Thomas the Train at Roaring Camp

Today we went with the kids to Roaring Camp for a excursion with Thomas the Tank Engine. Our ride was scheduled for just before lunch, so Karen and I drove over to Felton early to look for some geocaches.

First up was Felton Covered Bridge (8:31 AM). I know we’ve been here before, but it’s now a nice little park with a playground. The description indicated this one was tucked away out of sight, but I saw it from a particular angle. Perhaps it wasn’t replaced correctly.

Noticing that there were several caches along the creek in Mt. Hermon, we found a parking spot and hiked along the creek as we’ve done many times in the past. We first gave a shot at finding Refrain from Bouncing at the fun pedestrian suspension bridge, but it escaped us.

So we continued on up the creekside trail to Meditation Cache (9:16 AM), then Brother, can you spare some cache? (9:26 AM), Camp #4’s secret treasure cache (9:37 AM), and finally The Fairy Harp (10:01 AM). This last one gave me some trouble because of tree cover (or initially bad coords) and I had to use the hint to the letter. Then it was easy.

No GPS

I drove Karen to a Dr. appointment this morning and while I waited I walked over to Peet’s for coffee. Since it was a quiet morning, and I knew from previous visits the general location of Hot Eats Cool Treats (9:15 AM) I gave another look. Found it in an obvious spot.

Brunch event in San Jose

It has been extremely hot. High temp today of 108. In order to go to the Saturday Brunch and do some cache hunting in San Jose, I got up at 5 AM and left home at 6 AM. My first hunt was for Capitol Station (7:00 AM), an easy find on the edge of the VTA parking lot.

Then I was glad for Coffee Anyone #5 (7:16 AM) at a Starbucks. After I found this one, I grabbed a much appreciated cup of coffee.

After coffee, what’s next? Margaritaville (7:53 AM), of course. Another pretty easy and obvious find.

Started a little hike around some percolation ponds by finding Blossoming River Trail (8:06 AM). Easy with interesting camo. Followed this with Stairway to Fish Heaven (8:23 AM), which took me a while because I was interested in the nearby egret and the container was just hard to spot. Leaving the trail, I found Almaden Station (8:34 PM). It was starting to get hot in the sun, but it was a quick find. Then I looped over and hunted Here’s the Benchmark. This was a tough one. After quite a while I spotted it, and touched it, but couldn’t figure out how to retrieve the container. Not wanting to mess it up, I stopped and figured I’d ask the owner (Marky) at the brunch. On the way back to the car I got “Skid A Ma Rink” (9:17 AM), a camo’d ammo can, which took just a little bit of looking (and sweating).

Saturday Brunch and motogrrl geocoin distribution (9:30 AM) was interesting conversation with escooby, Joani, and British Invasion. I did get Marky to tell me how to retrieve the cache without damage, so after I left the brunch I went back and got Here’s the Benchmark (12:00 PM).

On the way home, on a whim, I stopped in Mission San Jose to look (again) for Assume Nothing #2 (12:49 PM). This time, I guess my assumptions were gone, because I spotted it in not too long a time.

Evening in Belmont

Not having much to do this evening, and thinking Pizza sounded good for dinner, I opted to drive over to a Peninsula un-event at Mountain Mikes in Belmont.

Just after getting off the bridge in Foster City I stopped to hunt for Don’t Feed the Ducks (5:21 PM), which was an easy find. Next I hunted Just a little wooden bridge, which should be easy, but I couldn’t see it.

At the un-event I chatted a bit with NavySparks, Sammydee, and bthomas. Then I walked to the closest cache, Pizza: NOT on the Menu (7:41 PM). Another quick find.

I drove up the hill to Patricia Wharton Park #2 (7:54 PM), a mini-park. Sat on the bench and figured out the cache container pretty quickly.

I found in R.P. (8:11 PM) easily enough, even though it was right in front of a busy Radio Shack, but had a hard time figuring out how to open the container. I thought it slid open, but it just pulls apart.

Do I Need A New CD or DVD? (8:36 PM) was easy enough to find, but after I had retrieved it the place seemed to get busier and I had a hard time replacing it unobtrusively.

The last of the evening was It’s Easy To Be Organized... (8:48 PM) in a rather empty parking lot.

Home via 395

Before leaving Reno for the drive home, we stopped for Haunted Cache: the Dr. is Mad! (8:22 AM). This was obviously at a light pole, but it was well hidden. Another one close by was The Woman with the Bowl (8:40 AM) at a small man-made lake. This one took a little bit of looking.

As we drove south into the Washoe Valley, we made a quick find at SHM#94 Winter’s Ranch (10:26 AM). Close by was Find it, Fix it (10:37 AM) which required a little hike and poking around in some brush.

We stopped and looked around a bit at SHM#166 Bowers (10:52 AM), a park at the Bowers Mansion. Followed that with another quick drive-up at SHM#114 Franktown (11:06 AM).

The final hunt of the day was at Shot Rock (2:41 PM) at a view point on highway 88. This took me a little while.

Lake Genevieve hike

Since hotel prices in the Tahoe were so high on the weekend, we moved to Reno to spend Friday night. On the way we went for a long hike starting at Meek’s Bay up to Lake Genevieve (9 miles round trip).

