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Please follow me

2012-01-16T17:50:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted on this blog in 9 months. I feel like this particular blog has run its course. I've started a new blog and I would encourage any of the followers of this blog to come over to A photo a day... especially if you'd like to continue to read about things relating to more than just GPS technology.

I've enjoyed my time writing this blog, but the photography project I started last year took up way more time than I anticipated. I also felt like I was repeating myself on this blog, writing posts that were essentially similar to previous posts. Quite literally, I'd run out of things to say on that one.

With my new blog, I'm not keeping it restricted to just geocaching, or just photography. I plan to expand into other areas. I think that will keep the content fresh. It is my intention that the title of the new blog, A photo a day... is designed to keep it in the back of my mind that I will post at least one photo per blog entry.

Thank you all for reading, thank you all for following. Hopefully, we can start something new and exciting again with my other blog.

Unusual things to see near a geocache

2011-04-10T17:32:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, while out geocaching, I'll come across things that are out of place. In this case, these things aren't really out of place, mainly because the geocache is hidden near a museum. So perhaps the geocache was out of place, but it really wasn't either. It's just a way to link the two things together somehow. A couple of weeks ago, my two older children and I took a day and visited the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). It's located near downtown Los Angeles, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits.

LACMA is a complex of buildings housing a multitude of artwork. I believe there are 9 buildings in all, but we were only able to go through half of them. All the better because we'll be able to come back again in the future, possibly enjoying the same exhibits, plus new ones which we were unable to enjoy in our first go around. The contemporary art building was a favorite of mine, because I was familiar with several of the pieces of art. There were several of Andy Warhol's iconic paintings, plus a Stuart Davis painting that I recognized while still several paintings away. I'd done a research report on Davis in high school and was very aware of his style.

Several years ago, I'd found a cache overlooking the main tar pit area of the La Brea Tar Pits, but it had since been muggled. There was also an earthcache located in the same general spot, so I was familiar with the area. After we spent a good five hours at the museum, we walked across the street to a burger place and had dinner. After that, my kids indulged their good old dad and "allowed" him to find a couple of geocaches.

I'd like to offer my apologies for not writing much these past couple of months. Being busy isn't the word to describe what this year has been like, but that's the best that I can conjure up at the moment. Adding new projects to my life, most notably the 365 project, has impacted other areas, including this part. I shall endeavor to write more often here.

Pictures were taken near the following geocaches:
That Black Gooey Smelly Stuff - by carlosguerrera
The La Brea Tar Pits - by GeoCraig

Walk in the pasture

2011-03-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

I went up for a hike today, primarily to take some pictures. All of the geocaches up in Johnson's Pasture, located just north of where I live, have been found. It was a gorgeous day, slightly breezy. It was a crisp day for the second full day of spring.

Picture was taken near the following geocache:

Welcome to Johnson's Pasture - by juniperb

Memories of Japan

2011-03-16T18:43:00.000-07:00

His name is Yoshihisa Yamada. The Japanese characters that make up his name can either be pronounced Yoshihisa or Miku, so he suggested we call him Mickey or Mike and so Mike he was to us. He was a foreign exchange student who lived with me my senior year in high school back in the mid 70s. He spent almost 12 months living with my family and me. We welcomed him into our home and he learned about American culture while we learned about Japanese culture.

His first night, he asked how to use a bed, as he had never slept in one before. Later in the summer, when we were having Tacos, he stated, quite enthusiastically that he loved Tako. He was rather disappointed when the Tako (Octopus) didn't show up on the table. He introduced us to Tako, and tempura and cooking with Sake. He became an honorary cheerleader at our high school that year, dressing in typical Japanese garb for each football game and basketball game that year.

We introduced him to Disneyland, hamburgers and camping. That year, we camped twice at Yosemite National Park and he ran to the top of Nevada Fall along the Mist Trail. That trail is extremely slippery and tough just to hike, let alone run. On the second camping trip, he ran to the top of Yosemite Fall, just because he could.

He and I both cried when he left the following summer in mid July, just after our country celebrated its bicentennial. We exchanged letters over the first couple of years, but then life seemed to get in the way and we lost touch. He called the morning my sister got married and we all talked with him. He'd lost a lot of his English in those last 6 years and it was difficult to understand him at times, but he still sounded like Mike.

I have tried over the years to contact him, using all sorts of Internet search engines. His name is a rather common name in Japan and I haven't been able to reacquaint myself with him.

His family is from Morioka, just north of Sendai where the earthquake hit this past weekend. Unfortunately, I have no idea if he still lived there or somewhere else. Needless to say, he's been on my mind a lot this past week. I hope and pray that he is safe and that his family is also safe. He would be 53 as of last December.

365 continues

2011-03-13T16:53:00.000-07:00

Several times in the past, I've written about the 365 project. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to attack something like this. Although I do tend to take a lot of pictures, I don't necessarily take them every single day.

When I looked into this project, it was in the middle of December. I posted a picture on the 18th following a geocaching trip up in the desert on a day where it rained up there for most of the day. But I didn't take another picture until a week later on Christmas Day. I suspected that I might not be up to a project like this. I was wrong.

I started posting photos in succession on the 30th of December, once again after a geocaching hike. I have yet to miss a day. I've played little tricks with myself that has helped me out tremendously. I have my fall back pictures in case I end up with no inspiration that particular day. My fall back pictures tend to be flowers. Living in Southern California, we have flowers blooming year round, so it's relatively easy to take pictures of flowers. I think I could post a different flower picture ever single day.

However, I didn't want to be known as the "flower" guy. I follow several photographers on the 365 Project, and while their photos are excellent, I also find them rather repetitive. They do certain things very well. I'd like to see them expand into other areas, just to see them stretch themselves a little. This is one of the tacks I'm taking. I'm trying to take a bunch of different photos of different things, just to expand and stretch myself. I know I can take good landscapes and flower and plant pictures. Can I take a good street picture?

I don't think I'm that good with portraits or with black and white photography, so I've been experimenting in that area. My daughter issued me a challenge for the month of March - no flowers. That's been tough, but I've worked other things in. I kind of cheated today, not taking a picture of flowers, but taking pictures of the aftermath - the berries. And now, as I look at my monthly calendar, I've seen March peppered with pictures of birds. My daughter has already said I can't take pictures of birds next month. We'll see how that goes.

I've been lucky to have included a couple of geocaching photos into my 365 project. I actually thought the bulk of my photos would be geocaching photos, but that hasn't turned out to be the case. I haven't been geocaching a lot this month due to other commitments, but with a two week break looming on the horizon, that might change shortly. Either way, I'm glad it hasn't happened that way. I'm enjoying working on still life, playing around with different objects just to see what the light will do. Almost every photo I think about posting goes through the black and white processing just to see what it might look like in that medium.

I've gotten into the habit of taking my camera with me almost every where I go. Sometimes, I go out with a specific goal in mind, other times, I just take pictures and hope for the best. Ironically, that's what I ended up posting today and I've already gotten some very nice comments back on that particular photo.

I guess what I'm really trying to say with this is I'm actually surprised that I'm still doing this. As I posted in an earlier post, I didn't think I would be able to do this. But I can and I'm finding it easier and easier to find good quality subjects to photograph.

Pictures were taken for the following dates:
March 1st, 2011.
March 10th, 2011.
March 13th, 2011.

Thus, begins the wait...

2011-03-05T20:43:00.000-08:00

My apologies for not writing earlier, but life has a way of getting in the way sometimes. I have been caching, but the writing of this blog has taken a back burner for the last month or so. I've been involved in a bunch of different ventures and I have not been able to give this the attention that I'd like to.

One project I'm dealing with will be over next week, but it entails the memorization of Shakespeare, Lord Capulet's lines in Romeo and Juliet. Somehow, I got roped into this. Well, that's an easy way of saying someone dangled a carrot in front of my nose to be on the stage again and I jumped at the chance. I think I am a born thespian who happens to be a teacher in real life. I can remember being in plays as early as 3rd grade summer school, as well as Up the Down Staircase and Man of La Mancha while in high school.

The school where I work has had a rich tradition of theater, with much teacher involvement as possible. The shows star 6th, 7th and 8th grade students with teachers in supporting roles. It's amazing what the directors have been able to wring out of students of such diverse backgrounds and abilities. In the past, we've performed The Pink Panther, Bye Bye Birdie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Wiz, Lil' Abner, 'Til Death Do Us Part plus several Shakespearean plays. This year's production of Romeo and Juliet is scheduled for performances next Thursday with an evening performance the following week. Once that is done, my schedule should clear up tremendously, especially with the onset of Spring Break three days after our final performance.

Along with this blog taking a back seat, so has caching, although I have been able to get out from time to time, especially when there was a date that needed to be filled on the calendar, which brings me to the title of this piece. Two weeks ago, I filled in the month of February and now will have to wait until September and October to fill in the remaining five days I need to completely fill my geocaching calendar.

It's more of a personal milestone, rather than anything really significant, but it's something I've been trying to achieve since about April of last year. I stumbled a little in the fall, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to fill those last five dates this year. And, thus begins the wait...

Thousand Word Thursday

2011-02-17T20:33:00.000-08:00

Picture was taken at or near the following geocache event:

Full Moon Rising - February 11 - by West End Geocachers

National Parks and caching

2011-02-13T15:48:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I found a geocache in a national park area. This, of itself isn't that unusual, because it's fairly easy to find Earthcaches and virtual caches inside national park units. What's much harder to find are actual physical caches, because the National Park Service (NPS) has deemed geocaches not conducive to the national park experience.

When I first started geocaching, I looked at the geocaching maps just to see where possible caches might be hidden. I actually thought it was pretty cool when I noticed a physical cache hidden near the chapel in Yosemite Valley. That cache was removed pretty quickly after that by the rangers in Yosemite National Park, which considered it litter. I can see their point, especially if it creates new geotrails to the cache site, something like that could destroy the local environment. Non-responsible geocachers who sometimes don't heed the warnings about putting food into caches could also cause problems. Any kind of food in a geocache would be found by a bear fairly quickly in Yosemite with some possible dire consequences for the bear, if not a cacher who happened upon a bear at the cache site.

There have always been exceptions and it also appears as if the NPS is lightening their stance on physical caches. I have always been aware of the geocache at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. GCNP Bright Angel has been around since April 2001. It's also one of those rare caches that geocachers covet, because it's rated a 1 difficulty, but a 4.5 terrain. That kind of combination in geocaches you don't come across very often.

Something that took me by surprise, however, was another physical cache that I just noticed at the Grand Canyon. I'd pulled the GC mapping feature up, mainly because I wanted to get the link right for the GCNP Bright Angel cache. I clicked on the link and immediately realized that I'd clicked on a different cache, yet one that's found within the boundaries of the Grand Canyon National Park. Camping in the Canyon is hidden in the South Rim Campground and has permission of the campground manager to be there according to the cache page. It's been there since last August and of this writing has 62 finds. Apparently the NPS really is lightening its stance.

There are six caches found within the boundaries of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, a unit of the NPS in west of Los Angeles. I was in Thousand Oaks Saturday with Chaosmanor caching and he told me about this one, but I didn't look closely at the cache page. I was rather surprised at first when we pulled into the visitors center parking lot for the recreation area. At first we thought it was going to be outside, but our GPSrs kept pointing inside the building, so we had to wait 10 minutes until the center opened.

Once inside, we walked through the exhibits, looking at a photography display by a local artist on loan to the visitors center through the middle of March. Chaosmanor spotted the cache from a distance hiding on the backside of a bookcase. I'd been looking in the general area, but hadn't spotted it yet, so he let me search a little while longer until I also came up with the location. After signing the log book, we put the cache back and then had a very pleasant conversation with the rangers about geocaching and other things. We both expressed our pleasure that the park has allowed this kind of activity and encouraged the rangers to express our views to the higher ups.

While researching this post, I looked to see if I could find any information about geocaching on the Santa Monica Mountains NRA website. It's fairly well hidden, but I was able to track down this page that details what you can do with a GPS in the national park area.

I'm almost wondering whether this area is a testing area for the rest of the NPS. The Santa Monica Mountains has not one, but 6 physical caches within its boundaries. If this proves to be a positive experience for all concerned, I can see where it will expand to other areas. It's small step, but a step that I consider in the right direction for the park service.

Picture was taken near the following geocache:
SAMO ParkCache 1 - by SAMO-NPS

Wordless Wednesday

2011-02-02T21:20:00.000-08:00

Picture was taken near the following geocache:

Eagles Valley View - by GaryIII

Caching with dogs

2011-01-30T20:12:00.000-08:00

My dog Jack, is not one who's very good at long walks. We've walked him down into village area of our town, which is about three quarters of a mile away and he's really tired about halfway back from there. For him, that's a long walk, but then again, he's a smaller dog and those little legs just keep churning along, but he's also the kind of dog who will just shut down, lie down and say, enough, I'm tired. Needless to say, I don't take him with me too often when I cache, although, he does have his own Geocaching account and has logged 10 finds.

I have been hiking and caching with others who bring their dogs along for the trek. All of these dogs have been much larger than Jack, probably outweighing him by fifty pounds or so. I would think a larger dog has more stamina for hikes of several miles. The last thing I'd want to do is have to lug around a dog who just refuses to walk any more. That would be tough, especially if you're miles from transportation or only midway through your caching day.

Most of the time, the dogs are just with us because they like to be outdoors with their companions and they love to run and/or go for along walk. All of our walks with dogs have usually been over a couple of miles. Yeah, they get tired at the end, but they always seem to have extra energy, much more than I can say for me after some of our hikes. It would be nice to have that kind of stamina.

When you're caching with dogs, you have a different mind set as well. You're constantly on the lookout for them, making sure they're not getting into trouble. Then again, sometimes, they just need to explore, like Sheila did last week when she decided to climb that tree. The cache was there, just not up that high. But she had the right idea for the most part.

Another thing to like about dogs is they don't eat very much while on the trail and if you have the right equipment, they'll even carry their own gear. One dog I went on a hike with had his own saddlebags for carrying his own water and everything else he needed for the day trek we had planned. All you really need is a good container to use for a water bowl and you're really good to go with a dog.

The other thing I've noticed about dogs is they're smart enough to rest in the shade. I'm pretty sure what goes through a dog's mind is something like this.

"Oh boy, I'm going on a walk with food guy!! Walk, walk, walk, pant, pant. Run, run. Oooooh. There's lots of good smells on this trail. SQUIRREL!!!! C'mon Food Guy, let's go!! You're going too slow for me. Oh, wait, you're looking for that geohiddenthingamabob aren't you? That's OK with me. I get to rest and relax in the shade while you look. I hope it's a difficulty Five. That way I get to rest for a good long while, cause I know you're not that good at finding those geohiddenthingamabobs. SQUIRREL!!!"

You know, you can stop me at any time, because I could probably go on for a long time like that. I'll leave you with one more short story before I sign off today. There was a cacher in the San Diego area who went by the handle Yrium. He took his dog with him on many of his caching outings. Several of Yrium's logs were written in the style I posted above, as if his dog had written them. They were some of the best logs I'd read and always seemed to bring a smile to my face.

Unfortunately, Yrium passed away a couple of years ago after a battle with cancer. Although I'd never met him face to face, we'd written emails back and forth, played fantasy baseball together, and so I felt like I knew a little about the man. Every time I log a cache for Jack my dog, I try to write it in the style that Yrium used to write for his dog and then I dedicate the log to Yrium's memory.

This past month, my friend Craig and his other companion Sheila lost their third companion Gromit. He's on the left in the second picture. Gromit went way too early in either people or dog years. He was a good companion and a good trail walker. He will be surely missed. This blog entry is respectfully dedicated in memory of Gromit.

Pictures were taken at the following geocaches:
Leaf Me Alone - by Whinger
Jumping to Conclusions - by Webfoot

Wordless Wednesday

2011-01-26T22:07:00.000-08:00

Mt. Rushmore?

Picture was taken near the following geocache:

30 YEARS OF PACMAN : V 15 - by michealamoody

Another picture in the desert

2011-01-23T19:50:00.000-08:00

Last Monday, I headed out to the desert to finish up another series of geocaches patterned after the PacMan figure. We'd actually started the series in December, but weren't able to complete the entire series because it had been raining most of the day out there. The last ten caches were located in very rocky areas and we didn't want to risk injury due to a slip on wet surfaces, so we waited until better weather to finish it off.

The holiday last weekend provided the best opportunity to finish up the series, so out we drove. We had two different spots to fix, so we drove down to one of the other caches we'd already found, then shuttled over to the back of the head. From there, it was just a nice hike to pick up the six we'd missed in that direction.

After lunch, we drove over to another starting spot, hiked up to the cache at the top of the head, then made our way over to the west to get the others. Hiking in a counter clockwise direction, we found an easy path amongst the boulders down to the road. We kept looking behind us and were having a hard time picking out our route we'd traveled down. This was the same dilemma we'd had on the 18th of December. We couldn't see a sensible route up. We really had made the correct decision to hike those last four in the opposite way than we thought about doing them.

What this all really means is I've had a decent start to the new year as far as caching goes. I'm averaging right now, slightly over a cache per day. Last year I averaged over 2 per day. My average will go up as we get into warmer weather, but I'm really not concerned about how many I average, but whether I have fun. And, I have another picture in the desert. I already had a Smiley, which is located just to the east of the PacMan. Then last year in April, we completed the Groundspeak Series. Next up on our list, whether it happens this year, or possibly next year is a giant Kokopeli located in the southwest corner of Utah. That one looks to be about a three day adventure, so we'll have to plan this one as an overnighter, possibly camping trip. It should be fun.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-01-12T15:49:00.000-08:00

It's a gusher!

Picture was taken near the following geocache:

Eti Wanda the Hedge Hog - by maddmaxxawr

Calibration

2011-01-09T09:37:00.000-08:00

Last week, on my hike in the North Etiwanda Preserve (NEP), I tried calibrating my GPSr. Not that I really could calibrate it accurately, but I tried to see how accurate it was compared to the adjacent signage. Usually, when I'm out geocaching, I don't need to take any kind of altitude readings with my GPSr. In my opinion, I believe that most of that handheld models are accurate to a certain degree, but not accurate enough for anything outside of fun and games.

When Chaosmanor and I hiked to the top of Simi Peak back in November, I put my GPSr on top of the bucket on the peak that held a laminated piece of paper stating the height of the peak, 2403 feet in elevation. I just wanted to see if my GPSr would register the same. It did, after a fashion. We actually watched the number start out at a lower elevation and then watched as the number climbed up to 2403 feet, which was when I snapped the picture. I suppose that if we were willing to wait several minutes of battery life, the unit would have settled down and produced a constant elevation. I might have to try that sometime, but it's not high on my list of priorities.

The NEP has mile markers every quarter of a mile. Those mile markers also indicate the elevation at the point as well. The last time I'd been hiking in the preserve, over a year ago, I did the same thing and got the exact result. This time, the result was four feet different than what the sign post said. After taking the picture, I picked my GPSr up and it immediately registered the "correct" elevation. Then again, does the elevation listed on the marker indicate the elevation at the top of the pole, or at ground level? My assumption would be that it should be a ground level.

