Mid Pen open spaces

Karen, Dan, and I drove up Page Mill road to Los Trancos open space and found all 11 caches there (including an earth cache related to the San Andreas fault). Then we did a few on Alpine road, and finally a few more along the Ancient Oaks trail in Russian Ridge. Karen especially liked the spacious views along Russian Ridge and wants to go back. We ended the day with 22 finds and no DNFs.

Sonora and Pinecrest

After visiting with Bob and Doris (and delivering some furniture), Karen and I grabbed a deli sandwich and found a cache near Phoenix Lake. Deciding to look for someplace a little cooler we drove up to Pinecrest and did a 2+ mile hike along the lakeshore to nearly DNF a cache (finally found it though). Then on the drive home we stopped for two more.

Solo in Davis

Over the weekend I worked on a few puzzles in the Davis area. I came with solutions for 10 of them, so decided to make a day of it. Even though Davis is a cache dense area, I didn’t find too many. DNF’d more than I could keep track of. I found half of the puzzle caches, and then got another 11 for a total of 16 for the day.

Tough hike in Sunol

We (Dan, Janet, Karen, and I) decided to hike in Sunol Regional park today. I chose a loop, starting with a climb up Flag Hill trail. Wow. That’s a doozer--almost 1000 foot climb in a little over a mile. Finished the day with 9 finds (not all on the hike). One of these finds on the hike was my 2,000 find milestone cache.

Big day in Lodi

Dan and I headed for Lodi today. We started with a couple of caches in Manteca and then headed north along 99 through Stockton to Lodi. Most of course, were micros, some hidden in lamp post skirts, but also many pill bottles hanging in trees and bushes.

We finished the day with 40 finds, although to manage that we had to squeeze another couple in on the way home. We could have upped that to 50 with just some small efficiencies: only one of us logs for both, only one records the finds in Cachemate, I choose the next and navigate, Dan reads description and prepares. To get more than that we need to start earlier, stay later, and learn even better techniques (perhaps some of the cacher websites have hints for doing this).

Ardenwood and other Fremont caches

Dan, Janet, Karen, and I went to Ardenwood to do the Ardenwood Scrabble series. Afterward we did a number of others nearby and at Lake Elizabeth, including the earthcache related to the Hayward fault at Central Park. We also got a webcam cache (Mark grabbed the photo for us). Finished the day with 16.

Bend

Karen and I spent a week in Bend, Oregon for some much needed R&R. Despite the cloudy and sometimes showery weather, we wanted to be outdoors. We used caching to direct us to different areas.

The caching culture in Bend is sure different than here. For instance, we spent one day southeast of Bend in Juniper forest and old lava flows on BLM land (think thousands of acres). A number of the caches in the area were multi-caches requiring 4 stops before finding the final. Each stop was .25 to .5 miles apart. Here, each of those stops would be a cache. I found no evidence of any power caching trails around Bend.

Another day we drove northwest from Sisters, crossed over Green Ridge near Black Butte and down to the Metolius River, then north and back up over and along Green Ridge. It was great having the Ridgeline to drive these forest service roads. Regrettably, it was so cloudy we missed the great views of Mt. Jefferson.

Last year in August we were prevented from going to some locations by the Black Crater fire. This time we drove to a cache placed near the origin of that fire. In fact, forest service crews were busy in the area cutting down the dead snags.

We explored a bit of the badlands east of Bend along highway 20. There’s more to see, with some lengthy hikes involved (no vehicles since it’s now designated a wilderness).

We thoroughly explored Charcoal cave, which impressed me as one of the most unique locations for a cache (it wasn’t in the cave). It took 3 trips (not all on this visit) and several hours to locate the cache. The coords are off and the hint doesn’t help narrow the search area. Finally located after reading all the logs and finding some hints in them.

Some San Jose caching and event

It’s been a while to get out caching so Dan and I took a brief trip to San Jose and the Little Shop of Horrors event. We couldn’t stay long because we needed to get back for a much postponed birthday dinner. I got 9 caches, including the event.