Just before crossing into the Desolation Wilderness, I hunted YOU LIED (10:35 AM). This was a near disaster as I went for the coordinates without carefully reading the description (which told exactly where the cache was hidden). On the way back from a fruitless search, I tripped in a bunch of downed tree limbs and fell flat. Hurt pretty bad for a bit. Scratched up my right leg badly, and significant bruising on my left side. After I recovered, I easily found the cache.

On the way back from Lake Genevieve I looked for Majestic Giant, but the coordinates weren’t good, and there were several large trees in the area. I couldn’t find it, and besides I was hot, tired, and being sucked on by hungry mosquitos.

After dinner in Reno, I looked for SHM #227 Mansion? (8:21 PM) while Karen did a little shopping. This turned out to be a pretty easy find at the Reno Convention Center.

Hike at Big Meadow

Up highway 89 to the south, the Tahoe Rim Trail crosses the road. We started a hike there, went through Big Meadow and then to Dardanelle Lake. It’s a lovely little granite enclosed lake. BPC Wilderness Trip Cache is located here, but we couldn’t find it. The coords don’t match the hint, but more importantly, the previous logs indicate it was easy to find and see using the description. We couldn’t find it.

After finishing this hike, we drove on over Luther Pass and stopped at the Walker River in Hope Valley to find Gone Fish’n (2:54 PM). Close by was Hope Valley (3:11 PM), which I hoofed up the little hill to find while Karen read in the shade of a tree (it was pretty warm).

After dinner we walked a little bit down by the lake and got the virtual Lakeview For You (7:07 PM) and manram (7:19 PM), which was pretty easy to spot, but more difficult to retrieve because of other people around.

Off to Tahoe via Highway 88

With not much going on at work we headed for Lake Tahoe for three days. We always enjoy a hike at Wood’s Lake (near the summit of Carson Pass) so we headed up highway 88. We were just a couple of weeks early for what looks to be a fabulous wildflower display. Lake Winnemucca still had ice in it. We hiked on up to Round Top Lake, but had to cross a few easy snow fields to do it.

After returning to Wood’s Lake, we hunted CH’s Birthday Surprise. Wasn’t too hard to find and it inflated my terrain difficulty cache numbers. It’s rated a 5, but it’s more like a 3 rating.

Pleasanton on a HOT day

I had the pickup worked on yesterday, and the intermittent misfire was fixed by replacing a faulty spark plug. So... I ventured out to Pleasanton.

It was also my first day of using the routing functions with the Garmin 60csx. First up was IHT Chugs into Pleasanton (1:00 PM), which was just off Valley and the new Iron Horse Trail.

Marky hid Nielsen Nano (1:30 PM) in a park that was deserted except for 3 guys practicing fly casting.

I looked for IHT Chugs #2, but couldn’t find it. Somebody else did get FTF on it today however. If it’s in the thick foliage, it’s as bad as an ivy hide.

California Towhee (2:36 PM) is a multi that starts in downtown. I easily gathered the info and then carefully did the math. I wasn’t sure about the location, but the cache was there.

Found Kids Rule-North (2:51 PM), an ammo can in a nice park. I approached via a back entrance, and an observant neighbor wasn’t sure why I left and then rather quickly came back.

For the final cache today, I again looked for RTH @ BMX (3:33 PM). Stage 2 was really hard to find, but finally I got it. Stage 2 had just been replaced and it didn’t take much figuring to see that there was an obvious error. I knew the final couldn’t be more than a few hundred feet away and the coords put it over a mile away. So, I tried to brute force find it, and did. I must have almost stood on top of it last time I searched.

All Wet

Today I completed the solution to All Wet (6:45 PM). I found this puzzle difficult because of the multi-part nature of it. I’d find a solution to one part, only to find that a later part didn’t work. Then I realized there were multiple solutions to one of the parts. After some trial and error, all the pieces fit. Finding the cache was pretty easy (in fact, I had already surmised the general location just from the puzzle starting conditions). The coordinates were right on, and I found it almost immediately.

Martinez with Dan

Dan and I went to Martinez today and ended with a higher precentage of DNFs than we normally have.

The 680 freeway jammed up in Concord, so we exited to take surface streets into Martinez. Dan noted that TOY WORLD (1:42 PM) was right on our way, so we stopped to get it.

We checked out a couple of others on the way, but one was a multi that required gathering info from 8 different things in a park (we didn’t want to take the time) and the other had some obscure entrance which we couldn’t find quickly.

As we were driving by the Shell refinery in Martinez, Dan noticed Churchill 1702 (2:20 PM) was nearby. Dan found this micro. It was full of water and the log was almost mush. Must have been the landscape irrigation causing the problem.

Special Delivery (2:36 PM) was clearly a nano on a mail box. We looked and felt all over that thing. Dan finally found it.

Traveling Forever (2:55 PM) was a simple multi at the old Martinez train station (the one we used for embarking on our long bike tour starting in Salt Lake City). Dan found this one too.

When we looked for Bridge the Gap (3:39 PM), we were fairly certain of the general location on the bridge where it was, but we didn’t immediately find it. Again, Dan’s persistence paid off.

We hiked along the shoreline trail to get Playground Madness #4 (4:14 PM). We think the coordinates were a bit off and had us looking under the wrong tree. Finally used the hint and got it.

We didn’t know that Joe Dimaggio grew up in Martinez, but Joltin Joe (4:24 PM) multi-cache clued us in on that. I found the cache quickly.

Shaken, Not Stirred (4:45 PM) is a virtual at a small monument that claims the martini was created in Martinez. Hmmm... I’m not buyin’ it.