Picking up my GPSr, actually brought it up to the top of the pole, which would have been the four feet difference, but once again, it's readily apparent that these gizmos shouldn't really be used for super accurate measurement of elevation or of latitude and longitude. And yes, I'm writing this all with tongue firmly planted in cheek this morning. After all, it's just a game we're playing out here.

Picture was taken near the following geocache:
NEP on the Rocks - by maddmaxxawr

Wordless Wednesday

2011-01-05T17:14:00.000-08:00

Picture was taken near the following geocache:

NEP_pd8 - by Ranger Rick

Finding caches I couldn't find

2010-12-31T17:13:00.000-08:00

Last October, I hiked in the North Etiwanda Preserve (NEP) for the first time. It was another instance of geocaching getting me to explore something in my own back yard. On that day I found 12 caches and DNFed five of them, a very high DNF rate in my opinion.

For whatever reason, I kept having difficulty finding some of the caches I was looking for that day. It wasn't because of tree cover, since there was little tree cover around. I just couldn't find them. Yesterday, I went back out again to hike that trail for several reasons, one of which was to rectify those DNFs. There were several new caches along the trail as well, the weather was beautiful and I had cabin fever.

It has rained for most of this vacation and I really haven't been able to get out and do any kind of hiking this past couple of weeks. The weather was finally cooperating and I was going to take full advantage of the situation. The NEP provides a 3.25 mile loop trail, but with spur trails you can walk a lot longer. I ended up walking just over 5.6 miles for my morning hike, with an elevation gain of over 2000 feet.

Fortunately, the gain was very gradual, so it didn't seem like I was gaining much in elevation, yet every mile marker post I came upon, it told me I was climbing. Had I gone the other way on the loop, the gain would have been steeper and more intense, but I knew that from the last time I'd hiked the loop.

With the mountains as a backdrop, I was able to get some really good pictures, more than I can probably post here in three different post, so I'll have to post them gradually over the coming weeks. There was a lot of snow on the peaks, which top out at around 8800 feet. I was hiking at 2300 to 2500 feet above sea level so you can see there's quite a bit of snow on the mountains. Last night, the overnight low got down to 29˚, which is quite cold for our area, which also means that the snow will stay there for awhile.

The daytime temperatures were warm enough that I was able to hike in shirt sleeves yesterday. That also means that once again, people back east will watch the Rose Parade out here tomorrow and see people enjoying the wonderful weather and wonder to themselves why they live in the snow. I think the single best advertisement for Southern California year after year is the Rose Parade and to a lesser extent, the Rose Bowl. Only once since I was born has it rained on the Rose Parade. That's a pretty good track record.

Needless to say, I enjoyed the weather yesterday. The setting was perfect for a good hike and for some caching. I was able to find those caches that I couldn't find over a year ago, plus all of the others that I had planned to find. I saw several deer, one that crossed right in front of me on the trail and two others who watched me warily from a good distance away. It was a good day, one that was a fitting end to the old year of 2010.

Tomorrow begins a new year, one that I'm sure everyone hopes will be the best year ever. Resolutions will be made and some will be kept. I resolve to continue to have fun while geocaching. I found more geocaches this year than in any past year. It's quite an achievement, especially since I was out of commission for several months due to personal reasons. I was just lucky the rest of the time I went caching I guess.

I will not resolve to find a certain number of caches. In my opinion, resolutions should be self improving. Finding more caches next year, does nothing to improve myself I believe, although it will probably get me on the trail more so I guess I can resolve to continue to be more physically fit than in the past.

I also resolve to post more often here. As I look back to when this blog was started, I can see my post counts fall every year. 116 in 2008, 100 in 2009 and only 80 this year. I plan to reverse that course this year. And so to all of my readers out there, please enjoy tonight, make it safe and may 2011 truly be the best year ever.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
NEP_pd4 - by Ranger Rick
Washed Out Plumbing - by bustindustin

More than I can chew

2010-12-29T22:09:00.000-08:00

Earlier this month, I mentioned that I was going to attempt the 365 project. I figured that I'd start the project on the first of next month and just end up taking a picture every day for the next year. Already, I now know, I've bitten off more than I can chew.

I uploaded two pictures earlier this month, just to see if this project would be difficult. In one sense, I can see where I could do this, but in another sense, I know myself well enough to know that I won't be able to do this every day over the next year. I love taking pictures, but at the same token, I'm also a perfectionist. I will not publish a picture of my toenail just to satisfy a daily challenge. It would get onerous very quickly.

Several years ago I challenged myself to try and find a cache for 33 consecutive days. At that time, I was the main person picking up the Tadpole from his elementary school. Because of when his Spring Break was and my Spring Break, I figured there was going to be a 33 day window where it would be relatively easy to find a cache every day during that period. And so I attempted it.

Once the 33 days went by, I continued finding caches each and every day. Some days were relatively easy, while others were more difficult to accomplish but I persevered up until day 57. That day, I ran into a string of caches that I couldn't find and it became frustrating enough after five DNFs that I just said to myself, enough. I wasn't having fun anymore, so I ended the streak. There is no way I'd ever want to attempt any kind of consecutive streak again. I think the longest streak I've had since that time has been 11 consecutive days.

And so I thought I'd be able to take a picture every day for 365 days. Uh huh. Right. The nice thing about the 365 Project is you can upload pictures to specific days. It doesn't hold you accountable for an every day post. So this project will take several years to achieve fullness, but I can live with that. The quality of the pictures will be much better than if I ended up taking a picture every day and I will also continue to enjoy the project as it develops. I know myself well enough that if I were to attempt this, I would end up hating it in the end. I don't want to do that.

In the meantime, from time to time, I will post updates of my progress on that project. I've noticed many other bloggers contributing to their own blog by having a Wordless Wednesday every week, which just includes a title and a picture. I may end up doing something like that as well, although the way I like to write, actually having to have a wordless day might be painful to me. But I can always try it and if that doesn't work out, so be it.

The two pictures posted here are the two I've posted thus far this month. One is of an inch and a half long millipede we spotted out in the desert the week before Christmas Day. We actually saw two different ones, but this one was a little bit more cooperative than the other. The second picture is of our California Desert Tortoise (yes, I have a permit for it) that lives in our back yard. It came out of its burrow on Christmas Day and was sunning itself under one of our orange trees. Today is the first day since Christmas where I haven't seen it wandering around in the back yard. I suspect the rain today had something to do with that.

Please enjoy these offerings and others in the future.

Sobering thoughts

2010-12-24T10:47:00.000-08:00

Whenever I go geocaching, I'm always on the lookout for memorials. There is something about memorials that deeply touch me, especially soldier memorials. Perhaps it's because I was lucky and was never forced to serve. Each of us must choose our own paths and mine didn't follow a military path, although it's not because my parents didn't try to influence me in that direction. I just knew in my heart that the military life wasn't for me.

But for many men and women, it is their choosing and I salute them for it. It must be extremely difficult to be away from your family during the holiday season. I can't imagine being thousands of miles from home, away from my family, let alone having these conditions imposed upon me and also being shot at in the process.

I've made it my custom, when I come upon a soldier memorial to take as many pictures as possible. The memorial is a poignant reminder of those who never come back from those far distant lands. It reminds me of the family left at home grieving for their lost husband, son or Daddy. It reminds me that I have been truly blessed to live in a country where we value freedom so highly.

A friend of mine is serving in Afghanistan right now, away from his wife and children. A former student of mine was killed earlier this year over there one week before his 20th birthday. My niece's husband served in Afghanistan several years ago and is now safely home. My nephew serves on a carrier in the Pacific. His carrier group was scrambled last month when North Korea decided to bomb a small South Korean island. At the moment, he's on leave and is safely home in California celebrating the season with us, his family. My thoughts and prayers go out to all of these people and many others who I don't know.

I leave you with a You Tube video that a friend of mine posted earlier today on Facebook.

I know we will always have soldiers overseas, but hopefully next year, we will have fewer of them in harm's way.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:

Cricket's Reflection - by GeoCrickets
"United We Stand" - by Lizard Man

Here I go, There I go, Where I go

2010-12-20T11:33:00.000-08:00

Last month, while on a road trip to Stockton, Chaosmanor and I were fortunate to attempt a couple of Wherigo caches. A Wherigo cache is similar to a multi-cache in that you have to find clues as you walk along a route planned out by the cache hider. You need a Wherigo enabled GPS unit in order to complete a Wherigo cache. The Geocaching website explains a Wherigo cache this way:

Wherigo is a toolset for creating and playing GPS-enabled adventures in the real world. By integrating a Wherigo experience, called a cartridge, with finding a cache, the geocaching hunt can be an even richer experience. Among other uses, Wherigo allows geocachers to interact with physical and virtual elements such as objects or characters while still finding a physical geocache container. A Wherigo-enabled GPS device is required to play a cartridge.

Since I don't have a Wherigo enabled GPS, I haven't been able to find one until now. In fact, the closest Wherigo caches is 20 miles away from me. Chaosmanor recently purchased a Garmin Oregon GPS unit and it is one of the ones that are Wherigo enabled, so when we were planning out this route, I spotted a couple of Wherigo caches in Lemoore, CA and decided to put them in our bookmarked route.

As I noted above, doing a Wherigo is similar to a multi-cache, only the clues are given to you on your GPS unit. You load the cartridge form the Wherigo website into your GPS unit, then head out to the starting coordinates and play the cartridge. There are several ways to play the game.

One way is to play locationless cartridges. These cartridges can be played anywhere. There's a tutorial at the Wherigo site that allows you to try a Wherigo out before actually doing an actual physical Wherigo cache. When we got to Lemoore, Chaosmanor let me have his GPS and I tried the tutorial out in a little park south of the first cache we were going to attempt. If you're familiar with GPS units, the learning curve for these isn't that tough, although it took five to ten minutes for me to get the hang of it. Once I solved the relatively easy tutorial, we walked across the street and tried the physical Wherigo.

This second cache was a relatively easy cache to do. It was located in a large park, with very little tree cover, giving us ample signal strength to our GPS. We picked up the clues by answering questions, then headed to the second waypoint. Each waypoint is located in a zone, which is the way the Wherigo cartridge works. Once you get to the next zone (which can be a variety of sizes), you then can get your next clue. Eventually, the clues and cartridge took us over to where the cache was actually hidden allowing us to log our find.

We then headed into downtown Lemoore to attempt the other Wherigo cache. We parked near the starting point, opened the cartridge and began. This one was a little trickier since we were walking through the old town section of town. Tall buildings cause signal bounce, so we didn't always get as close as we could to the center of the zone in order to answer the questions which would lead us on to the next waypoint. This could be because the zone may have been too large. I'm not sure on this, but it's something to consider if you're going to attempt a Wherigo in a city environment.

I enjoyed the second Wherigo more than the first probably for a couple of reasons. One, the first one was in a park, where any kind of cache could have been hidden. There wasn't much interest generated outside of going through the steps and finding the cache. I also was new, it being only my second attempt following the tutorial. The downtown Wherigo, I had a little bit more experience utilizing the cartridge and the buildings in the downtown area had some local history attached to them, which made the walk more interesting in my opinion. Your mileage may vary depending upon your own experiences.

I enjoyed walking through the downtown area. I'd been there previously, finding a virtual cache in one of the areas we walked through on this caching experience. Looking at some of the turn of the 20th century buildings was enjoyable to me, especially looking at some of the Victorian architecture. It gave me an idea for a Wherigo cache in my local area, although I'm not sure how I'll be able to set it up, since I don't have a Wherigo enabled GPS at the moment.

I'll have to download the Wherigo builder onto my other computer and try it out. Perhaps I will be able to create one, without the need of a Wherigo enabled GPS. We'll have to see about that.

There are quite a few Wherigo caches in California. I noticed one in Yosemite Valley near Yosemite Fall. I found this interesting because the National Park Service doesn't allow physical caches, but when I investigated it further, I discovered that the physical part of this Wherigo is outside the park in nearby El Portal. I've heard rumors about Geocaching possibly bringing back the virtual cache. If this does become a reality, I can see where some very interesting Wherigo virtuals could be created, especially in a National Park environ.

The upshot of all of this was it was a new experience for me to try, using my GPS. They probably aren't for geocachers who are numbers runners. They take more time than the regular cache. I would estimate the first cache we found in the park took us 15 minutes to complete and the second one in downtown took us closer to 45 minutes. We might have been able to solve the second one more quickly but we did get sidetracked. All in all, they were enjoyable experiences, something that I'd like to try again in the future. I'd also like to create one.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
Lemoore's First Wherigo! - by JohnE5

Night caching and photography

2010-12-17T21:36:00.000-08:00

Every now and then there are surprises that show up while you're out. Chaosmanor and I, while on our road trip last month, stumbled upon a cache at night. Now, I don't do much night caching and we weren't really going to do any night caching on this trip, but we were on our way back to our hotel room and I spotted this cache just off the freeway, so we thought we'd attempt it.

Once we got there, we discovered this particular cache was a virtual cache. After we got the requirements for the cache, I went back to the van to get the camera to get some shots of this statue. Had I had my tripod, I might have been tempted to try some long exposures, but I figured some flash shots would work this time.

This leads me to another topic, that of the 365 project. Chaosmanor showed this to me, so I thought I'd look into this as well. I'm going to try and do a literal 365 day project, starting on January 1st, 2011 and work through the year. I probably won't get anything really earth shattering on some days, maybe even just the top of my foot or something along that line, but I do take a lot of photos and I think I'd like to try something like this. I keep seeing the 12 on 12 projects, taking 12 photos on the 12th, but for some reason, I always seem to forget about the day until after the fact. Perhaps with this, since I know I'll need to take at least one photo each day, I'll persevere. We shall see.

Picture was taken at the following geocache:
Worthy Steed - by Original owner gallahad Adopted by Pamelot 7-2007

And the hard part begins

2010-12-09T16:39:00.000-08:00

I found two caches today. There's nothing really earth shattering about that, but it helped me fill another calendar date. Almost 10 years of caching and I'd never found one on December 9th before. But, as the title says, the hard part begins now.

I have 19 days left to fill. Five are scattered in September and October. I'm not worried about those, nor am I worried about the ones left in January and February. I'm worried about the ones that I have to fill in December. I have 6 more dates in December to fill, four of which are directly in the week of Christmas, including Christmas Day. As I noted last year at this time, December can be a very tricky month, because it looks like there's all this free time available to do things, like geocaching, yet when all is said and done, much of that first week is tied up in doing things preparing for that big day.

Six open dates in the nice days preceding Christmas Day. The only date I was able to fill in last year was Christmas Eve. This should be interesting to see if I can pull it off this year.

Desert creatures and other things

2010-12-05T10:04:00.000-08:00

My last cache hide was a multi-cache hidden up on my favorite trail. It's now been hidden for over a month and has a grand total of two finds, one of which is the beta tester who went with me when I was laying out the final coordinates. It's really too bad that the cachers around where I am aren't more of a hiking bunch. I think they're missing out on some very nice hikes and caches all in the same boat, but that's another story altogether.

The reason why I bring this up is while on that hike, CraigsOutside and I encountered a tarantula on the trail. That's not necessarily surprising since the area is know to have tarantulas, but what is surprising is before that hike, I've seen a tarantula in the wild only one other time and it was about 2 weeks before that when I spotted two others.

One was on the trail and was actually discovered by a couple of bicyclists coming down the hill. One stopped about 50 feet up the trail from me and pointed it out to his riding partners who were behind him. By the time I got up there, it was just ambling across the fire road. Later on that same hike, I nearly stepped on one at ground zero of the first stage of my multi-cache. If that doesn't get your adrenaline up, nothing will I guess. Either that, or you're just a calmer person than I.

I've encountered my fair share of creepy crawly things while out geocaching. I've spotted snakes from time to time. Once, while out hiking we came across a very large rattlesnake. Unfortunately, it wasn't really pleased with us being there, but there wasn't a whole lot we could do about it at the time, since we had it surrounded on a couple of sides. We did the best thing we could do and that was to back up and make wide circles around it. This snake encounter was in May, when the environment is becoming more habitable for all creatures in this area, but particularly reptiles, since they rely on the air temperature for warmth.

My friend CraigsOutside was bitten last year by a rattlesnake (read about it here). This happened in November, which seems a little strange since you would think most snakes by this time in the year would have gone underground and started hibernation. Southern California is a little bit more temperate and so in this area, we need to practice caution at all times. One can never tell, obviously, when a snake could be lurking nearby.

Before last year, I wouldn't have had rattlesnakes on my mind at all in November or December or any of the cold months of the year. Craig's encounter had me a lot more cautious yesterday while I was looking through a pile of rocks on the side of the road. I keep thinking that I really should get a hiking stick of some kind to carry along with me. Many of my friends take one along when we go on hikes. I've never found the need to carry one, mainly because it's one more thing in your hands while you're walking. Maybe I need to rethink that.

I'll be hiking out in the desert over the next couple of months. It's the most pleasant time to be hiking out there. It's cool and comfortable, much more pleasant than during the middle of the summer time. There's another figure out in the desert that we're going to create. I've written about the Smiley series and the Groundspeak logo in the past. Now, in the same general area to the west of the Smiley Series is a large PacMan. There are 30 caches, plus one mystery which makes up the eye of the PacMan. I have this feeling after we go out and find all of those, we might be singing "PacMan Fever" for awhile.

It appears as if each cache is about two tenths of a mile from the next cache, meaning this will be a 6 mile hike. That will make for a good hike if we do it all in one day. If we spread it out over two days, it'll be two good hikes. Anything over a mile is a good hike, in my opinion. And since one of our proposed hiking dates happens to fall on one of my open cache dates, that's always a bonus.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Give or Take 20ft - by madmaxxawr
Curiouser and Curiouser - by Terra Girl, Bean Dog, and my faithful sherpa Max

Beta Testing

2010-11-26T12:04:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, when I hide a cache, I like to have the cache tested out by someone else. A beta tester to a geocache serves a couple of important functions for the cache hider. The primary job of the beta tester is to check the coordinates of the cacher. Sometimes, when the coordinates have been gathered, they aren't necessarily the most accurate.

As I posted in my last post, the accuracy of hand held GPS receivers are only good to about 30 feet. When I got to the degree confluence, my receiver said I was at the point +/- 7 feet. That was pretty good, but thirty feet could be a different story, especially if you're looking for a smaller type of container, which is where the beta tester comes into play.

I've been a beta tester on a couple of caches. I enjoy being a beta tester for a number of reasons. Sometimes, it's interesting to watch a person as they go through their hide process. Other times, it's interesting to see how close our two GPSrs are with regard to signal. Sometimes they're way off and the hider will have to do some checking to see whether it's his unit or mine that appears to be off. It can go either way.

The last time I was a beta tester, I chose to stand several hundred feet away and take pictures of the scenery. I also took a picture after my friend Chaosmanor had hidden his cache and watched as he tried to verify his coordinates. There was no way I could have seen where it was hidden and I actually had a tough time finding his cache, although I shouldn't have since it was fairly exposed from a certain angle. I didn't approach the cache from that particular angle and had a more difficult time finding it.

