Dorris Lake

Today we did some hiking to Dorris Lake, had lunch there, and let the girls play for a while. On the way back into town we hunted down All points bulletin (3:21 PM).

All week we had been passing a nifty little playground the kids would enjoy and saving the two nearby caches so Cortnie could help us find them. Tonight after dinner, we drove over and the kids had a ball playing on the structures and stuff. Finally I handed Cortnie the GPS and told her to follow the arrow. She navigated easily enough to the location, but the cache was a bit high for her. We found Playground at 6:45 PM. Next door was a senior citizen center with a cache hidden in some nearby trees. Again Cortnie took us there, and with a little coaching she zeroed in on the cache, so we bagged Senior Moment at 7:00 PM.

Karen rode back to the house with Mark and Annmarie while Dan, Janet, and I used the rest of the daylight to find some more. We found the following.

B.S.P.S. #8 - Kiwanis II (7:35 PM)

Momma’s Packrat I (7:41 PM)

Aspen Cove (7:56 PM)

Bend, while the rest go to Sisters

Some of the family wanted to go to Sisters today, and then go swimming, so Dan, Janet, and I split off and hunted caches in Bend.

Big Eddy’s Nightmare--Momma Micro Is Pregnant (9:44 AM). I thought this one was on Highway 20 and guessed it was inside a building from the description, but it wasn’t. It was big and easy to find and was the closest cache to the house.

B.S.P.S. #1 Providence (9:57 AM). This one is just a couple of blocks from Nostrada, but we never did make a connection with him. Perhaps it was just an inconvenient time in his schedule.

B.S.P.S. #2 Mountain View (10:23 AM). We didn’t get the math to quite work out on this one, but since we had a bearing that made sense, we just checked in the most obvious spots and found the cache.

Dance (10:37 AM) is a virtual that took us inside the hospital to a beautiful wood sculpture.

Dusty Trails & Dusty Trails2 (11:10 AM). We had to hunt for the first stage because the coords were about 30 ft off. Second stage was easy.

Beginning Larkspur Trail (11:45 AM) was quick. Dan found it with a dripping wet log.

Wagons Ho! Elliott trail of 1853 (11:51 AM)

Don’t Want No Stinkin’ Puddin’ (12:08 PM)

Development (12:21 PM)

Along the trail (12:31 PM)

Urban Arbor (1:19 PM). I remember looking for this one last year with no luck. Finally found it this time in an area that I’m sure I must have looked before.

Lunch with a lone juniper (1:59 PM). We started looking around the old Mill district and found this one.

Shelter from the storm (2:14 PM). Dan scrambled up to retrieve this one.

Farewell Bend (2:21 PM). Under the bridge and blends in well.

Smith Rock

Today we hiked at Smith Rock. The trail we chose was steep and challenging, especially for Cortnie, but she did great. We had some beautiful photography stops and found one cache at the foot of Monkey Face, a 400 foot high spire of rock. We found The AAC Rescue Cache Cache at 3:30 PM.

Around Lava Butte

We all went to the Lava Butte area of Newberry National Volcanic Monument today. The first thing we did was hike the long Lava River Cave and get the info for Lava River Cave Earthcache (12:54 PM). The girls did real good, although Cortnie got cold and wanted to turn back. I gave her my light jacket, so I made more than half the hike in a t-shirt (it was about 40 degrees in the cave).

Next, we went across the street and got Lava Bute Breach Earthcache (2:10 PM). This involved a hike out across a lava flow and it was pretty warm. When we finished this hike, Mark and Annmarie took the girls back to the house (Karen went with them) and Dan, Janet, and I hurried up to the top of Lava Butte (we had a 30 minute window, and only about 20 minutes were left) to get Lava Butte Summit Earthcache (2:41 PM). We hike the summit loop trail and gathered the necessary information.

We then began navigating the dirt roads on the east side of hiway 97 and picked up Frozen Fire (3:02 PM) which required a little hike to get to. We had to hunt around for a while on the next one, This will "Crack" you up (3:24 PM). This is in the immediate vicinity of a deep lava crack. We didn’t take the time to go into the crack.

Next we took a .3 mile hike to Skwirl Hunt (3:52 PM) that involved finding a way across a wide lava crack. Also bushwhacked through a bunch of scratchy manzanita, but the cache was easy to spot.

On the way back into town, we stopped to hunt L.S.U.-Cheap Seats (4:40 PM) which Karen and I hadn’t been able to spot last year.

