Pacific Grove

After leaving Asilomar after lunch, I drove along the coast into Monterey and picked up 4 caches. Two of them, at least, I had looked for a year ago. One was clearly missing back then, and one I just didn’t find, but got them both both today.

Asilomar afternoon

I had the afternoon off from my meetings at Asilomar, so I went for a hike up on Huckleberry Hill. It was raining lightly during the whole hike, except just as I was getting back to the truck it turned into a downpour. This is the location of two night caches (Down the Rabbit Hole and Illuminati), which I would have done in the evening had it not been raining. I found the four caches in the area--one of them took a long time because I think the coords were off enough to cause me to look in the wrong clearing.

Elk Grove and the Tour of California

I went to Sacramento to watch the conclusion of Stage 2 of the Tour of California bike race, and stopped in Elk Grove for some caching going up and coming home. Almost all the hides were urban type, and too many were in shopping centers. In fact, I wasted a good half-hour at the end of the day unsuccessfully looking for 2 caches in shopping centers, since 6 PM is just far too busy a time. I found 10 caches total.

The bike race was fun, although since I focused (not too successfully either) on taking pictures, I didn’t really see the wide scope of the action. And, they all fly by very quickly.

Novato and Petaluma

We started the day in the Novato quad at a trail head on Lucas Valley road very near Skywalker Ranch. We found 11 caches, most of them with a Star Wars theme. It was interesting that the cache logs showed that Mathgen was doing the series earlier in the day, and we did meet at one of the caches. We got in a nice 5.8 miles hike here.

Afterward we drove to Petaluma the slow, windy way and hiked in Helen Putnam Park and picked up another 4 caches in 2.4 miles.

Danville

Picked up four caches today in the Danville/Blackhawk area. I spent a long time searching for Tree Down, but couldn’t find it. It was, however, a nice walk out to the area. The owner replied to my DNF, and I think I looked where he suggested, but I’ll go back some day and check it out.

Pleasanton

Picked up a couple of caches today. One was right along Stanley (missed it before) and one was way out Bernal by the creek. This cache (A Beautiful Oak) was hidden right in a patch of poison oak. I hope it gets relocated.

Time Stand Still

A couple of days ago Karen and I went to Pleasanton to work on Time Stand Still, a multi-cache that requires finding locations on Main Street based on pictures. We made a couple of round-trips of Main and still couldn’t find the location of the object that in black and white looked like a window frame.

Yesterday I checked the description page, and it’s definitely not a window. Today I went back and found it after a bit of searching. Found the cache too.

More nearby

I found another 4 this afternoon in Pleasanton and San Ramon. One Degree of Separation: N2BOOKS2 was a hide style that gives me trouble, but I finally spotted it. Blue iis Grand "Fore!" was a multi along the Iron Horse trail in San Ramon. I had trouble reading the last stage coords (and entering them into my GPS apparently), so I kept zeroing out in clearly the wrong place. Finally I got it right and was rewarded with a shower of water from the cache container.

Finding some close ones

I spent a while this afternoon in Pleasanton picking up seven caches. There were a few new ones around the fairgrounds and a few along a new bike trail south of Bernal. Biking into 2007 #3 was a toughie for me. First, my GPSr zeroed out a bit away from the cache causing me to search the wrong spot for a long time, and the cache was well camoed.

Las Trampas DNF

Karen and I went after Romp in Las Tramp this afternoon, starting with stage 3. It was kind of a bummer; 7.15 miles hiking for a DNF. Still, we both enjoyed the weather (nice) and the park. Karen is ready to go again.

ANX, and others

Dan and Lamneth had agreed to work together to find ANX: Angle of Eternity, so I got invited along. I worked at finding the key in order to get the coordinates for the first stage but couldn’t make anything come together. Eagle eye Dan finally spotted something and gave me a nudge.

We met Lamneth at stage 1 at 10:20 AM or so. Dan and I had a lengthy discussion about how to put the clues at stage 1 together. We finally decided how it was supposed to work, but a piece of information we needed had apparently disappeared. Luckily, Lamneth had done this stage previously and he provided the info.

After that we clicked off the stages pretty well, although we did take a detour at one area because Lamneth pulled off in a parking area too soon and we got misdirected for a while. Altogether though, this was a thoroughly enjoyable cache.

Afterwards, we drove to Sanborn county park and did the 100 Million Year Walk Earthcache.

Finally, we hiked on St. Josephs’ Hill in Los Gatos (starting about 3 PM) and covered 5 miles finding 9 caches. All in all, a full, but fun day.

Clayton

After an appointment at Kaiser Walnut Creek I drove out to Clayton for a string of 5 caches along Bailey Road (total walk about 1.8 miles) and then another couple in downtown Clayton.