On another of his cache hides, he called out his coordinates to me and I inputted them into my receiver and then went on the hunt. My receiver sent me over there, which disagreed with his receiver. But in this case, his receiver was also pointing to where mine had been pointing and so he had to take additional readings to make sure his coordinates were accurate. In this case, it helped having that second GPSr along to verify the coordinates.

The second reason I like to have another cacher beta test my hides is I get to see the reaction of someone finding the cache. On my last hide, CraigsOutside came along on the hike. I had already hidden the cache, but was having some proximity issues with another one of my own caches. This particular multi-cache had to have its second waypoint moved in order to be published. The look on CraigsOutside's face when he found both ends of the cache was priceless. As a cache owner, you only get to rely on the log write-ups of others to see how good the cache is most of the time. When you get to see others attempt your own cache, it furthers the fun.

In reality, I think that every cache hide should have a beta tester. I think many people hide caches too quickly and don't get accurate readings for their cache hides. This leads to frustrations for cache hunters when the coordinates don't end up being very accurate. Even with an accuracy rating of +/- 30 feet, there are things that a cache owner can do to make sure that accuracy is better than that.

Having patience when taking the initial coordinates is probably the first thing that a cache owner can do to insure accurate readings. Taking more than one reading, or averaging the initial reading is always helpful, especially if there is overhead site disturbances, such as trees that could block the signals from the satellites above. Having a beta tester along for the ride will also help, in my opinion.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Sandstone Game Paths - by Chaosmanor
Pathfinder 59s - by Chaosmanor

Degree Confluence

2010-11-24T12:46:00.000-08:00

I've always been fascinated with maps. I usually got to ride "shotgun" when we went on family trips. I was the navigator, which meant I got to follow our progress on the road atlas. It also meant I could suggest routes of travel. Not all were taken, but it was fun to think about that road less traveled. In my travels, I've always enjoyed taking those kinds of roads, as they usually present a different perspective to what I've seen over and over again on other trips.

Such was the case over Veteran's Day weekend. Chaosmanor and I planned a trip up to Stockton. The two main routes north are either Interstate 5 or State Hwy 99. My usual route is to take the 99, because I find it slightly more scenic than the 5. More importantly, there seems to be natural breaks along the route, which helps gauge where you are on the trip. There are many towns along the 99 and I know I can usually make it to Bakersfield in around 2 hours, to Fresno in another 2 hours and then to Stockton in approximately another 2 hours.

The 5 is bereft of many cities and town and the scenery is pretty much the same with the exception of the cattle stockyards near Coalinga. Other than that, there's no way to really tell where you are or how long you have to go until you've reached your destination. If you're in a hurry, the 5 is the way to go because it's about a half an hour shorter than the 99. But the main purpose of this trip was to take the scenic route - well scenic in regard to geocaching.

Outside of the geocaches in the major cities along the 99, I've pretty much cleared out most caches along that route. So Chaosmanor suggested we take the less traveled road, parallel to the 99. It would still take us north, but we would avoid most of the larger cities, while driving through open country, which is where you can usually find large numbers of caches without the worry of caches being muggled, or having to worry about crowded situations.

As we made our way north, I saw one of the caches that Chaosmanor had added to his route. Many caches like this I've found in the past usually are mystery caches, not actually near the geographic coordinates that are posted on the cache page. This one, however, was a regular with coordinates N 36˚ W 119˚. This would be a degree confluence, one of many points on the earth where a line of latitude and longitude intersect.

According to the Degree Confluence Project, you are within 49 miles of a degree confluence anywhere you happen to be. Just because you're close, doesn't mean that you can necessarily access these points, however. If you think about it, you'll realize that 70% of the degree confluences fall in water and are difficult to access. Many more fall on rough terrain. Although a map is flat, the world isn't and we have to take into account the lay of the land. But there are some, like the one we visited, that are very easy to access.

The confluence point was literally by the side of a road. To the west, was a large orange grove. To the south and north, the road traveled onward. To the east, the view was of foothills and in the distance, the Great Western Divide which makes up that portion of the Sierra Nevada. There was a slight dusting of snow on top of the mountains. I'm sure there's a lot more snow up there now as we've had several winter storms come through California in the past week.

For a map nut like myself, this was kind of cool to visit. You see all of those lines on a map, yet often don't really think that much about why they're there. These imaginary lines are the basis of GPS technology. They tell us where we are and because of mathematical formulas, GPS receivers can take electronic signals from satellites in outer space and also tell us where we are, with a great degree of accuracy. Most receivers are usually good to within 30 feet of accuracy. And that's where the fun comes in with geocaching. The receivers get you close, but then you have to do the rest.

According to my GPS receiver, I was within 7 feet of the confluence, based upon the accuracy of my unit at the time I took that picture. You can also see that each of our receivers didn't agree, as I later took a picture of Chaosmanor attempting to zero his receiver out. He was standing about 15 feet away from me while I was at my ground zero point.

After I found the cache, which was hidden nearby, I discovered that my receiver had decided to creep a little bit to the west, closer to my friend's point of confluence. This isn't uncommon. When we go out caching, our units very rarely agree on a particular point, but usually get us close. For $200, I'll not quibble about slight inaccurate readings I received that day. The point is, I was the closest I've ever been to a degree confluence with fairly accurate readings. And from a geek standpoint, it really is kind of cool to see all those zeroes show up on your GPS screen.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
Confluence N36 00.000 and W119 00.000 - by TheeSugaBear

On a clear day...

2010-11-05T22:04:00.000-07:00

In November, Los Angeles gets treated to the annual U.C.L.A./U.S.C. football game. An old saying I've heard in the past was, "On a clear day, U.C.L.A. . . . . . . . . on any other day, U.S.C. Obviously, this one was created by a Trojan fan, but if this past week is any indication, U.S.C. might be in trouble this year. But this entry is not about college football.

Last Saturday, I went on a hike with my friend Chaosmanor in the Agoura Hills area of the Los Angeles Basin. We'd planned a trip to get us several geocaches, plus a virtual flag that would score me the maximum number of points in the game. We found several caches before heading up to the trailhead to begin our hike.

The first part of the hike was on a new trail open for about a year or so. Surprisingly, it had no caches on the trail, so Chaosmanor took it upon himself to hide a couple while on our way. Soon after those hides, we were on a fire road heading up to some caches that hadn't been found in exactly a year. Well, they still haven't been found. One cache we started to attempt, but didn't finish, mainly because the terrain had changed slightly in the past year. There was a lot of plant growth, which concealed the main way up to the cache and any other route that we could see, looked extremely treacherous and so we passed on it.

The second cache was similar, so we didn't even make an attempt to get up to it. The third cache was attempted after a nice lunch at the end of the fire road on which we'd hiked. This one was probably the most frustrating of the three since we were able to hike up to the cache site and do a very thorough search of the area. After calling a lifeline, we were pretty much able to verify where the cache probably had been, but we couldn't find the ammo can that had been placed there. We did find, what appeared to be two Asian memoriasl, complete with pictures in nearby alcoves. The only thing we could possibly think that could have happened was that whoever put those pictures up there, took the cache for some reason.

After striking out there, we headed further up along a game trail and found another more established trail that took us up to the virtual flag and a couple of other caches, including a virtual cache at the top of Simi Peak, just inside the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. This stop was probably the highlight of the day.

The peak is only 2403 above sea level. I was able to verify that with a laminated sheet at the peak. I put my GPSr down next to the sheet and eventually, it also read the same elevation above sea level. Just after I took the picture, the elevation on my GPSr changed again. I've noticed that on other occasions as well, so I'm not ready to say that my GPSr has great accuracy when it comes to elevation, just that I was able to get the two numbers to coincide.

That didn't make the highlight reel though. What made this spot truly noteworthy was the view. Even though we were at fairly low altitude, we had a complete 360˚ view which stretched for miles and miles, literally. Originally, I had been looking to the west from the peak. Chaosmanor had already pointed out the ocean from further down, but once we got on top of the peak, we spotted Anacapa Island and behind it, Santa Cruz Island, both within Channel Islands National Park. Looking at the map, it looks like we were at least 30 miles, probably more distant from those two islands.

Then we got a bigger shock, I believe, when we looked south and could see the ocean and Catalina Island in the distance. Catalina Island 26 miles from the mainland, while Anacapa and Santa Cruz are closer to the mainland. It's become a rather rare occurrence when one can see Catalina Island. It's usually obscured by haze, smog and fog, usually a combination of all three. It definitely was a treat to see it so clearly in the distance that day.

The weather conditions were just right that day where we were. Other hikers might not be so fortunate, but hopefully, that won't stop them from coming up there. I can imagine that peak in fog. That would give an entirely different perspective to the area, that's for sure. We spent a great deal of time up there, getting the necessary information to fulfill the requirements, take pictures of the scenery, take pictures of the benchmark that's also at the top and also just to enjoy the view. It's not often that the Los Angeles area is that clear. Besides the ocean views, we also had amazing views of Simi Valley to the north and the San Fernando Valley to the east. It was a picture perfect day.

Eventually, we knew we'd have to descend back into civilization and we did it reluctantly. We hiked down the trail heading to other geocaches further down the slopes of Simi Peak. At one point we missed a trail junction and ended up further north than we had originally anticipated being, so that added another mile or so to our overall hike, but it was definitely worth the effort. It had been a good climb up and a good hike totally just over 8 miles. It had been a good day.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
Simi Peak Returns - by WM6P

Proximity issues

2010-10-27T21:22:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I hid a multi-cache in an area where I hide many of my caches. I didn't figure I'd have too much problems getting this one approved since I seem to be the only one who hides caches up in that area for the most part. I was kind of surprised when I got an reviewer notice stating that my cache was on hold until I cleared up some proximity issues.

Apparently, the second waypoint of my multi-cache was impinging upon a secret waypoint for a puzzle cache in the area. The reviewer couldn't give me any more information than that, other than to give me the cache waypoint for the puzzle cache. I was a little confused, since I wasn't aware of any new puzzle caches in the area, but when I looked at the waypoint number for the cache, I realized that it was my own puzzle cache, Cobol Canyon Trail.

I had neglected to take into account my own waypoint when laying out another cache. I found a really nifty site that will take geographic coordinates and calculate the distance between the two points. My two points are 447 feet away, about 80 less than what is expected as the minimum distance for cache waypoints set in the guidelines at geocaching.com.

After some back and forth between the reviewer and me, I decided that I had a couple of options. I could archive my puzzle cache and then there wouldn't be a problem with the multi-cache. This would be the easiest option. In fact, I could probably take the ammo can from the puzzle, move it 80 feet further away and I'd have two new caches. I've decided against this one, mainly because I like that particular puzzle cache. It gets good comments every time it's found. As most cache hiders will probably attest, a good log on your cache page is worth its weight in photons.

My second option is to move the second waypoint of my multi-cache. This is the more difficult of the two options, because I would have to make two hikes up to do this, one to get new coordinates and move the cache and the second hike to bring up the new coordinates for the first stage. I keep the coordinates on laminated paper, so it won't disintegrate in any kind of wet weather. It's not that this is a problem, because I like to hike, but I don't have the time to do this until sometime next week. This weekend is already booked and I had hopes of getting this cache up and active sooner as opposed to later. Unfortunately, I guess it will just have to be later. That's the way it goes sometimes.

Pictures were taken at or near Cobol Canyon Trail - by Webfoot

Road Trip

2010-10-20T22:17:00.000-07:00

My friend Chaosmanor and I are planning a road trip for next month. Veteran's Day is conveniently near the end of the week, creating a nice long weekend. Our plan is to head up the 395 on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, then head over to Lake Tahoe and up to Interstate 80, before heading back down through the central valley of California.

Part of the reason for this roadtrip is to get those last couple of counties that I still need to fill up my state map. I'm pretty sure we won't get all of them, but I think the two hardest, El Dorado County and Nevada County which are at the north and south end of Lake Tahoe can be had, especially if the weather holds out for us. I'd also like to clear out a couple more of the DeLorme map pages.

For those of you unacquainted with the DeLorme map series, there are several challenges where you have to find a cache on each page of a DeLorme map. There are actually three in California, one for the northern half of the state, one for the southern half and another for the entire state. This past summer, when the Tadpole and I traveled up the 395, we got several of the pages off of the list, but I wasn't paying close enough attention at that time and missed a couple. I know I can't get them all on this trip, but any serious dent will help.

There is also a challenge cache near Hanford that I'd like to get. 10 year event cache, Chaosmanor and I actually found five different kinds of caches that day, an event cache, a regular, a multi-cache, and earthcache and a mystery cache. We've since had another day where we found six different kinds of caches. That challenge cache is high on the list of "must finds" for this trip.

And to top it all off, near that challenge cache, there are two Wherigo caches. Having never found a Wherigo cache before, these look intriguing. I'm not really sure how to explain what they are, mainly because I really don't know what they are or how they work. Chaosmanor has found one, just after he got his new GPSr a couple of months ago, so he's more of an expert. Geocaching.com explains a Wherigo cache as the following:

>Wherigo is a toolset for creating and playing GPS-enabled adventures in the real world. By integrating a Wherigo experience, called a cartridge, with finding a cache, the geocaching hunt can be an even richer experience. Among other uses, Wherigo allows geocachers to interact with physical and virtual elements such as objects or characters while still finding a physical geocache container. A Wherigo-enabled GPS device is required to play a cartridge.

My particular GPSr is not a Wherigo enabled GPS, so I'll be relying on his GPS. I'll obviously be writing more about this when we get back from our trip. I'll expand on each of these in other posts over the next week or so. Until then, Happy Trails.

Scouting and Geocaching

2010-10-12T21:23:00.000-07:00

I was once in the Boy Scouts. We were Troop 7 affiliated with my local parish church in Santa Ana, CA. I joined the Panther patrol, which evolved into the Hawk patrol the following year. For awhile, we had a very active troop, mostly due to the active participation of several parents, including my dad, who eventually became assistant troopmaster. The boys in the troop had a good time learning outdoor activities, and everything else that was part of scouting.

Our troop had a tradition of camping out at least once a month, rain or shine. Traditionally, we'd camp out near the beach in San Clemente in June. I can remember one year, President Nixon (yeah, I know that dates me) was going to be down at "La Casa Pacifica," the Western White House, the same weekend our troop was going to be camping at San Clemente State Beach. I wrote to the White House and invited him to a cookout with our troop. I got a nice response back from Hugh Sloan, one of his assistants. In essence, it said Thanks, but the President would be too busy to attend. I figured it would end like that and wasn't bothered by it in the least. If I hadn't sent an invitation, it definitely would have been a no.

While in the Boy Scouts, I rose to the rank of 1st Class. I enjoyed the camping, the regular scouting meetings every Tuesday night. But, for whatever reason, I had no motivation or desire to attempt to move on to the ranks of Star, Life or Eagle. The process of doing the requirements of the various merit badges held no interest for me. I haven no idea why, because I've looked at my old Scouting book and have wondered why I didn't attempt some of the different badges. Many looked interesting and fun to do. Perhaps I was overwhelmed by the requirements and the number of badges needed for each rank. Perhaps this is probably why only 2% of all scouts ever attain the rank of Eagle.

I bring this up mainly because the Boy Scouts have recently released the requirements for a Geocaching Merit Badge, which is pictured here. Some of the highlights for the merit badge, as noted in their official blog are listed here and include:

Precautions necessary to have a safe time while searching for geocaches

Geocaching etiquette and how the principles of Leave No Trace apply

Geocaching terms

How GPS Technology works

Steps for finding and logging a cache

How to use geocaching.com, the official online home of geocaching

I must say, that it looks like it would be a fun merit badge to attempt.

I like the fact that Scouting has stayed true to its roots regarding most of their merit badges and that they still emphasize a well rounded young man. 21 merit badges are required to attain the rank of Eagle Scout and of these, there are 12 required badges.

Camping
Cycling or Hiking or Swimming
Citizenship in the Community
Citizenship in the Nation
Citizenship in the World
Communications
Emergency Preparedness or Lifesaving
Environmental Science
Family Life
First Aid
Personal Fitness
Personal Management

When I first looked over the list, I was surprised to not see some kind of required orienteering badge. I can remember being able to use a compass as one of the skills we learned early in our scouting career. Perhaps it's my faulty mind, or the changing of the times. With GPS technology, the need to use a compass might not seem like a necessary skill that it once was and so the requirements have changed. Either way, it is definitely still a challenge to become an Eagle Scout.

Picture of the merit badge comes from the Cracker Barrel, the Official Blog of Scouting magazine.

Do you see what I see?

2010-10-10T17:07:00.000-07:00

Picture day. I wonder where that cache is hidden? The beauty of geocaching is seeing some of the great and creative ways people hide caches. I found a cache once that was hidden on a sign and had become part of the sign because of the camouflage the cache hider had done on her cache. This one was similar, however it really did have a cache. Muggles wouldn't give this one a second glance, however, it really was fairly easy for a geocacher.

Pictures were taken near the following geocache:
San Bernardino County Geocache - by TrekNTerry

Life getting in the way

2010-10-07T20:59:00.000-07:00

It's really interesting how life can sometimes get in the way of your goals. That's all right, because a lot of time, it's really life giving you a wake up call, usually in the form of a large two by four in the middle of your forehead. For most of the summer, I've had this goal of filling the calendar and it worked well until mid September, when I missed a day. There was no way around filling this day, because life got in the way.

Since that mid September day, I've missed four other days which will have to be filled next year if I want to finish that goal. Eventually, I'll finish it, perhaps next year, perhaps not however. And that's OK, because it's just a game. Real life is what's important. In this particular case, that two by four was a good two by four. It got me to appreciate what I have more than ever before.

James Dean passed this way?

2010-09-30T21:38:00.000-07:00

Fifty five years ago today, James Dean died. I was reminded of that by an editorial on the Op-Ed page of the Los Angeles Times today. I actually already knew about it, but the editorial nudged me a little. He would have been 79 had he not been involved in that car crash along Hwy 46 east of Paso Robles.

Two weeks ago, I passed near the spot where he died coming home from Santa Cruz after dropping my son off for another year at college. Hwy 46 is littered with all sorts of James Dean memorabilia. The interchange where the crash occurred is called the James Dean Memorial junction. There's a James Dean memorial and virtual cache just east of there. The highway is called the James Dean Memorial Highway.

We in America have an interesting fixation about stars who die before their time. Marylyn Monroe, Elvis, Michael Jackson and James Dean all seem to fit this bill. It's hard to know where James Dean fits into this mix. He made three films, died before two of them were released. Most people, I think will remember his role in Rebel Without a Cause, staring two other young actors, both of whom died premature deaths, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo. If you've never seen this film, it's a good one to watch, especially if you want to learn about teenage angst of the 1950s.