Klamath Falls to Bend

We left Klamath Falls about 9:30 AM, but stopped just a little ways north for a cluster of three caches. I’m glad we did--they were up a little dirt road on a very steep hillside with a tremendous view of Klamath Lake. We found Halfway Up (9:45 AM), Over Upper Klamath (10:04 AM), and Rocky Hideout (10:22 AM).

Later we stopped for a drive up find, Do You Feel Lucky (10:45 AM) at an Indian Casino. At Williamson State Park we walked around the outdoor Logging Museum and found TIMBERRR!!!--Oregon History Lesson #17 (11:10 AM). On the upper reaches of the Williamson River, we found Kirky (11:52 AM). The river was dry.

At a northbound rest stop we found North 97 (12:30 PM), then continued on to La Pine and found Gone But Still In Our Hearts (1:55 PM) near the La Pine cemetery. A little farther we hunted down Run Chipmunk, Run! (2:14 PM) in a motorcycle/atv area (dirt road access). For some reason, no one else was around.

Also on dirt roads, and with a bit of a walk, we found Evergreen (2:43 PM), then got RAWS Lava Butte (3:11 PM). This was a nice little hike up a hill to an automated weather station.

Starting on the way to Bend

Dan, Janet, Karen, and I started our one week vacation to Bend, OR and we decided to leave today (check-in to our rental is tomorrow), make a more leisurely drive, and break up the trip with some geocaching. Dan had gathered about 300 caches along the route going through Sacramento. Since I wanted to go 680, 80, and 505, I gathered a few along that route.

We left at 9:00 AM and made our first geocaching stop in Benecia close to where the mothball fleet is anchored. Cache the Caboose (10:14 AM) was a micro hidden under a caboose on display in an industrial area. Just down the road hidden in some bushes was Mothball Fleet (10:19 AM). The view from this cache was about as close as one can get to the mothball fleet from land. Finally, before getting back on the freeway, we found Mothball Vista Vista (10:29 AM). This one required a short, steep uphill climb which was easy enough, but a bit more challenging on the way down (slip ’n slide).

We drove along the frontage road along the marsh area and found MarshView (10:41 AM), then proceeded on to find Decisions...Decisions (10:48 AM).

When we got to Vacaville, we found Double Helix (11:16 AM), a simple puzzle I had solved and then told Dan to give it a try. While we were in the area, we found A lonely green bench (11:25 AM) and Deadline USA (11:34 AM).

Back on the freeway, we drove to a Dunnigan rest stop, found Dunnigan, Again (12:11 PM) and had lunch.

We stopped in Redding looking for the Sundial Bridge. Unfortunately, I had failed to load any caches for that area. But we found Big Bear and the House of Terror (2:41 PM). We did find the Sundial Bridge and walked over it--interesting and impresive. GEO-CACHE (4:08 PM) was in a shopping center parking lot, but not a lamp post hide.

We grabbed a burger in South Weed and then stopped at the Living Sculpture Memorial Gardens to see the sculpture and to find a couple of caches. First was Living Memorial Sculpture Garden (6:21 PM) and then Remember (6:38 PM). While we were walking there were a couple of peals of thunder and a brief shower that got us pretty wet. Great experience.

We stopped briefly at the border to find Cal-Ore (7:43 PM), and then continued on to our motel in Klamath Falls. After settling in to our rooms, Dan and Janet were ready to go out for some night caching, so I went along.

Pails By Comparison (8:58 PM) was right down-town on main street (in front of city hall, I think). Because of the time, we didn’t stand out very much. Title America (9:05 PM) was in a dark parking lot. Ace in the hole was in another deserted, dark parking lot. There didn’t seem to be much around, but after searching for a bit we found it. Beaming on RalanN (9:24 PM) was a virtual where we had to count rays. Tile City (9:33 PM) was another virtual that was time consuming--too many tiles to examine.

We looked for "You’re in" Deep Doo Doo, but all we found was a very active hornet’s nest, and we decided not to search further. We easily found Blue Diamond 2 (10:15 PM). The sneak II (10:22 PM) was wet. Babe Watch (10:30 PM) was our last hunt.

Another trip to Pleasanton

After lunch drove over to Pleasanton to find Arroyo, HO! (1:13 PM) and Koll’s Last Stand (2:00 PM). This last was a 3-stage multi-cache and I walked to all the stages, even though it was easy enough to drive to them.

Quick trip in Pleasanton

I finally found IHT Chugs #2 (2:44 PM). I guess I just dislike getting so involved with bushes. Afterwards, I drove over to the sports park and found Foul Ball (3:03 PM). Lastly, I got Parallel Universe (3:20 PM).