and see if I could find Prospero’s Prolific Programming Primates. I had solved this puzzle cache a few days ago, but the couple of times I checked the location it was too busy with muggles (and a guard Chihuahua). I didn’t have the GPSr, but managed to find it almost immediately (without a flashlight). What luck. Mission accomplished at 7:15 PM.

More Las Trampas

Karen and I spent an afternoon hiking and caching in Las Trampas. I had initially planned on going to the Devil’s Hole area for 6 caches, but it seemed a bit far given when we were starting. So we took the Chamise Trail to start and ended up walking 4.8 miles with some pretty rugged climbs.

Our first one was Primarily Pens, Pins, and a Penn, found at 2:09 PM. The GPSr wasn’t real accurate, but I chose the most likely looking spot, and there it was.

We continued on up to the Las Trampas Ridge trail and hiked over to Three Peaks--Vail Peak, which we found at 3:06 PM. This was a pretty brushy area, with some poison oak in spots.

Then we took the Corduroy Hills trail to Three Peaks--Eagle Peak. This trail is a scramble, and reminds me of a Mt. Washington, NH trail (except this one was a lot shorter). Once we got there, finding the cache was easy at 3:27 PM.

We backtracked to the Las Trampas Ridge trail and headed up north toward Las Trampas Peak. The final location of It’s Over Rated is up that way. Made that find at 4:06 PM.

Historic Crossroads Murals

I finally took the time to stop and look at these murals in Dublin that I often drive by. Dublin Blvd. is very busy and you can’t sneak a look while driving by. This is a virtual cache, and there are 9 questions to answer. There are problems with a couple of the questions (in my opinion). I’ve listed my answers in the spoilers.