Giant gives you a glimpse of Dean and how he might have looked had he survived. Giant is a big set piece set in Texas during the oil rush. Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor fill out the cast of stars. Dennis Hopper also makes an appearance. However, I think Dean's best work, is in the film East of Eden. I can remember seeing this one in college, after having seen the other two several times while in high school. East of Eden hardly ever gets shown, but it's a very fine film both from an acting standpoint by Dean and others and the cinematography. Rent it and I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I bring all of this up mainly because as I was driving on Hwy 46, I ended up geocaching along the road. One cache took me off the main highway to an old bridge which paralleled the highway. Little used, the bridge is in a state of decay and will eventually be replaced. It's interesting to think about, but it's a bridge that James Dean probably traveled over on his ill fated last trip. Over the years, the highway has been realigned several times to make it wider and straighter and thus, safer for motorists. Much of the old road is probably gone entirely and the exact spot where the car crash took place isn't on the highway anymore.

I'm actually surprised that some preservation society hasn't come along and decided that this little piece of history deserves to be preserved. It's probable that this might happen in the future, when the wrecking ball comes into play, but it's also just as likely that this old bridge will slowly drift into obscurity. Or then again, maybe this is just an old side road with no link to what happened so long ago.

Pictures were taken at the following geocaches:
This Old Bridge - by Scooterman
James Dean - by TahoeTeach

Meets and Greets

2010-09-27T21:58:00.000-07:00

Back in April, I wrote about a mini high school reunion that I attended. At the time, I thought I might have recruited a couple of new geocachers. I'm not sure whether that panned out or not, but it sort of whet my appetite to try and go to a couple of geocaching events, something that I have not done a lot of in the past.

I attended an event celebrating the 10th anniversary of geocaching back on May 1st. That was a very enjoyable afternoon. We ate, we talked geocaching, then many of us went on a hike through the Devils Punchbowl, picking up some caches we hadn't found on previous outings to the area. All in all, it was a very good day.

This past Saturday, I attended another event hosted by BigDaddyGRC and ScrabbleDogs. BigDaddyGRC is one of the hiders of the Groundspeak series that I've written about, plus the Smiley Series. I'd met him at the 10th anniversary event and had enjoyed his company then, so when my friend Chaosmanor pointed this event out to me, I thought it might look interesting.

Unfortunately, the Tadpole also had a cross country meet that day, so I couldn't be in two places at the same time and family comes first. However, he hadn't been feeling well with allergies all week, due mainly to the local county fair and didn't end up running on Saturday because of it. That freed up my day once I got the lawn mowed.

I was able to get the lawn mowed early in the morning before it started to heat up and then took off. I found a couple of caches on the way up the hill to the event, which was held at the Grassy Hollow area near Wrightwood, CA. This area has a very nice visitors center and has a nice group campground designed for through hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail. I had been up here one other time back in November 2002 looking for a cache hidden right along the PCT.

The event was a potluck hamburger/hotdog barbeque and the day couldn't have been more perfect. The people who came up were similar to me in that we were all beating the heat. The temperature at my house on Saturday was 99˚, while up in the mountains, it was probably in the low 80s - quite pleasant for a picnic and subsequent hike along the PCT. BigDaddyGRC was a fine host, cooking the burgers to perfection and we had plenty of food for everyone. In fact, if people went away hungry after this event, it was their own fault.

At any of these events, most of the cachers tend to know one another, either because they've met in the past, or they're familiar with them due to seeing their names in logs somewhere while out caching. This event was no exception, but it's still nice to finally put cache names to faces. I met three of the 4DirtyDogs that afternoon, as well as RedBaroness, Shell1Fish, NascarFamily.

We ended up talking for several hours about different things, including geocoins, old time caching back in the early days when you'd go for a hike of 2 miles and find one cache. That was the case when I'd gone after that cache up here. It was the only one there. Now there's about 10 caches available to find within a two mile radius of the picnic area. We were also treated to a nice geocoin collection by Steben6.

After the raffle of some prizes, which I think ended with everyone in attendance getting something related to geocaching, geocoins, we all headed our separate ways. I ended up hiking with Chaosmanor and the 4DirtyDogs over to a cache. Our group eventually ended up being 10 cachers strong and it was fun talking about stuff while hiking along the trail. We eventually ended up over at the Grassy Hollow Cache which I'd found 8 years ago. It was fun watching others find this old cache.

I related about how few and far between caches were back then and talked about the differences in caching between then and now. Logging in the logbook was an art and people tended to write stories. While the others signed the new log book, I was busily looking through the old logbook of this cache. As I was looking, it dawned on me and I also voiced it out loud, that I was going to be pretty embarrassed if we encountered my name in the log book and there wasn't a story attached. I breathed a sigh of relief when I found my entry and noticed that I had indeed written a short story about the experience.

The last cache the group ended up finding was a picture puzzle cache, one where cachers had to walk along a trail checking out the viewpoints until the view matched up with a set of pictures attached to the cache page. Once the pictures lined up, supposedly you would be at the cache site. A lot of debating went along with this one as we walked along, especially after we saw the lake down below which showed up in one of the pictures. Eventually, we were able to get the "right" view and found the cache, a fitting end of the day cache find.

I looked on my profile page while writing this one and this was only the 10th event I've chosen to attend. I'm averaging about 1 per year, but I know there have been several years where I haven't attended any events, while other years have a couple. I'm already planning on attending another local event on the 10th of October. I can't resist the numerology of 10/10/10. I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy that one as much as I enjoyed this last event last Saturday.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
A Day in the Angeles Forest - Grassy Hollow - by HDGC (BigD'GRC and Scrab'Dogs)
Grassy Hollow - by John, Donna and Slipper

Wait'll next year...

2010-09-20T17:35:00.000-07:00

As my son the Tadpole told me yesterday, I guess I'm going to have to wait until next year to fill the calendar out. Saturday was an incredibly busy day. I was on a road trip north to Stockton to help my daughter move into her new place and there wasn't any time during the day to go out and find a cache. So, for the next year, I'm going to have at least that one empty spot in the middle of September staring at me. Wait'll next year? I don't really have a choice on this one.

Pine Droppings

2010-09-15T03:05:00.000-07:00

Every now and then you have to stop and marvel about nature. Nature creates some isolated patches of wonder that will catch your eye and you just have to enjoy them. This past weekend I was able to get out for some geocaching and one of the last caches we found that day was hidden at the base of a Coulter pine tree. I love Coulter pine trees for a couple of reasons. First, they have an awesome pine cone and second is I have a couple of friends who resemble the tree in some way or another. They'll understand.

If there aren't any pine cones around the pine tree, it's sometimes difficult to identify the Coulter pine. Not so when there are any pine cones either in the tree or on the ground. In fact, when you see them on the ground, you instinctively look up. These cones are massive. My pictures don't do them justice, but the first one was probably close to 9 inches long. They weigh a lot too, so looking up is really a good idea. If one should fall and hit you, you're going to be severely damaged.

The damaged tent came from a small sugar pine cone that a squirrel chewed through and ended up dropping onto our tent when we were camping in Sequoia National Park. We'd been out caching and hiking that day and came back to camp. I looked at the tent and couldn't tell what had happened at first, but when I got closer I figured out quite quickly. Not only did the pine cone go through the side of the tent, but it had enough force to go through the bottom of the tent as well. And where it landed was about a foot away from where my son would lay his head while sleeping. That particular pine cone probably weighed no more than a pound or so. Imagine a 4 to 10 pound Coulter pine cone coming down. It's no wonder the Coulter pine was nicknamed the "widowmaker."

The Coulter pine is found in the coastal mountains of Southern California and Baja California. It has a very limited range, but is not threatened or endangered and you can find isolated groves as far north as the Bay Area near San Francisco. They are pretty plentiful in our local mountains. I've hiked through one small grove on a caching expedition near the Devils Punchbowl, which is located north of me on the desert side of our local mountains.

I can remember as a child going out on outings with my parents to our local mountains near Big Bear, California. My mom was always collecting Coulter pine cones to create Christmas decorations. She'd spray paint them green and create miniature Christmas trees out of them. They usually have a large base on which they stand and when not their natural color do resemble a squat Christmas tree.

I'm not sure how many people outside of Southern California are familiar with the Coulter Pine. It's probably not many, but then again, I'm pretty sure I'm not familiar with all of the native flora that grows only in other areas of the country. This particular pine is rather distinctive. Just make sure if you're walking through a grove to watch overhead. You wouldn't want to become the latest statistic of a Coulter pine.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
A Forest Adventure - by Kit Fox
California Hoax - by Radikel

September Slowdown

2010-09-11T07:48:00.000-07:00

Once again, September has become a slow month for me caching. However, in about a half an hour or so, I plan on hitting the road with my good friend Chaosmanor for some caching and GeoVexilla and also some GeoDashing. It's been a tough couple of weeks, so my apologies for not writing in here.

The Hard Part Begins

2010-08-28T14:38:00.000-07:00

In the past, I've always tried to have some kind of goals for my hobby. If I don't have goals, I don't seem to have as much enjoyment at it. This year, one of my goals started later in the year. I had been looking at some challenge caches and thought about some of the goals I could set for myself to get those challenge caches.

A personal goal for me was to "fill" the calendar, that is, find a cache on any date where I hadn't found a cache before. I figured it wouldn't be that many. Wrong. I had over 60 dates where I hadn't found a cache yet. It's now down to fifty individual dates, but I'm now coming up on my rough patch. Starting on Tuesday, there are 16 open dates in August and September over the course of 32 days, an obvious average of one every other day. But if you look at the chart, you can see large stretches of white areas in the calendar. Fortunately, most of them seem to fall on weekends, but I'm still going to have my work cut out for me if I intend to fulfill this goal by the end of February 2011. Wish me luck.

Prescribed burns

2010-08-25T17:50:00.000-07:00

I think I'm rather fortunate at this point in time to be back at school. Working in an air conditioned building right now is a good thing when the outside temperature is around 104˚. The heat always gets me thinking about fires since this is also our "fire" season. This wouldn't necessarily be the case if we didn't have nutcases who get a thrill out of starting fires and if we'd had a better fire management system in place over the past 100 years or so.

When we visited Lassen last month and also when we visited Crater Lake last summer, there were prescribed burns happening in the parks. Over the course of the last hundred years or so, we've had a policy within our country of any fire being bad, and so therefore the fire was suppressed almost immediately. I can remember reading back in the early 1970s about forest fire management and how prescribed burns were now being applied to areas to get the forest back to where it should have been all along.

Clues that helped fire management personnel figure things out were burn scars on the bark of Giant Sequoias and other trees. This indicated that the big trees had survived many fires in the past. However, after many of the trees were protected within national and state parks fires were suppressed in order to protect these same trees. Park rangers were unaware at the time that they were doing more harm than good to the forests.

My family took my camping all over the western United States during the 60s and 70s. I grew up thinking that forests were deep and dark and very difficult to traverse except on trails due to the heavy underbrush and the think canopy of trees. Very little light penetrated to the forest floor, so very few plants grew. Many forest had uniform thick trees due to all of them sprouting around the same time.

Eventually, fire management teams realized that fire is a good thing for a forest. It clears out much of the over accumulation of pine needles and other forest duff that accumulates over the years. It was discovered that many forest had small fires burn through them perhaps as much as every 10 years of so. Think about a forest that had over a century of forest pine needles accumulated waiting for a small spark that would start a conflagration.

This is what happened in September 1988 in Yellowstone National Park. Several small, lightning started fires were allowed to burn. Then, the fires got out of control and much of Yellowstone burned. The fires probably helped in the long run, but it was a catastrophe at the time. I had visited the park in 1987 and I remember watching the fires come ominously close to many of the places I had been barely a year previously. It was a very sobering sight to say the least.

In Southern California, we have an entirely different ecosystem, with many bushes and a lot less trees. When we get fires, they tend to get ugly very early. We haven't had a fire in the foothills behind our house in about 7 years. I've hidden a geocache puzzle up in those hills, which was originally entitled The Dead Forest? mainly because there was very little vegetation up there following those fires, yet the question mark at the end held out for the promise of new growth. The cache is now called Cobol Canyon Cache, because the forest is definitely not dead any longer. Whether prescribed burns would work in this area is another story. If the area wasn't so urban, it probably would. Saving houses adds another layer of complexity to fire management.

The prescribed burn in Lassen was right along the Manzanita Lake trail. The fire wasn't very big, but then again, most forest fires, if they're actually allowed to burn naturally, shouldn't be that big. They're usually just enough to burn the lower branches and the pine needles without scorching the land. We probably have these damaging images of Yellowstone and other costly forest fires etched in our minds and think to ourselves that fire has to be bad.

Yet here we were, walking along a trail, with little areas slowly burning. I spotted a couple of spots where I could see some tongues of flame, but none of the pictures came out where you could even see the flame. The burn had worked its way down to the lake edge. Because there was little to no breeze blowing, no hot embers were flying through the air. The fire would eventually die at the water's edge having cleared out a small patch of forest to regenerate. In fact, as we got over to the other side of the lake, I ended up taking a picture across the lake at the prescribed burn. I think most people would be hard pressed to even figure out what part was actually burning.

Yosemite National Park actually has/had a small demonstration forest in their Wawona Big tree grove to show the differences between the two different types of environments. The Wawona grove is a two tiered grove of trees, so it's easy to demarcate the boundaries and show the differences. The upper grove, which had been burned through by several prescribed burns over the course of several seasons, had lots of small bushes and grasses growing throughout. The trees were widely spaced, giving the grove a light airy feel to it. It was very easy to walk through this grove.

The lower grove had trees packed closely together and it was very dark, with very little sunlight reaching the forest floor. Consequently, there was little grass growing, providing little food for grazers. Because of the accumulation of forest litter, there were few sprouting trees. Had a fire started here, it would have probably killed many trees, possibly some of the Giant Sequoias as well. This happens because the fire burns so much hotter with all the additional fuel. I think the eventual plan was to slowly clear the lower grove out as well, getting both groves back to where they should have been all along.

The prescribed burns keep that fuel down, taking the forest back to the way nature intended. At least that's the hope. Only time will tell whether this way of managing the forests is any better than the total fire suppression we had in the early part of last century. As it is, we still get major fires, but I think the hope is eventually, we'll not have to be so aggressive in fighting fires and allow them to burn out naturally. That will make for an better forest for all of us to enjoy.

On a side note, the National Park Service celebrates its 94th birthday today.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:

Pumice Castle and the Old Man of the Lake - by 47Dad47, KollyWobbels, Sally, and Russ
Loomis - by 2dogs and mtnsteve

Better late than never?

2010-08-21T14:30:00.000-07:00

As usual, Wile E. Coyote showed up a little late and looking a little worse for wear. My wife came home from work yesterday and saw this guy taking a snooze in the grass directly across the street from our house. The only reason it got up was because our neighbor had just walked out into the driveway and gotten in his car.

I was able to get a couple of pictures taken before this one went around the vegetation to the right in the picture and disappeared. When I went over to investigate, it either had found a spot in the vegetation to resume its nap, or had scaled the fence of the house and was now walking through the back yard of that house.

Either way, it is always important to be on the look out for wildlife, either on the trail or in urban environments. My son has informed me that he's seen the roadrunner several times on his way to and from school for cross country practice. As noted in my last post, we see coyotes all the time, but usually near dusk or dawn and they are usually fairly skittish and people wary. This one wasn't.

I've been hiking in the foothills north of our house and seen coyotes several times. One time I had been out geocaching with friends in San Dimas Canyon, located to the west of our house. We had been looking for a nicely put together geocache entitled Curiouser and Curiouser, themed after Alice in Wonderland. After finding the cache, we stood at the gate leading which closed the fire road to regular car traffic and I spotted a coyote walking toward us about 500 feet or so up the road.

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I was thinking to myself that something didn't look right at all with that coyote. I even mentioned it out loud. At about the same time, the "coyote" made a left hand turn into the brush by the side of the trail and it was at that time that we realized that we'd been looking at a mountain lion walking toward us. In the dwindling twilight, we decided to take our leave from the area.

Be careful out there.

Meep! Meep!

2010-08-17T20:20:00.000-07:00

I came home this afternoon from work to a very nice surprise in my front yard. I'd actually taken a different route home, since I was low on gas. I'd stopped at my nearby gas station and came toward from my house from the south as opposed to the north from the freeway. I think if I'd come from the north, I might have scared the bird away. Anyway, as I approached my house, I saw a rather large animal walking across my front yard and then saw it stop on the sidewalk in front of my house.

It was motionless as I drove by and pulled into the garage. I got out of the car and slowly walked out on the driveway and the bird crouched down as it was getting ready to take flight. I backed off and got a great view of a very large roadrunner. I would guesstimate its length at around 18 inches or so from beak to the end of the tail. It's a pretty distinctive bird, one that I've seen one other time in the Palm Springs area along a fairway of a municipal golf course.

According to the Wikipedia article, I live in its habitat, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see it running around, but I'm much more familiar with his "stereotypical" enemy, Wile E. Coyote than the roadrunner. I probably see a coyote in the neighborhood, walking down the street probably once a month, if not more. Raccoons are sometimes common, less so than perhaps skunks, but never a roadrunner before.

I quickly went inside, got my camera and started birdstalking. By the time I was back outside, he was on the curb and then in the middle of the street, heading over to greener pastures. At first I thought I was going to lose it in the neighbor's bushes, but it seemed to have a single minded purpose about it, heading over to another neighbor who has a nicely xeroscaped front yard, one that I have been thinking about creating in my own front yard.

I was able to get around in front of the bird as it meandered through the yards and watched it take a sand bath. My neighbor had just pulled into his driveway and wasn't at all surprised by the bird. I found out from him that he'd seen the bird numerous times in his front yard and said that it had been hanging around for the better part of five months or so. His only negative comment about the bird was he saw it eating a lot of the lizards in and around his yard, which keep the bug population down, but other than that, he had nothing but positive things to say about the roadrunner.

I have to admit, had I known this bird had been living in the neighborhood, I know I wouldn't have been surprised to have seen it. I get into a certain mindset because I live in an urban setting. The mindset includes not seeing much wildlife, outside of the occasional squirrel, or the multitude of birds that inhabit the trees in the neighborhood.

As noted above, coyotes are fairly regular, but they're one of those animals that have increased their range because of human existence. The ready supply of food that we tend to leave out in the form of garbage is tailor made for the coyotes, rats and raccoons of the world. But to see an obviously desert creature, in a fairly urban setting is very surprising and a nice treat. I hope to see it again in the near future.

The Sundial Bridge

2010-08-15T15:42:00.000-07:00

The Turtle Bay Museum in Redding, CA had a lot of nifty features about it that make it stand out as a high quality museum, one that a person would want to come back to often. The Tadpole and I explored a large quantity of the museum, but didn't even scratch the surface of the arboretum which was north of the museum, across the Sacramento River.

The arboretum is connected to the museum by way of a bridge. However, this bridge isn't just any bridge, but a sundial as well. Yes, you read that right. The bridge is also a sundial. If you're driving along Interstate 5, you might think it's just a white spire, perhaps a sculpture. But when you get close to it, you can see it's a sundial. It definitely gives the city an identity.

This bridge is a pedestrian and bike bridge. There were plenty of people out on a warm Monday enjoying the sites the museum had to offer as well as the arboretum. There were some dog walkers as well as a couple of geocachers thrown into the mix as well. In my original bookmark I created for our trip up here, I noted many geocaches on the arboretum side of the museum grounds. We ended up getting the one nearest the sundial on the far side of the bridge. It was close to noon, neither of us work well when we're hungry and we didn't want to get too far afield when Chaosmanor called telling us they were there. It wasn't a problem, as it really gives us a built in excuse to come back and visit again.

The bridge, itself, is a marvel of engineering. It appears to be a suspension bridge, with the gnomon (the shadow caster) being used to support the bridge. The sundial is large enough, plus it's close enough to the Sacramento River, that it's only good for about four hours worth of time telling, from about 10 in the morning, to 2 in the afternoon, PDT. We were there at 11:48 and it was keeping remarkable time, with the shadow slightly past the 11:45 mark. We were able to get underneath the bridge and it resembles a cruise ship's mast from that particular angle.

While we were crossing the bridge, I happened to look to the west. The Sacramento River, at this point runs west to east and then bends around to the south just beyond this point as it flows toward the Pacific Ocean. Looking to the west, I spotted a large bird come up out of the water. Obviously, I'd just missed it going into the water, but it was just close enough to the bridge that I could make out the fish it had just caught in its talons. Then it made a sweeping left hand turn, probably heading back toward its nest with food for dinner. The unmistakeable white head identified this beauty as a bald eagle, the first I've ever seen in the wild.

Having grown up in a time period when the eagle was in danger of extinction, it was very heartening to see this beautiful creature living in a semi-urban environment and not just in the woodsy backcountry where so few could enjoy its majesty. I looked it up and found that it has been removed from the endangered list in 1995, moving to the "Threatened" category, and in 2007, it was delisted from the "Threatened" category. This is a remarkable achievement for a bird that was on the verge of extinction in the lower 48 during my lifetime.

I would have to say seeing the bald eagle was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. I have a geocaching friend in Nebraska, who is a serious birder and keeps life lists of birds she's seen. I hope she's already experienced.

While the GPS Maze exhibit won't always be at the museum (it's scheduled to close on Labor Day), the bridge and arboretum will be there for a long time. Next time you're driving north or south along Interstate 5, take the time to spend a day exploring this area of the northern Sacramento Valley. I seriously doubt you'll regret the decision.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
GPS Adventures Maze Exhibit-Turtle Bay Park - by Groundspeak
Quality Time - by BlueBoyDavid

Surprises in the mail

2010-08-11T20:21:00.000-07:00

Most of the mail we get these days are bills. Email has become so prevalent, that we rarely get any written correspondence from anyone, so when something does come in the mail, we usually are surprised. Most of what I get in written correspondence are postcards.

I belong to a website called Postcrossing. The premise is pretty simple - send a postcard, receive a postcard from somewhere in the world a little bit later on. The more you send, the more you receive. I've acquired quite a collection of postcards from around the world. One of the postcards I received this summer, didn't come via Postcrossing however. Here's where it gets interesting.

Over two years ago, I wrote on this blog about a student of mine who was taking a trip of a lifetime. At that time, he was a part time geocacher, nothing obsessive, but he enjoyed going out and finding a cache from time to time. Most of his caches he logged under his family's account, but he also logged a couple under his own account. I kidded with him before he left that he should find a couple of caches down in Ecuador where he was going. He took me up on that and found a virtual cache and a regular cache in some of the free time he had available.

At the same time, I also asked if he could send me a postcard from Ecuador. He did, but he did it in a unique way. Apparently, he found a spot down there where you could post cards on a board and hopefully, someone would see the card and bring it closer to its destination. He posted the card at the "Barrel" on Florence Island in the Galapagos on March 7th, 2008 It took over two years, but the postcard arrived by the US mail at the beginning of the summer this year. Every now and then, you get one of those neat surprises in the mail.

Duck, Duck, Goose

2010-08-07T15:12:00.000-07:00

When we're camping, every so often, the Tadpole and I take time out from Geocaching, just to enjoy what's near us. In the case of Lassen, it was Manzanita Lake, a gorgeous body of water right next door to the campground where we were camped. One of the days we were there, we decided to hike around the lake, a 1.8 mile loop, plus walk to and from our campsite, probably put it close to two and a half miles.

Since we were walking around a like, the terrain, for the most part was very flat. There were a few up and downhill sections, but it was an easy hike. We were out, just to enjoy the scenery and to get a little exercise in the process. We'd also learned at the visitors center that the trail would be open all the way around the lake. The park service had been doing a controlled burn along one part of the lake and the trail had been intermittently closed during the week. We were fortunate that day.

Hiking with the Tadpole has become an adventure over the past couple of years. My daughter and wife have always complained that I walk too fast for them. I have a quick pace, but I don't feel it's that fast. His pace, on the other hand, is freeway speed. And I really think that's probably not the right choice of speeds. He has very long legs and he just takes longer strides. Needless to say, I spent most every hike, catching up to him. That's not a bad thing, just an observation.

I had a couple of goals in mind when we went on this hike. The first and foremost was to enjoy myself. That was a pretty easy goal in reality. The walk was pleasant, and we ended up with several spectacular views of Mt. Lassen. This leads me to my second goal. I have a picture in my bedroom of Mt. Lassen that I took after I graduated from college. My friend had driven up with my family to see me graduate and then he and I went camping at Lassen and Yosemite before I came home and started the reality of life. It was one of those last flings before adulthood set in permanently.

I'd gotten a decent picture on the hike we took back then, and my goal was to get at least as good a shot this time. I figured that the likelihood would be that the shot, overall, would be better because of the excess snow on the mountain. I was not disappointed in the overall effect. The breeze was just strong enough that there wasn't a really good reflection in the lake, but you can still make out the form of the mountain in the lake's reflection.

From that spot, we headed through the controlled burn area. This was interesting from the standpoint of just seeing little smoldering areas. Signs had been posted telling not to report it, since they already knew of this fire. Also, the fire wasn't going to go anywhere, because it was very small, and the wind was blowing it to the lake's edge. There was no place for it to go, so it would naturally burn itself out anyway. I took a picture of one of the little tongues of flame coming from a small area of pine needles, but it didn't come out very well. The purpose of the burn was to clear out the underbrush, so when a natural fire does occur, it doesn't become catastrophic like many fires have become recently. I'll be writing about this more in depth in another post later on.

As we continued around, we stopped and watched a wood duck family enjoying what looked like one of their first outings outside of the nest. 8 little ducklings and mother were enjoying a fine day for a swim. We watched the ducks for about a half an hour, mainly because there was another duck harassing the mother, so we decided to stay and watch the interaction between mother and this intruder. Ducklings stayed together, almost in formation, while mother chased the intruder off. When mom was back, then they would break ranks, so to speak and be a little more adventurous. It was an interesting study in animal biology.

As we continued on, we rounded another bend and came upon four Canada Geese feeding on the shoreline. Canada Geese are very large birds and they were the dominant swimming bird in this lake and the nearby Reflection Lake. We'd actually seen a gosling earlier in the morning and it was the size of a large chicken. These geese were not the exception, but I was still very surprised when only three of them waded out into the shallows as we approached their feeding spot along the trail. One goose, apparently, couldn't have cared less that these two larger creatures were invading its space. It just kept eating and enjoying life.

We spotted several other groups of geese as we continued on our hike. They tended to congregate near the boat launching area of the lake, mainly because I believe they probably ended up getting some handouts from some of the tourists in that area. Needless to say, feeding the wildlife, no matter how hungry they appear to be, does the wildlife no good whatsoever. In fact, it harms them, because they'll become dependent upon people food and won't bulk up on their natural foods that are better for them. What was nice was none of the people who were at the boat landing area were even encouraging the geese to come over for food.

Fortunately, the park service is doing a fairly good job of educating the visitors to the park. Bear boxes seem to be the norm in most campgrounds in California now. I have think back to the early 80s to remember a time when there weren't bear resistant boxes in the campgrounds. My first camping trip to Sequoia National Park with my daughter in 1995 was the last time I've actually seen a bear. That's a good thing. Bears that stay away from humans will remain living bears. Bears that congregate near humans and start feeding on human food become dead bears much more quickly than bears that don't. The same holds true for the ducks and the geese.

We continued around the lake, ending up at our starting point, then headed back to our campground. No geocaches were found, but then again, none were attempted, so that was fine. We'd had a good day, just enjoying nature. And that worked for us.

A "Maze" ing

2010-08-04T17:35:00.000-07:00

Long before we'd planned our summer camping trip, we knew the GPS Maze exhibit was going to be in Redding throughout this summer. After I pointed this out to the Tadpole early in the springtime, he stated he wanted to visit it, so I started planning our vacation around Redding. With Lassen National Park, just an hour or so to the east, it was a no brainer to figure out where we were going to camp, and at that point, things started to fall into place.

Later one, I found out that Chaosmanor was going to be up in the area sometime during the summer as well. Their youngest daughter was getting married in late June along the coast of California, and so we plotted to see whether we could meet up at the Maze at the same time. There was also an outside possibility that the maze could be their 4000th cache find as well, so it would be fun to share that with them.

Chaosmanor was coming from Klamath Falls, OR, and were farther away. We didn't know exactly when they'd get there, but we planned on meeting and having lunch at the Turtle Bay Museum and either going through the maze beforehand, or afterwards depending upon arrival times of both of us. The Tadpole and I headed out in the morning, grabbing a couple of caches along the way, including a nice benchmark virtual cache just east of Redding.

We got to the museum and paid our admission and then walked around the grounds. The Turtle Bay Exploration Park is a science museum and much more. It appears to be built upon an estuary of the Sacramento River. There were walkways from the entrance/gift shop over to the main building of the museum which sat on the bank of the Sacramento River. Surprisingly, the wetland area was relatively dry, considering how moist the winter had been.

We decided to wait on the museum, opting for the butterfly exhibit, where they had multitudes of different kinds of butterflies flying freely. We had to watch our step so as to not crush the butterflies that might be on the path. I've experienced one of these houses at the San Diego Zoo about 30 years ago, but this was a first for the Tadpole. Still, I'm not sure who was more excited about this little side excursion, he or me.

After an abortive attempt on a geocache just outside the fence to the park, we decided to head over to the museum and view some of the exhibits. The science museum is centered around the ecology of the Sacramento River, so there were many different exhibits with live fish from the river, as well as other exhibits about the Native American population that used to inhabit the area. We spent the better part of an hour enjoying ourselves with the different exhibits offered. There was also a photograph gallery, with some very good amateur photographs on display.

The only thing that we hadn't explored yet, was the GPS Maze. We walked into the entrance area for the maze, looked at some of the stuff available for sale at the gift kiosk located outside the maze, then decided to walk across the river on the bridge behind the museum (more on this in a later post). There were people out and about, enjoying the warm day with their family, friends and animals. We walked to the far side of the bridge, then decided to find a cache on that side. There were other caches further down, but we didn't take advantage of those, since we were both starting to get hungry and neither of us is a good cacher when we're hungry.

Fortunately, Chaosmanor called at that time saying they were outside and to expect them shortly, so we headed back across the bridge and met them in the museum foyer. After a hearty lunch, we headed over to the GPS Maze exhibit. The maze exhibit, is just that, a maze, with partitions and displays along almost all of the walls of the exhibit. The purpose is to explain GPS technology and the hobby of geocaching. While in the maze, we had to find four different geocaches, which contained clues that allowed us to enter locked rooms within the maze that held special areas. One entire locked room was dedicated to travel bugs and geocoins.

Almost immediately, we were separated from Chaosmanor as they chose a different path in the maze. We eventually met up with them and discovered that we'd each solved three of the locked areas and had but the same locked area to solve before we were able to get out of the maze. We did that last section together and it took all of us a fairly long time to find that last geocache. I think I had my fingers on it at one point, but didn't realize what I was touching. Eventually, we worked our way through the maze and back into the main area, where we both spent, probably more money than we should have on geocaching paraphernalia.

The overall construction of the maze was probably the highlight point of the maze. It had been made in such a way so as to not frustrate novice museum goers, who just wanted to experience the maze. It wasn't too difficult for them, yet it wasn't easy and possibly boring for experienced geocachers. It was truly well done.

We decided to walk the museum again with Chaosmanor, then went over to the butterfly exhibit again as well. We also went outside the park, and found that geocache I had been unable to find earlier in the day. One of the reasons I enjoy caching with others, is it gives one or more sets of eyes looking at the same things. I couldn't find it earlier, yet I was the one who came up with the find when all three of us were out there. Sometimes I think there is more pressure when you're by yourself to find the cache, and so the obvious doesn't always jump out at you. I seem, for whatever reason, to be able to make the geosensing jumps better when caching with others.

The maze is there until Labor Day. I'm actually hoping that as it hopscotches around the country, it makes an appearance in Southern California. I wouldn't mind taking a tour of it again. It was a fun day, exploring both the maze and the museum grounds.

My apologies for the poor quality pictures. My main camera's battery died the day before, so these were all taken with my cell phone.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
GPS Adventures Maze Exhibit-Turtle Bay Park - by Groundspeak

Lava Beds

2010-08-02T17:05:00.000-07:00

As noted in my last post, a straight line is not always the shortest distance between two points. That could not be more apparent than the route we took to get from Lassen Volcanic National Park up to Lava Beds National Monument.
Although the monument is almost exactly due north from Lassen, the route to get there takes you northwest, then northeast, then northwest again. That's just the way the roads go up there. Finally, there's that little decision about which entrance to take, the north or the south?

Because of the distance involved, we chose to drive straight up to Lava Beds, foregoing any caching along the way. We figured, we wanted to optimize our time, and there was only one objective as far as caching went. So, without caching, we drove, then came in through the southern entrance. You can't really see much, but if you look at the entrance sign post, you can definitely tell where the county road ends and the federal road begins. The county road was a lot worse in spots and not well maintained.

Lava Beds is a very interesting spot. The park protects an area of former volcanic activity. If you look at a map of the United States, you could draw a line, stretching from Lava Beds, up to Yellowstone. That line would also pass through or be near Craters of the Moon National Monument, another area of volcanic activity. The present theory is there is a hot spot of magma underneath Yellowstone, fueling the thermal and volcanic activity there. This hot spot used to be underneath Craters of the Moon and then previously Lava Beds as the earthen plates moved over the magma.

Lava Beds is an area of volcanic flows and a great amount of lava tubes, places where lava flowed, then as the lava subsided, large empty tubes, or caves were left behind. Several of these tubes are available for exploring and we brought out flashlights along just for this occasion. The park also rents hard hats out, but we weren't going to be exploring some of the low ceiling caves, so we didn't take advantage of that. There were large amounts of lava rock alongside the trail and we spotted one of the largest pieces of obsidian, known as volcanic glass, that I'd ever seen.

Because the area is dry, these caves are not what most people typically expect caves to be, full of fanciful formations. They have mostly a rough interior, but there are very few formations of any kind, no stalactites, no stalagmites or flow curtains. They are, nonetheless, impressive to see with some being over thirty feet in diameter. We explored several, including Mushpot Cave, Skull Cave and Valentine Cave, so named because it was discovered on that ever important day.

Skull Cave, where the only virtual cache is located in the park, is particularly interesting. Named because of skeletons found in the cave, it descends down into the earth. There are metal staircases going down and at the bottom there can be found ice year round. It's not one of those caves you'd want to stay in for very long, especially if you were dressed as we were, for the 90˚ weather topside. We walked down, felt the ice on the floor of the cave and then retreated to the surface.

There were several caves in the park that had Native American petroglyph drawings on the cave walls. We hiked out to this cave and viewed those. Once again, I was struck by the toughness of life. At the entrance to one of these caves, there was a large tree growing out of the roof of the cave. We could not see any of the roots coming through the roof, yet the roof was probably only about 10 feet thick. The tree was probably twenty to thirty feet tall. Just amazing that it had been able to grow that large with such poor soil possibilities for it.

We ended up driving through the park and exiting via the northern entrance, then headed back to Lassen. The park is located in Siskiyou County, a county that I had already found a cache, but we had yet to find a cache in Modoc County. Once outside the park, we were in Modoc County, so it was just a matter of driving down the road and finding some caches before leaving the county to get that particular county checked off for the 58 California County Challenge Cache.

Because of the time driving to and from, we probably didn't spend as much time as we could have there. I think if I were to do this trip over again, I would have decided to move camp and camp up at Lava Beds for a night or two, but the day trip worked well for what we wanted to do this trip. As always, the caching and the companionship were excellent, so it was a good day.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches and waymarks:
Lava Beds National Monument - by Webfoot
Skull Cache - by ChrissySkyking + Blaze

Straight Line Caching

2010-07-30T17:50:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, you run across a cache where you think you're smarter than the cache owner. I've had that happen on one of my caches, where I wanted cache finders to come in one way, but they came in another way. To be perfectly honest, I hadn't even explored that possibility when I hide the cache. I've gone in both ways and they both are adventures, although adventures of a different kind. One is a nice trail, the other requires more bushwhacking.

The Tadpole and I ran into those circumstances while up in Lassen earlier in the month. The cache is located just outside the park boundary on the western side of the park. There appears to be several possible access points leading to the cache, but the cache owners give only the western one. Well, we didn't feel we needed to follow the cache owners instructions, because we're smarter than the cache owner. Why hike six tenths of a mile, when you only have to hike .17 miles? Sounds easy, right?

Wrong. If you look at the cache page, the satellite view of the cache area shows the cache to be in an open area, surrounded by some sparsely scattered bushes. Well, from ground experience, those sparsely scattered bushes were a dense, impenetrable wall of manzanita bushes. Scratchy and very dense, it wasn't pleasant trying to bushwhack through those and we gave up, not once, but twice. We tried from the east which was a third of a mile away. No go. We tried from the north which was only .17. That was even worse.

The Tadpole wanted to try from a service area inside the park, which upon closer inspection shows the other end of the trail that is described on the cache page, but by that time, I'd decided that I'd already donated too much DNA to the surrounding plants, so we went in the cache owner's way. I was able to get the van in to about a half a mile before we hiked the rest of the way in. It was an adventure, but I need to remember if in doubt, follow the cache owner's guidance. They've been there before, you haven't. The shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line.

Picture was taken at or near the following geocache:
Loomis - by 2dogs and mtnsteve

Lassen

2010-07-28T17:24:00.000-07:00

There are a couple of national parks that protect historical and cultural treasures within our country. Most, if not all, protect scenic beauty and many also protect geological wonders. Lassen Volcanic definitely falls into the latter two categories.

One of the nice things about Lassen Volcanic National Park is it is one of the least visited national parks in the lower 48 states. Consequently, there are very few crowds in this park, even on a busy weekend. We happened to be at the park during the 4th of July weekend and were only confronted by crowds once, and that was in the visitors center. Once we were out on the trail or the park road, we encountered very few other people. Even the campground wasn't totally filled on that weekend, which I found surprising, since there is a substantial population to the west concentrated in several towns in the Sacramento Valley.

Probably one part of the equation was the winter we've had in California earlier in the year. The Sierra Nevada and the Cascade range got a large amount of snowfall this year. Hikers we encountered on the John Muir trail spoke of walking more often on snow as opposed to terra firma. One couple we spoke with told us there wasn't any trail to follow, so they were just following other's footsteps in the snow.

Snow in the high country isn't unheard of, but it's surprising to see that much of it, especially in late June and early July. My wife and I were in Crater Lake National Park on July 19th, 1987, basically snowed in. A storm had moved through Northern California and Oregon the day before and dropped a foot of brand new snow on the rim of the caldera. The rim drive had been shut down. It made for spectacular scenery, but it's a little disconcerting wearing winter gear in the middle of the summertime.

Lassen's elevation varies from around 5000 feet above sea level up to just over 10,000 feet at the summit of Mt. Lassen. The high point for the road that traverses the park is 8100 feet. As I noted in another post detailing where we would be going camping, we knew there would be snow at Lassen. We also knew the road was closed, but I decided to gamble that the road was open by the time we'd get there. I lost that gamble.

That didn't deter us from seeing the park. The major thermal area of Bumpass Hell was off limits due to the heavy snow. However, the small area of Sulphur Works, which is right by the road side was open. We got to see boiling water, colored a mustard yellow color and fumaroles steaming away. The smell of rotten eggs was prevalent.

The creek rushing downstream was a milk gray color from the sediments and minerals in the surrounding area. I wish Bumpass Hell had been open, as it would have been even more spectacular than what we saw, but I guess this just means we'll have to go back some other time to see it.

As it was, because of the snow, the two earthcaches that we'd planned on getting in the park were also out of the question. The Devil's Breath, was at Bumpass Hell. No way were we going to be able to get out there. I've camped at Lassen several times in the past, even hiked in hip deep snow to get to Bumpass Hell in June right after I graduated from college back in 1981. This time, the snow was overwhelming.

By not being able to drive through the park, we ended up driving completely around the park, something that we had planned for and were prepared to do should it come to that. That actually worked to our advantage, geocaching-wise, since instead of concentrating on those two earthcaches and possibly a couple of caches just outside the southern park border, we ended up getting over a dozen caches on our trip around the park. We gave ourselves several hours inside the park on the south side to view Sulphur Works and drive up to the Lassen Peak trailhead, where the other earthcache, Vulcan's Mecca was located. Once again, we were stopped by the snow from getting to the peak because the trail was closed about halfway up the peak. Next time.

On the drive down from the Lassen Peak parking lot, we stopped at a pullout to get a look at all of the snow. Helen Lake, which is at 8000 feet elevation still had a thin sheen of ice on its surface. If you didn't know the picture had been taken on July 2nd, you could swear you were in the middle of a clear winter's day. It was amazing to see.

The downside is we missed a couple of caches. There were so many upsides that it didn't matter. The scenery was spectacular and because of our change in itinerary, we ended up finding more geocaches because of it. Probably the best thing of all was our trip a couple of days later over to Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, which is to the west of Lassen.

Last year, when my older son and I drove through the same area in mid July, the lakes were down considerably, showing a bathtub ring which appeared to be fifty to a 100 feet deep. There was no bathtub ring to be seen this year in the lakes. Whiskeytown Lake was filled to capacity, with water right at the vegetation's edge as opposed to 100 feet away. Hopefully, we'll get another couple of good years like this past year, so we don't have to worry about water as much as we've had to in the past. Not enough water isn't a very good thing. This year, at least, we don't have to worry so much about that problem.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
The Devil's Breath - by hafhas
Vulcan's Mecca - by Booty Buddies

Cache hiding

2010-07-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

In the past, I've dealt with what I think is the most efficient use of my time with regard to the hobby/game/silliness that we all know as geocaching. I've kept a goal for myself of a 1% threshold, where I have hidden at least 1 hide for every 100 I find. I probably could hide more than that, but there's an issue of quality in my mind. I don't hide micros. The smallest container I've ever hidden was a rectangular Altoids container. The only reason I hid that was as a replacement cache for the one that I accidentally lost in my haste to make the grab. Ooops.

Other than that cache, which really wasn't mine, the smallest has been a decon container. I like decon containers for a number of reasons. The first is they're large enough to hold a small travel bug or any geocoin. In my mind, I think a small should be able to hold at least something other than a log book. A geocoin makes this criteria. The second reason I like decon containers is they're small enough for general placement. I have a couple of decon containers that are hidden just off trails and every time I go out to check on them, they're a tough find. It's embarrassing having a tough time on your own cache. Usually when happens after I check on them is I up the difficulty rating on the cache by half a star or so.

Those and the traditional ammo can are usually my containers of choice for caches, but I've been know to use other things, particularly old coffee containers. But that's beside the point I'm trying to make here. It's more background information.

My arbitrary 1% threshold was set by me as a way to keep a balance in my caching. I hid my first two caches after only finding 14 caches. By my own standards, I don't think that's enough cache finds to adequately make a decent hide. There are always exceptions to the rule, but I think had I waited, I might have tried some camouflage techniques on the containers. Neither of the first two containers were camouflaged, just a container with a label on the outside indicating that it's a geocache (see the picture). Not that camouflage is a necessary requirement for a geocache, but I think they would look better if they had. And yet one is still out there after almost 9 years in the field, so i guess it's done OK for a non camoed cache.

The 1% threshold for me keeps me from having too many caches out there at any one time, yet at the same time, it allows me to give back to the caching community. At present I have hidden 35 caches, but only 22 are active. I think if I had more than about 30 caches active at a time, all I would be doing would be cache maintenance. Granted, cache maintenance is part of the game, but it's not the only part. I don't know how people who have 100 or so hides active do it unless they shirk that part of their caching responsibility. Nothing's worse in my opinion than coming across a cache site, not finding a cache and then checking the cache page and finding a string of DNFs dating back several months. That just shows that the cache owner doesn't care about their cache.

What this all really leads to is I'm approaching my 1% again. In the next couple of days, I will end up going over the mini milestone of 3400 cache finds, which will put me within 100 finds of the 1%. I've been working on a couple of hides, so it's now time for me to go out and place a couple more caches. The one I've been working on for the last couple of days is a puzzle cache with a theme to it, only the second time I've themed a cache.

The graphic of national park patches comes from my collection of patches that I've purchased over the years. The Mesa Verde Patch was the very first patch I ever purchased, buying that particular patch back in the summer of 1971. I will be making a graphic for that cache, based on those patches that cache finders will have to de-cypher in order to find the cache. I guess local readers have an advanced warning, but they haven't see the puzzle yet, so it's really not a head start for them.

I hope to have this one out by the end of the week. Today would have been a good day to go out and hide it, since it was unseasonably cool this morning, but I had no energy this morning due to a migraine. If the weather continues in this vein, I might get out tomorrow or Wednesday to hide it. I'm hoping this one will be challenging for cachers.

Top picture was taken the following geocache:
Willow Creek Cache - by The Swamp Things

Hot Rock

2010-07-23T12:57:00.000-07:00

One of the things about camping at higher elevations is the differences in weather that we're normally used to experience at our regular altitude. Before our camping trip, I had received an email from Chaosmanor asking what I was going to do about Lassen Volcanic National Park? I didn't know what the heck he was talking about, so I started investigating and discovered that the park road was still closed due to the high volume of snow.

I could postpone our trip, but I'm not sure if that was going to accomplish anything, so I decided to keep out timetable and leave when we had planned to leave. If there was snow, that would just add to the adventure. Besides, we had planned to meet Chaosmanor up at the GPS Maze exhibit on the 5th of July. If I postponed our trip, that visit wouldn't happen. It was something to consider, but for the most part, I didn't seriously think too long about postponing the trip. The snow could be fun.

The day we got to Lassen, we headed down the park road, which was cleared for about 10 miles into the park. The drive took us to several locations, one of which is interesting from the standpoint that we could get a feel for what Mt. St. Helens might look like in 70 years or so. Mt. Lassen erupted almost 100 years ago and today, it is a living laboratory. It's about 70 years ahead of Mt. St. Helens, which is a similar type of volcano, being in the same Cascade range.

Along the road, we stopped at the Hot Rock, a very large boulder that had been ejected from Mt. Lassen and come to rest approximately 5 miles away from where it had started in the mountain. I scanned a postcard that I purchased at the visitors center showing the rock only days after it had been ejected from the mountain. B. F. Loomis, a photographer had taken this photograph and had noted that the rock had glowed red hot for several days after it had made its final resting spot. Loomis' photos are a great historical record of the area, which can be compared with similar views today. The rock as noted on the postcard, was 20x18x14 feet, a massive rock. Today, it stands by the side of the park road, with no view of the mountain any more.

There is another area just down the road from the Hot Rock known as the Devastated Area. It has a similar view to the Hot Rock postcard picture. In the postcard, the ridge of trees to the right were spared, because of the local topography. The heat, volcanic winds and mud and landslides from that major eruption swept around or over the ridge sparing many of those trees. However, the other area to the left is clearly barren of any kind of plant life. That is what was called the Devastated Area. Compare that with the picture I took at the Devastated Area. Nature has a way of reclaiming its own eventually. This is a glimpse of what Mt. St. Helens could look like in the future.

Pictures were taken near the geocache:
Loomis - by 2dogs and mtnsteve

Rainbow Falls

2010-07-21T16:43:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine, who I introduced to geocaching, described geocaching as "Hiking with a purpose." I would respectfully have to disagree with him. I guess it's probably because I grew up with camping and hiking. My first camping trip (to Yosemite National Park) was with my parents when I was four years old. Everywhere we camped, we hiked. If you didn't want to hike, you stayed in camp, unless Mom decided to go on a hike too, which was many the time, so we learned to hike.

When we go camping today, we hike. If it weren't for geocaching, we'd still hike, but I think geocaching has expanded those hikes to new and different places. As a travel enthusiast, I like to take new roads when I go somewhere. Driving the same road, back and forth to the same locale isn't what I'd like to do, although I know people who enjoy that. It's just not for me.

That's probably why we end up going to so many different spots when we camp. Camping in the same place is OK, but different locales afford us new and different experiences. And, obviously, it also gives us more chances to geocache. The hiking aspect of geocaching comes into play, but it's not the reason we geocache, nor is geocaching the reason we hike. We hike, because we like to be outdoors. I like to watch the scenery go by.

When we hiked to Rainbow Falls south of Devils Postpile, we took the shuttle bus from our campground to the trail head. We could have just hiked from the campground up and back, but that would have been the same route. We also had other things to accomplish that day, so by taking the shuttle to the trail head, it shortened what would have been a five mile round trip hike into a 3.8 mile hike. It was still a significant hike, but a little less strenuous and thus gave our legs a little more energy for later in the day.

The hike down to the falls took us through a major burn area from a lightning strike fire that started at the southern end of the park and burned through a major part of the park in 1992. The area, almost 20 years beyond that fire still shows the scars but is slowly rebounding. There were many old snags standing as sentinels over the landscape and just as many fallen trees. We could see evidence on the downed logs of recent bear activity as the bears looked for grubs and termites in their quest for food. The animals were helping with the decomposition, which was further enhancing the soil, allowing the new growth of plants to flourish.

The falls were spectacular and we got there at a good time. The sun was overhead and because of the large amount of water in the San Joaquin River, the water was plunging over the 101 foot precipice at a high rate, causing a lot of mist to spray up at the bottom, creating the signature rainbow for which the falls are named. Actually, if you look closely in one of the pictures, you'll see a double rainbow.

We then took our time, lingering around the viewpoint, as well as taking in the other views that had been built. The third viewpoint, a staircase down to the river below the falls was the most strenuous and the least traveled. We ended up seeing the waterfall through the water droplets on our glasses down there, but it was well worth the extra time. Were there any geocaches down there? Nope. We hiked there for the experience.

Afterwards, we hiked down to the lower falls, a smaller waterfall further down the trail and outside the park boundary. Apparently, there were only two other people who took advantage of that trail while we were there, because we saw them at the brink of the lower falls. We didn't see anyone else on that portion of the trail the entire time we were on it. Alone in the wilderness.

The return trip was via the main trail that runs along the eastern edge of the park from the falls back to the postpile and beyond to the campground at the northern end of the park. While on that trail, I kept watching the mountains to the west of me. Trees would obscure them for awhile and then allow me different glimpses of them further down the trail. I kept watching this one ridge as it slowly blocked the view. Eventually I had to stop and take a couple of pictures, otherwise I figured I might lose the view entirely.

Every time I stopped, it seemed like there was another group of hikers heading out to the falls. The trail is very level, and thus, a very easy trail for all age groups, even if it is 2.5 miles long one way. I would think that most people could do this trail, even if they weren't in the best of shape. It would be a good workout for those not in tip top shape and a stroll in the park for those that were. I probably fit into the former as opposed to the latter.

The common question I ended up getting by most of the groups was "How much farther are the falls?" Since I had an earthcache at the falls in my GPSr, I was able to give them "crow fly" mileage at least, but since the trail went relatively straight to the falls at that point, the GPSr mileage wasn't that far off. The interactions with other hikers were pleasant and didn't detract from the overall experience I had on the trail.

It was a great hike. And yes, there was an earthcache at the falls location. Did we hike out there to get the earthcache? Yes we did. But I think the more important question is, would we have hiked out there had there not been an earthcache out there? Yes we would. As President Kennedy stated in a speech in 1961, "And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?" The answer is self evident. In reality, I don't feel geocaching is hiking with a purpose. I think, rather, it's another reason to get out and hike.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
Rainbow Falls - Devil’s Postpile NM - by TerryDad2

Underrated

2010-07-19T14:29:00.000-07:00

One of America's Best Ideas has been the creation of National Parks. It started with Abraham Lincoln, back in the 1860s when he signed legislation protecting parts of Yosemite Valley and continued into the 1870s when Yellowstone National Park was created by congressional act. In 1906, Congress passed the Antiquities Act of 1906, which allowed presidents the power to set aside tracts of land as national monuments, kind of a step lower than a national park, which can only be created by an act of Congress. Today, there are national parks all around the world protecting areas of scientific interest, or scenic beauty for generations to come.

Many of the first National Monuments have been later created into National Parks, such as Katmai National Park in Alaska and Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. Presidents Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt had the foresight to originally protect these areas until Congress got around to finishing the job. The National Park Service was created in 1916 and administers many more units than just the 58 national parks in the United States.

There are still many national monuments scattered around the United States and the Tadpole and I were fortunate to visit two of them on our latest camping trip, Devils Postpile and Lava Beds. Coupled with Lassen Volcanic National Park, which we also visited, there was a definite theme to what we saw on this latest trip. My point for all this history is I believe that many national monuments are neglected by the general populace, because they aren't national parks, they aren't the best of what America has to offer.

To this I say that most of the national monuments I've visited in my lifetime are vastly underrated. They usually are smaller than a typical national park, but have many of the scenic vistas one comes to expect at a national park, but with usually no crowds to speak of. On a hike out to Rainbow Falls in Devils Postpile National Monument, we encountered the usual number of hikers who were willing to take the fairly easy 2.5 mile hike out to the falls. However, once there, they took their pictures, and then made the return trek. There were many times when we had the views all to ourselves.

Many times, while hiking in a national park, we've encountered other hikers, but there was no practical way of getting away from them, mainly because there were so many hikers. In Devils Postpile, all we had to do is wait a couple of minutes, and we had the place to ourselves again. We took the slower route to many areas of the park and enjoyed the solitude the park had to offer to us.

The same could be said for Lava Beds National Monument. The park preserves multiple lava tubes, historical areas and beautiful landscapes we have come to expect from these kinds of areas. The small campsites at both places were clean and never filled. Contrast that to many national park areas where you have to get camping reservations 6 months in advance and there's no chance of having the campsite next to you empty.

Another enjoyable aspect of visiting national monuments is most people have gone out of there way to visit these areas, probably because they have an interest in what the monument is offering. Many times, you'll find like minded people that you can share an experience with, that might not happen in a national park, because of the many tourists who are there, to enjoy, but not necessarily immerse themselves.

We had an enjoyable evening with an older couple taking their youngest granddaughter on her first camping trip in Devils Postpile. We watched as two young men came into the campground and picked out a campsite. I made a comment that I believed that these two young men were probably either walking the Pacific Crest Trail or the John Muir Trail based upon their backpacks. Sure enough that had been walking for the past five days from Toulomne Meadows in Yosemite National Park to the Postpile, a distance of 34 miles. That doesn't seem like they were walking very quickly, but the snow had slowed them down tremendously over many of the mountain passes.

I would not have been able to enjoy their stories had we avoided Devils Postpile. It's on the route of both of those long range trails. You don't encounter backpackers on the trail that often in many of the national parks, because they're walking through remote regions of those parks. With the national monuments, many times the monument is the remote region.

The experiences I've shared in national parks and monuments have both been enjoyable and enriching. I just think the national monuments are underused treasures of the national park system. They are truly underrated. But, let's keep that our little secret. We don't want them to get too crowded.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Devils Postpile National Monument - by truckgirl2
Skull Cache (Lava Beds National Monument) - by ChrissySkyking + Blaze
Cinder Hills Overlook (Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument) - by TerryDad2

A tree grows in Brooklyn

2010-07-16T22:23:00.000-07:00

Well, the tree doesn't really grow in Brooklyn, but actually grows on the top of Devils Postpile. The first time I was at Devils Postpile, we climbed up to the top of the postpile. It's like being on top of a large patio terrace in someone's back yard, with the major difference being if you take a wrong step, you're falling a long way.

10 years ago, I took all three kids camping in Yosemite National Park. On one of our hikes, we hiked up to the top of Vernal Fall. The hike is strenuous, with lots of stair steps rocks to negotiate. There is a guardrail along that part of the trail, and once you get to the top, the guardrail had a screen wire grate along the bottom portion of the rail to prevent anyone from slipping out and falling over the waterfall. The viewpoint is right on the edge of the waterfall as you can see by the picture.

The Tadpole, at the time was four years old and when we climbed to the top of the fall, he dutifully held my hand, mainly for safety, but also because he wanted to feel the support of Dad as he made his ascent. It was at the top when all hell almost broke loose. In every parent's worst nightmare, he broke free of my hand, just as we crested the trail and the viewpoint. I hadn't seen the wire mesh grate, but even if I had, I probably would have freaked a little bit. Because I didn't see the wire mesh, needless to say I freaked a lot. Suffice to say, nothing happened that day and the Tadpole is still around, as am I.

One of the things I noticed about the Tadpole on this past trip was his willingness to just take over things that I normally did when we camped. He decided to be in charge of the food storage box. In California, most campgrounds in bear country are outfitted with metal storage lockers to prevent bears from raiding your supplies and also to keep bears away from populated areas. Bears that feed on people food, as opposed to what they're supposed to be eating isn't good for either bears or people. The Tadpole decided that the storage box was his territory on this trip. He organized it, he got the supplies out when it was time to cook dinner, and he put the supplies away at the end of the meal. It was nice to not have to do everything this time around.

I think I might have been more nervous on the top of Devils Postpile back then had we gone there. There is no guardrail and not anything to remind people of a steep drop. Everyone knows it's there. I didn't even think twice about walking around up there nor did I worry about the Tadpole. His maturity, at almost 15 now, is showing big time and he's turning into that responsible young man that we all hope our sons turn into when they reach that age.

One of the things that I wanted to show the Tadpole at the top was a small tree. I'd photographed this tree back in 1977. As you may have noticed if you're a regular reader, I enjoy seeing the struggles of like, especially when plants grow where you don't think they should grow. The tree that used to grow on the top of Sentinel Dome is one good example. When I took that photo, I figured this tree might be something along that line and I hoped that someday I might get back to see it. As you can see, the tree hasn't grown much. By comparing the two pictures, I think it's safe to say there's about a foot of growth on the tree.

I guess I was overly optimistic when we came back this summer. I think I was expecting the tree to be several feet higher. After all, it had 33 years in which to grow. I forgot about where it was growing. It had two major disadvantages going against it. The first, and probably the most important was the fact that it was growing in very shallow soil. There were a lot of nutrients at the top of the postpile and so it's growth would probably be microscopic. Because it's so readily accessible during the summer months, I'm sure it gets beaten around by all the people that make the short trek to the top of the postpile as well.

Still, the tree had grown a little and that was promising. It also showed, that it would be a long time before this little tree towered over anything else in the forest. It has its foothold. Now, hopefully, it will continue to send down roots and continue to thrive. The Jeffrey pine tree on the top of Sentinel Dome is no more, but it lived a good long life and never got more than about 12 feet tall at best. The living conditions up there were probably harsher. I have hopes for this little tree.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Mist Trail Cache - by V-man
Devils Postpile Glacial Polish - by TerryDad2

Earthcaches Galore

2010-07-12T22:01:00.000-07:00

Our trip along the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada culminated in our camping at Devils Postpile National Monument. This monument, established in 1911, preserves an interesting basaltic columnar formation and an impressive 101 foot waterfall, aptly named Rainbow Falls.

Since the monument is part of the National Park Service, no container type caches can be placed in it, but virtuals (if they were already created) and earthcaches can be. Earthcaches are a geological discovery. You learn from the cache page about a particular aspect of geology, answer some questions, based upon your observations at the cache site and thus, get credit for a cache find. It's the new type of virtual cache that Geocaching allows on its site.

In the park, we found four earthcaches, two on the first day and then two more the next day. We split them up only for convenience's sake. We could have done three on the first day, but the fourth required a substantial hike, so it was basically unavailable the first day of our camping trip.

One of the earthcaches we did on the first day was the Soda Springs earthcache. I'd been here in 1977 as part of a biology summer school class I'd taken at my local community college. Devils Postpile was one of the places we'd stopped to visit and I can remember our instructor, Dr. Bates, talking to us about the Soda Springs in the area. In August, the San Joaquin River, which runs through this glaciated valley is at a low point, with most of the winter snow melted at this point, so there isn't as much water movement where the springs are and so we could see lots of iron oxide precipitate deposited along the shoreline where the springs were.

We had a very heavy winter in the Sierra this year and even in late June, the runoff was tremendous. The San Joaquin was very close to flooding in areas. The meadows were very wet and boggy due to excess water - mosquitoes were rampant. Because the river was so high and swift moving, the iron oxide precipitate was non-existent here. It was fun to explain to the Tadpole the differences between the two time periods and why things were the way they were.

Other things we investigated while in the park were the direction the glacier moved through the park while it was polishing the top of and plucking the face of the postpile. The postpile is a series of basaltic columns that cooled a relatively even time frame. When the last ice age glacier scoured the area, the postpile was exposed for all to see. Over time, columns have eroded and fallen to the base, creating the postpile. The columns are generally smooth on the top where the glacier ground against them.

They are also large in size. At first glance, you can't really appreciate the size of the columns, but you have ample opportunities to get very close to some of the fallen columns and it's then you can truly appreciate how big they are. Earthcaches aren't for everyone, but as the Tadpole likes to say, "you get to learn something with these, so I like them." They take more time to do and so, they're not conducive to "numbers" runs, but then again, it's not really about the numbers, but the experience. You truly get to experience the surroundings with earthcaches.

Pictures were taken at or near the following earthcaches:
Soda Springs at Devils Postpile - by TerryDad2
Devils Postpile National Monument - by truckgirl2

Owens Valley

2010-07-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

The Tadpole and I just got back on Wednesday from one of our more satisfying camping trips in a couple of years. Camping trips in general seem to be fraught with could'ves and should'ves. This one didn't have that feel at all, with a couple of minor exceptions. We did what we wanted to do and only once, really got caught up in the, "No, we can't do that cache because we have to be somewhere else" mode.

That is a good thing in my opinion. There were lots of things to do, lots of things to explore and we both had a really good time. Our first day out was, obviously, a driving day. We managed to get a virtual flag near Red Mountain and about five caches on the drive up, including a couple after we established camp at Devils Postpile.

As we drove north we kept a look out for interesting things to see. I wanted to make sure my son got to see Mt. Whitney. We talked about the John Muir Trail that stretches from Whitney's peak to Yosemite Valley. We ended up walking along part of the trail while in Devils Postpile later in the day.

Once you get into the Owens Valley part of California, the scenery pretty much speaks for itself. Owens Valley is on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada and sits around 4000 feet of elevation. Directly to the west sit the Sierra Nevada, towering over the valley. At points there is a quick elevation gain of nearly 10,000 feet between the valley and the mountains.

The mountains, created by a fault block were uplifted and create a major rain shadow. Owens Valley is in the rain shadow and doesn't get much rainfall over the course of a given year, because the mountains trap the moisture from the clouds as they rise to go over them. This year was a particularly wet winter and there was a lot of snow in the high mountain passes and peaks. So much so that it would affect our camping trip down the road.

One spot we chose to stop was at Manzanar National Historic Site. Manzanar was one of several relocation centers for Japanese Americans during World War II. Many Japanese Americans were rounded up during the early stages of the war and sent to live in these relocations centers for, as the government put it at the time, "the safety of the Japanese people." Ironic that the guard towers posted at these relocation centers had their guns pointed inward as opposed to outward to protect from an external threat to the Japanese American people living there.

After touring the newly created visitors center at the old gymnasium, we were back on the road again, heading toward Devils Tower. We stopped for one more cache north of Manzanar and reveled in the beauty of the cache location. The disparity between the two locations was striking. Manzanar was a harsh and unforgiving place back then and is still, for the most part the same today. The National Park Service is slowly recreating it so that the visitor's experience will reflect the day to day life the Japanese Americans had during that time period.

Sixty miles to the north, the beauty of the place overwhelmed us, much like the starkness of Manzanar tried to do earlier. This time, we let it.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Manzanar Virtual Cache - by GoodDogSD
Cache with a View - by Rallye

Camping this summer

2010-06-28T06:06:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, the Tadpole and I will head out for our annual summer vacation camping trip. I have been camping with many different combinations of my kids every summer and sometimes during spring break for the past 16 years. We missed two summers, one due to circumstances beyond our control and the other because the Tadpole got sick on the first day, so we actually did camp that year, but only for one day.

This year, our trip is going to take us all the way to Northern California, not as far as last year when we got all the way to the panhandle of Idaho and into Montana, but still a good distance. Our first stop is Devils Postpile National Monument on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. The last time I was at the Postpile was the week Elvis died (1977 for those of you who aren't old enough to remember). We'd been backpacking in the area and had stopped at the Postpile at the beginning of our trek. At the end, we stopped in Bishop, California for lunch which is when we found out that Elvis had died.

I can remember taking a picture of a pine tree about a foot tall growing out of a crack in the top of the postpile. One of the things I'd like to see is how tall that tree has grown if it's survived. There are also extensive hiking trails in the area and we plan on taking advantage of these while we geocache.

From there, we will head up to Lassen Volcanic National Park. I have been camping in Lassen at least four times in the past, however the Tadpole has never been there. There were several things that I wanted to take him to see, including a possible trip up to the top of the mountain. The trail is fairly rigorous going to the top, but I'm pretty sure he'll be able to handle it this year. However, this year, the entire west coast got a lot of rainfall, and thus in the higher elevations, a lot of snow. The road through the park is still closed as they continue to work on snow removal. I have serious doubts as to whether we'll be able to make it to the summit.

There are also thermal areas in the park, one near the south entrance and one further in along the southern entrance. If the snow is still blocking the road, we may have to drive around to get to these areas, but it's something that's fairly unique to the park and I'd like him to see at least one of these. One day while we're camping there, we also plan on driving up to Lava Beds National Monument.

This area has more volcanic activity, similar to Lassen, yet different. If you were to look on a map of the United States, you could trace a line from Lava Beds, up to Yellowstone in Wyoming. The line would also run through Craters of the Moon in Idaho. All three areas are volcanic and are theorized to be created by a hot spot in the mantle of the earth. As the North American tectonic plate moved over this hot spot, lava oozed to the surface or nearly to the surface, and caused many of the features that can be seen in these three parks.

Currently, the hot spot is under Yellowstone, but in the near future (geologicially speaking) it will move beyond that and many of Yellowstone's current features will cease to exist because there won't be heat under them to help them to continue, including Old Faithful Geyser. If this theory holds up, our descendants can expect to see a new volcanic area forming to the northeast of Yellowstone. It's pretty cool to think about.

Lava Beds National Monument, besides the geologic history, also has some cultural history. It is the site of the Modoc Wars between Federal Cavalry troops and the Modoc Indian. Outnumbered 5 to 1, the Modocs managed to hold out for over five months in this region during 1872-73 because they knew the lay of the land much better than the cavalry that was trying to remove them from the area.

In all of the years I've been camping, I don't believe we've ever been away from home for the 4th of July. The town where we currently live has an annual parade down the main street, followed by speeches in the park and a fireworks show that evening. We'll probably drive near Redding, California just west of Lassen to view their fireworks display.

The next day, we plan to drive into town and visit the Turtle Bay Museum, where a GPS Maze exhibit will be this entire summer. When we discovered that this maze was going to be in Redding, we both decided that we wanted to go and see it. It doesn't look like it will be coming to the Southern California area any time in the near future, so this would possibly be our only opportunity to see one of these. I believe there's one happening currently in Baltimore, Maryland.

The last two days of our trip will be spent driving home, with a stop in Stockton, about midway between Lassen and home to visit my daughter, Tadpole's sister. On the way, we plan at least one detour in Yuba City to find this cache. Yuba City cache is the second oldest active cache in California, hidden in September 2000, almost 10 years ago. It's so old that it only carries two digits after it's GC designation symbol. It will definitely be the oldest cache I've ever found since starting this hobby.

This will be my last post for about a week, unless I can find a WiFi hotspot somewhere in Redding and can make a quick post, but I seriously doubt that will happen. Besides, I will be on vacation, so I'm not really planning on checking in until after I get home. Have fun in the meantime.

Butterflies are free to fly

2010-06-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

As you've probably guessed by now, I like to take pictures when I'm out geocaching. I don't necessarily take pictures every time I geocache, but when there's a hike involved, I'll usually have my camera along with me. One of my favorite subjects to take pictures of are butterflies.

I guess you could say I'm an amateur lepidopterologist. When I see a butterfly in the field, I usually watch it for several minutes in the hopes that it will alight somewhere and pose for me so I can take a picture of it. As a youngster, I can remember watching small yellow butterflies that were very common around my house. I had been told that these particular ones were moths, but I have since learned they are actually a type of skipper.

Since I had only seen these types of insects during the day, it made sense for them to be butterflies, as they are usually active during the day, while moths tend to be active at night. And that makes it nice to take pictures of butterflies, because they're out when I'm out. Back in December, I wrote about one of the Monarch wintering grounds near Pismo Beach, California. I can honestly say I've never seen so many Monarchs in one place ever.

I can remember growing up, reading about the Monarch butterfly and thinking if I'd ever get the chance to see one. Living in California, I had a good chance, but the opportunity never seemed to arise and I figured it was going to be one of those elusive creatures that I would never get to see except at a laboratory specimen. Then, one year while on our annual summer camping trip, I spotted one in Kings Canyon National Park in Zumwalt Meadows along a nature trail. I have seen many Monarchs since then, including one while out hiding my latest cache.

The interesting thing about butterfly identification is it's not an exact science. I tend to use this site as my guide when I'm trying to identify a butterfly. When I saw the Western Checkerspot on a trail hike last month, I was surprised to find that it could have been one of about four different subspecies.

There was another time while doing the Groundspeak series of caches when I spotted a pretty small green butterfly. It was late in the evening, so it was looking for a spot to rest of up for the night. When it found a spot, it folded up its wings and settled in. That didn't help with the identification, since much of the identity of a butterfly is on its top wings. The best I could do with that one was to narrow it down to either a Desert Marble or perhaps a California Marble. Once again, the identification guide is not fool proof, but it gave me a pretty good idea of what I was looking at.

These pictures here represent just a small portion of the butterflies I've seen in my lifetime. I have not been able to photograph them all, nor will I ever. I just think they're interesting to look at and I find it kind of neat to be able to note that the swallowtail isn't just a swallowtail, but a Pale Swallowtail.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
East Canyon Above and Beyond the Meadow - by SnakeSpotter
Micro N Post - by not tom
Carpe Diem! - by HaZaMaTt...

Kill Bill meets an Elephant

2010-06-22T09:44:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, I posted about simulacra, the waymark where inanimate objects look like real live things. Earlier this month, I was out in the desert finding a multi-cache. The cache was a simple offset, where you find something, or go to a set of coordinates and then walk a certain direction away from those coordinates to find the cache. I've created a cache similar to that, but I've turned it around and make the finder project a waypoint out and then head to those coordinates to get the final.

The original spot, as stated on the cache page, was at a sleeping elephant. OK now. Give me a break. A sleeping elephant out in the desert of California. Maybe in Africa, but not here. Whoa! Yep, that's a sleeping baby elephant all right. Besides finding this cache, it also gave me the opportunity to post a waymark in the simulacra category for a sleeping baby elephant. An added bonus was also posting a waymark in the movie scenes catergory, since the title of the cache is called Kill Bill's Church. The church across the street from the elephant was used in the Kill Bill movies.

I always enjoy stumbling across stuff like this. I was actually surprised that neither spot had previously been waymarked. With the title of the movie as part of the cache description, one would think that some other geocacher would have thought to look on waymarking.com and done a search for it. I did and found the nearest waymark to be 16.1 miles north of the spot, which gave me a pretty good indication that neither had been waymarked.

The problem, as I see it with waymarking, is you really don't know what's out there until start clicking on links on the geocaching site. I have never been able to find an easy way to navigate around on the waymarking site. When I wanted to waymark the piece of the Berlin Wall that's standing at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, I wasn't sure where to start. I think I started with a search of Berlin Wall. Eventually, I figured that it would best fit in the Preserved Architectural Remnants and Ruins section. Once a category is found, it's pretty easy to submit a waymark and the people who help approve the waymarks are pretty good about steering you to the right spot if you haven't quite got it, but I still think it should be easier.

I'm sure I could probably do a lot more waymarking than I do, but I don't know the criteria for each category. There's almost 1000 different categories of different things, so for the most part, I stick to what interests me and stay there, although the movie category isn't one of the categories I usually end up submitting waymarks to, the Kill Bill Church being the first one. I just happened to get lucky that I had taken a picture and had all the requisite information for the submission.

I sometimes think that since the removal of virtual caches from Geocaching, Waymarking has become the ugly stepsister of Geocaching. They're not really sure what to do with it and so it just sits there, getting bigger, but not really improving in any way. The geocaching site gets makeovers on a regular basis, but I don't see that happening on the Waymarking site. That's a shame, as I think the site could be better utilized if it were better organized. But then again, perhaps that's the best it can be, because of the scope of it.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
KILL BILL'S CHURCH - by fear it caches

It's the wrong one people...

2010-06-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

While on the road trip this weekend, I found a cache that had a benchmark nearby. The cache page even stated there was a benchmark nearby. As I've stated numerous times in the past, I usually don't go hunting benchmarks, but if they present themselves to me, I'll log them.

The Altamount Silo find was sort of like a comedy of errors. First, I didn't believe the GPSr when it said over there. Nope, my geosenses were saying it should be here, so that's where I'm going to look first, foxtails be damned. Yeah, well with that much open sky, I should have trusted the GPSr, because it led me right to the cache. After making my trade at the cache, I headed back to my van to get my camera to photograph the benchmark. Why I didn't bring it along, I don't know, because I knew I was going to have to take some pictures at this cache site.

The benchmark page at Geocaching.com is pretty specific on how to log a benchmark. Unfortunately, they don't require a picture of the benchmark in order to log it, which in my opinion is wrong. The picture backs up the find and also points out possible errors, should the person get the wrong benchmark. There is another section on the benchmark page that educates people on whether they have the correct benchmark or not.

This particular benchmark is supposedly very close to the Altamount Silo Geocache. Looking at the two maps, they are indeed very close, but if someone is going to log that benchmark, they really need to find it first. I didn't and realized it as soon I got home and looked at my pictures. The designation for the benchmark is K 1258. That means you're going to see those combination of letters and numbers are going to be stamped into the benchmark somewhere, especially if it's a disk.

When I got home and looked at my picture of the disk, I noticed that it was clearly labeled Alameda County Surveyor around the outside of the disk and CAR-ALT and 1994 stamped in the middle. Anyone, who had taken the time to read the benchmark description page would have noticed the discrepancy in the designations, plus the other clue of the date. The 1994 date on the disk doesn't match the description of the other disk, which was set in 1974, twenty years earlier.

The sad thing is people are still logging the benchmark as found. I'm not a serious benchmarker by any stretch of the imagination, but I can imagine that this would frustrate people who are. They might plan a trip out there, then realize that the disk isn't the correct one. What's even sadder, in my opinion, is there have been people who have pointed out on the benchmark page, that the disk that is being logged isn't the correct one. This was done early in 2005. Since that time it has been logged as "found" by six other geocachers. Two other notes have also been posted stating the benchmark they are finding isn't the correct one.

Maybe I'm picking nits on this one, since it's just a small aspect of the overall hobby, but there's something wrong with claiming a find when you haven't found it. I think partial responsibility rests with geocaching.com. If they're going to list this on their site, then they should police that area, but that's not happening. And so, people are being misled.

And the flip side of this is, don't know that this disk is the wrong one. I didn't until I got home. The difference is, I checked before I logged it, realized that it wasn't the correct one, and so didn't log it. Others are following through like that. I guess I'm hoping for a perfect world where everything runs, uh, . . . yeah, perfectly. All caches would be found, benchmarks would be logged accurately, people wouldn't lose their GPrs, and gas would only cost 35¢ per gallon. Well, we know that's not going to happen, but I think I just needed to get that off my chest anyway.

Oh, and when I got back to the van and got ready to take off, I realized that I didn't have my GPSr with me. I checked the van thoroughly and didn't find it there, so I went back to the cache and found it lying on the ground about four feet away. Usually, when I find a cache, I place my GPSr on the top of my foot, since it's likely that were I to walk off, I'd feel it fall off of my foot and remember that I need to pick it up. For whatever reason, this system failed me this time. At least I wasn't 20 miles down the road before I realized it though.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
Altamount Silo - by Kenny162

A rose by any other name...

2010-06-12T13:44:00.000-07:00

This past week, I went on a short road trip to Northern California. I know short is a relative term, but it was short for me in time, as opposed to distance since I put slightly over 1000 miles on the van, plus added two new front tires during the trip.

I drove up to Stockton, mainly to deliver extra "stuff" to my daughter, including a couch that she'd gotten from her grandmother, but couldn't fit in her car. There would be a side trip to Santa Cruz to pick up my son as well. Since he wanted to visit with his sister for a little bit, I picked him up, then drove back over to Stockton. This should have been a 4 hour round trip, but it ended up being over 8 hours because a problem developed on one of the front tires and I had to get that fixed before we could head back. Things happen and there's not much I could do about that.

Each time I drive up there, I try to take different routes. I look at the different virtual flags that can be captured, as well as any possible dashpoints, plus geocaches and then I plan my route accordingly. Waymarks and benchmarks are side possibilities, but for those, I just let them happen as opposed to me actively search for them.

If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you know that my most active waymark category is water towers. I love driving into small towns and seeing their town advertised for miles by the large water tower in the center of town. We have few water towers in Southern California, as most municipalities build large storage tanks in the hills above town which provides the same purpose of creating water pressure for the town's water supply.

Towns in the Central Valley of California and elsewhere where no hills are present create their town's water pressure by building water towers. Usually, these water towers promote the city, but some support advertisements for local businesses. The main water tower in Merced, California promotes the newest university in the UC system, UC Merced.

As I drove through the Central Valley this week, I happened to drive through the town of Wasco, CA. I've seen signs pointing to Wasco while driving both Hwy 99 and I-5, but have never gotten off, mainly because the town is out of the way. I've actually wanted to either stop in the town, or at least, stop and take a picture of a sign with Wasco on it, mainly because a geocacher, whom I consider a good friend and have met, goes by the name WascoZooKeeper.

Had I known a little bit about the town, I might have been tempted to stop there sooner. Wasco bills itself as the Rose Capital of the World. Every year it has a rose festival the weekend after Labor Day weekend and the water tower in the middle of town is plastered with a large red rose. After getting home, I discovered that 55% of all roses grown in the United States are grown in and around Wasco by nine major rose companies. It was a pleasant experience to drive through the fields around town and see rows and rows of red roses, then rows of yellow roses. I know I've never seen so many roses in one place before.

If not for the GPS games that I play, I probably would have never passed through this quaint little town. I feel, I'm richer in spirit because of this hobby. If you happen to be in the area on the weekend after Labor Day some year, I think you could do worse than to make a stop in Wasco and take in their Rose Festival.

Pictures taken at the Wasco Water Tower:

Where is that thing?

2010-06-03T19:27:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, I will come upon a cache that I feel is just well done. That was the case last weekend with East Canyon Log-In. The coordinates were slightly off on this particular cache, but being thirty to fifty feet off in a rural setting is a lot different in many ways to being the same distance off in an urban setting. Some will argue that the urban setting would be easier in that instance while, I'm sure, others would argue the other way around.

What helps is the cache page write up, which is one of the reasons I really liked this particular cache. If you go to the cache page, you'll notice that I've placed it on my top 5% list. Making my list in no way implies that the cache is a great cache. It only means, that in some small way, it either tickled my fancy, or I felt it was creative in some way. This one, I think, did both.

The cache itself, is a small jar, which would be difficult to spot in thigh high foxtails and thistles. However, the cache page write is very much like a decrypted hint in helping the finder find the cache. I'm not saying that's necessary all the time, but it sure is helpful, especially when you have tree cover that reduces the accuracy of the GPSr in your hand.

The second part of this cache that I really liked was the cache container. As stated is was a small jar, but what way the jar was incorporated with the surrounding environment helped get this cache onto my list. I actually would have wanted to be a fly on the nearest tree when the cache hiders brought this cache here. I think it would have been very entertaining.

The only other question I have is, where do you think the cache is hidden? It might be obvious, or it might not be.

On a side note. Some of you might have noticed that I've gone to moderated comments. I have done that because recently, I have been getting spam comments. Obviously, the person who has been doing this hasn't gotten the message and continues to post links to pages that I would find objectionable if my youngest were to click on them. Since he reads this column from time to time, I felt it necessary to go to moderated comments. To that person - if you continue to reply to this blog with links to semi-pornographic sites with no other intent other than to generate traffic to your own site, your posts will continue to be summarily rejected. I apologize to my other readers for this action, but I feel it is necessary to keep this a family friendly blog.

Picture was taken near East Canyon Log-In - by BearandDirtybird

Personal challenges

2010-05-31T20:48:00.000-07:00

I think most people challenge themselves for their own personal satisfaction. When I was younger, I used to challenge myself to improve upon my model making ability, usually by being more careful and patient (probably the best way to improve in model making), or by trying to build harder models. My painting ability was never very good, so I worked on that. Sometimes, I was satisfied, other times I wasn't.

I do the same thing with my photography today. It's much easier now, in my opinion, to take good pictures in the digital age than in the film age. Once you take a picture, you can view it and see if there needs to be adjustment immediately. Other adjustments can be done on the computer with a variety of photo editing software. I still try to improve and challenge myself to take better pictures. Composing behind the lens is important to me and for the most part, I like the results I get.

In Geocaching, I also challenge myself. Earlier in the year, I challenged myself to see if I could find caches on every date in the year. There is a challenge cache out there that has that requirement and I figure if there's one close in California, within the next year, I'll be able to go and look for it. This past month of May, I had three barren days where I'd never found a cache. I cleaned those up, so now I have four months completely filled on the grid: March, April, May and July.

This next week is going to be the first major challenge for me. As you can see, I have five open days in the next six. At first, I was kind of surprised when I looked at this for the first time earlier in the year. Why is June, especially early in the month, so cache empty? The answer is readily apparent if you know my profession. The end of the year for a teacher is usually hectic and incredibly busy. With the school year shifted over the last couple of years, I'm now out earlier in June. This might open up some opportunities for me to go caching that might not have happened in the past. This week is my last week of the school year, so we'll see if I can get out and cache.

The same can be said, even more so, for the beginning of the school year. I have 10 open days in June. In September, I have 15 open days. It's just too hectic at the beginning of the school year to attempt any kind of caching other than on a couple of weekends. That's probably why I only average less than 10 finds for the entire month of September over my entire geocaching career. Contrast that with July where I average 45 caches for the month. Summer vacation does afford me more time to pursue my hobbies, that's for sure.

The two hardest days for this upcoming week will be the next two. Those are the last two full days of school. I should be able to leave school and at least get one local cache for each of those days. There is a new cache just north of my school that was hidden recently that I would like to find, but I think I'm going to wait until Friday for that one. This particular cache is placed only 189 feet away from where my second hide had been hidden when I lived closer to where I work. When we moved out of that house, which overlooked the cache site, I archived the cache. It was fun to watch geocachers looking for my cache. I think I'll check out the new cache sometime this week.

So I guess the only thing left to do is to wish me luck on this endeavor. I have 63 open days and if I'm successful, I'll have every square on the grid filled next February 8th.

Graphics created using My Geocaching Profile.

Broken Benchmark

2010-05-28T14:39:00.000-07:00

I have gotten into the habit of logging benchmarks when I stumble upon them. Chaosmanor and I actively went searching for this particular benchmark, mainly because it hadn't been monumented in over 40 years. A lot can happen in 40 years and to assume that a benchmark, no matter how sturdy or solid it appeared to be back then, will still be in the same place later on is foolhardy.

I think one of the reasons I didn't enjoy benchmark hunting at first is because when I "discovered" benchmarking, I immediately went out and tried to find the closest benchmarks to where I lived, only to come up empty on four or five attempts. Being a rookie to this particular GPS activity, I didn't know all of the ins and outs at the time. I'm not saying that I do now, but I understand what to look for and how to look better than I did 6 or 7 years ago.

The first benchmarks I went hunting weren't there, because of the federal government. The Feds didn't destroy them, rather other agencies probably inadvertently destroyed them, while complying with the American Disabilities Act (ADA). I had been looking for disks attached to curbs. When streets had been widened or worked upon, the curbs had to be made wheelchair accessible. New curbs were laid and the old curbs, which had the benchmarks attached to them were discarded.

In urban or suburban areas, I would suspect that many early benchmarks disappeared because of new construction all the time. In rural areas, without as much construction, benchmarks tend to last longer, which is why I find most of the markers on my list out in the desert. The marker that Chaosmanor and I went searching for was out in the desert, so we assumed that we'd find it in the ground where it should be according to the description listed on the benchmark page.

We were sadly mistaken on this account as we found the benchmark, attached to its concrete post lying on the ground. The benchmark was in the general vicinity of where it was supposed to be, but some kind of construction, or possibly a farmer tilling his field had pulled the post out of the ground.

Because there hadn't been any kind of report on this benchmark in over 40 years, we can only speculate as to when this took place. We both estimated that it had been several years at least that the benchmark had been in its present condition. We could find no evidence of any kind of hole where the concrete post should have been in, indicating that several seasons had gone by for enough erosion to have occurred to refill the hole.

I'm going to assume that whoever pulled it out of the ground had one of those "Oooops" moments and didn't want to risk a fine, so decided to leave well enough alone and just disappear back into the desert environment. With that assumption, the hole would have slowly filled up over the course of a couple of wet winters and there would have been little evidence of where the post should have been in the ground. The post is about 3 feet in length, so three or more years would have been minimum I think to fill in a hole. Then again, the person who pulled it out, might have helped it along by refilling the hole.

Overall, the benchmark is in pretty good shape. It's just not useable the way it is, because it's not in the right spot. At least with a little detective work, we've been able to piece together a little bit of its history over the past 40 years.

Pictures were taken near the following benchmark:
EW0888

For the Birds

2010-05-20T21:11:00.000-07:00

What you see is a picture of a birdhouse. Nothing much really to tell about it, other than the occupants of said birdhouse didn't want their picture taken that day. This birdhouse was quite close to a cache and it worked well as, what I liked to call, a distractor. In other words, it helped us find the cache, because we could use the birdhouse as a reason for being in the area, in essence, loiter without appearing to loiter.

When you think about it, we tend to look like loiterers when we geocache. It's hard not to look like you're loitering when you're hanging around a bush by the side of the road and every now and then you end up putting your head inside the bush. I spent the better part of an hour inside a bush last Saturday and ended up with a DNF on that 4 icon challenge cache. Come to find out it was muggled. The owner has promised to have it replaced by the time I head back up there next weekend.

But, back to the birds. As I said, this birdhouse was in the perfect spot for cache hunters, because it provided a reasonable purpose for cachers to be in a particular area, in this case a parking lot. While we were looking for the cache, we ended up seeing a groundsman drive past us. We weren't questioned because we made it look like we were enjoying the flowers and taking pictures of the birds, which is really what I was doing. Had the birdhouse not been there, it would have been more difficult to justify our presence there.

The Western Bluebirds, that were inhabiting the house, apparently didn't want their picture taken. It seemed like each time I raised my camera to take a picture, either the male would fly off from the perch, or the female would duck her head back inside. And of course we had one of those, "wouldn't you know it" moments, because as soon as we were back in our car and leaving the area after finding the cache, both birds were outside the house. Maybe next time.

Picture was taken near the following geocache:
TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS - by BEATLES CREW

Icon Challenges

2010-05-13T22:02:00.000-07:00

Chaosmanor sent me an email last week entitled, "If we'd only known." In it, he detailed a challenge cache that was all about the icons. In other words, you needed to find, in one day, six different kinds of geocaches to qualify to find this particular cache. We didn't know about this cache on Saturday May 1st when we went to the 10 Years event at the Devils Punchbowl, so we didn't go out of our way to get a bunch of different kinds of caches. The caches just came naturally that day.

We ended up finding five different types of caches, a traditional, a multi-cache (can you see it in the picture?), a mystery cache, an earthcache, plus the event cache. No such luck to qualify for the One Busy Day Challenge, however while I was planning my route for my road trip this weekend to Stockton, I noticed this challenge cache, which my May 1st day does qualify for, so I'll be stopping by that cache on Saturday to find that one.

My son and I are also going to attempt the 6 icon challenge this summer. Our planned route takes us through Lassen Volcanic National Park, close to Redding, CA. Many of you may already know that the GPS Adventure Maze Exhibit is in Redding through September at the Turtle Bay Museum. This particular exhibit offers it's own special icon. With that in mind, we have planned an earthcache in Lassen, then will drive down to Redding, getting a traditional, and a virtual, before heading to the museum. After the museum, there will be a multi-cache just north of the museum. All we'd have to do then is find a mystery cache to complete the challenge. It should be a fun day, even if we don't finish the challenge.

I think this is one of the things that keeps me going in Geocaching. I've had other hobbies that have waxed and waned over time, but I seem to have kept an interest in this hobby much longer than others. Perhaps it's the little challenges that keep me going, keeping the hobby from getting stale. Either that, or it's just something that I like to do. I would be willing to bet that it's a combination of both of the above. Either way, I'll continue to watch for these kinds of caches.

Picture was taken near the following geocache:
Devil's Punchbowl - by Kit Fox

Winter's last gasp

2010-05-09T21:00:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I just marvel at the diversity of life in California. You can be at the beach in the morning and on top of a fairly tall mountain within in a couple of hours, or out in the desert rock hounding. It has an amazing array of scenery. This late in May, it's also extremely rare to see much snow on top of the mountains, unless they are the Sierra Nevada. Those mountains, which create the geographic backbone of California run as high as 14,000 feet. They trap a lot of snow during wet year, which this one qualifies as, and will have snow for a long time. Some will linger year round on the tallest, or sun shaded sides of mountains.

Still, in May, we usually only see a sprinkling of snow in few spots on our local mountains. Not this year, because we received several very cold storms in April. The storms dumped snow at around the 5000 foot level and it's still there, not in copious amounts, but enough to notice if your hiking in view of them. That sometimes lends itself well to interesting pictures. While on a hike in the Devils Punchbowl, I ended up getting, what I think is a pretty decent shot of a yucca in bloom with the snow covered mountains in the background.

In a month, the snow will be gone, although based upon today's weather, which was cold and dreary, but with no rain, it's not out of the realm of possibility to see more rain storms. We have been having warmer, rather than colder weather over the last week or so and I ran the sprinkler system on the lawn for the first time last night, so I think we only have two chances of getting more snow on the mountains this season and that would be slim and none.

I'm now trying to figure out when to take my camping vacation this summer. The plan is to camp at Lassen Volcanic National Park this year. I've been to Lassen probably 3 or 4 times, but I've never been able to get to the top of the mountain. It's not a real tough climb, but it is 11,000 feet and because the park is much farther north, there will be more snow on the peak, especially this year. Because of when work starts in August, I don't have the luxury of waiting until then when it's quite warm and probably snow free, so we'll have to take our chances with the snow. But, as my son says, "It's an adventure." Snow, or no snow, we'll be there sometime this summer.

Picture was taken at or near the following geocache:
Devil's Punchbowl - by Kit Fox

To each his own

2010-05-05T21:09:00.000-07:00

The nice thing about hobbies is everyone can enjoy them at their leisure and no one needs to be recruited or feel that you're out of step if you don't partake in a particular hobby. Just like everyone else, I dabble in a variety of activities that keep me relatively busy. Geocaching is one of my many outdoor activities that keeps me from "getting into trouble" according to my wife.

As we were hiking this past Saturday in the Devils Punchbowl, we stopped several times to watch some rock climbers on the opposite side of the Punchbowl work their hobby. Even with my acrophobia, I considered this particular sport at one time when I was in college. Several of my friends in the dorms at Humboldt State University would drive up to Patrick's Point State Park and climb the rocks there on the weekends.

They invited me to go on one of their excursions one time and I incredibly, now that I think of it, accepted. One friend let me borrow his climbing shoes and another friend set me up with his climbing harness and soon they had me hooked up, on belay and climbing up the face of this rock. First thing they had me do was fall. I had to know that I could depend upon them to brake my fall. That, actually, was the hardest thing about the sport. That initial rush, or rather, the trepidation of just letting go of the rock probably scares a lot of people off the face of the rock more than anything else.

Once I passed that test, it was on to the actual climb. The rock that they would climb was probably no more than 50 to 75 feet to the top. There was a parking area on top, complete with railing and viewpoint, so it made a perfect place to anchor in the ropes. Then, they would drive down to the bottom of the rock and practice different ways to climb the rock, trying different techniques to improve their abilities. The rock was pretty much vertical, so it was a good test for most rock climbers learning their craft.

I started up and was doing pretty well, getting encouragement from my friends while I tried different routes. Then, I made my fatal mistake. I looked down. Had I kept my focus on the top as opposed to trying to gauge how far I'd gone, I might have conquered the rock. But I froze and it was all over. My friends got me down, but I've never tried it again. Now, I have no desire to. I'm content to watch others do it. I'll just get to the top of the rock by taking a trail, instead of taking the more direct approach. I'm sure they probably think my hobby is a trifle boring. To each, his own. Besides, there's more flowers and things to look at alongside the trail.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Burbling Brook - by steveel
Devils Punchbowl - by Kit Fox

Thanks Dave

2010-05-02T13:32:00.000-07:00

In the spring of 2000, President Clinton signed an executive order allowing for the removal of selective availability of GPS satellites. The implications of this meant that hand held GPS receivers would be more accurate and navigation systems would start to become standard features in many cars. Another result of the lifting of selective availability was the advent of several different kinds of GPS games like the Degree Confluence Project, GeoVexilla, GeoDashing, and of course, Geocaching.

On May 3, 2000 Dave Ulmer hid a black painted container in the state of Oregon and challenged an on-line community at sci.geo.satellite-nav to go and find it. The first geocache was born, although at the time it was called the First GPS Stash. Within days, that first stash had been found. Contained within that five gallon bucket were a Delorme Topo USA and 2 CD Roms, a cassette recorder, a "George of the Jungle" VHS tape, a Ross Perot book, 4 $1 bills, a slingshot handle, and a can of beans. The original cache is no longer there, but the spot can still be visited where there is a plaque placed commemorating the original stash. The can of beans, heavily rusted but preserved, is now a travel bug.

This weekend, I traveled to the Devils Punchbowl to celebrate ten years of geocaching. Events were held all over the world, but I found myself in a void, with the nearest event more than 30 miles away driving distance. I decided to attend the event in the Antelope Valley mainly because it's a very scenic spot, plus there were going to be opportunities for some hiking after the event. After all, when I started geocaching back in 2001, that's what it was all about. The requirements for a 10 year event, as posted by Geocaching.com were that the event needed to have a picture posted showing at least 10 people at the event plus a sign indicating the coordinates of the event in the picture. Our event picture is here.

This was my 9th event in just over 9 years since starting this silly game. I don't know why I don't attend many events. I could probably go to at least one event a month if I so choose, I just don't and there's not really a reason why I don't. This event, hosted by Kit Fox, was a lot of fun. I met one of the hiders of the Groundspeak Series and Smiley Series, Bigdaddygrc. I had a very pleasant conversation with him about geocaching and other things. I also spent a good deal of time with a fairly new cacher, HD-MsTree. I got to meet mcattk again, after bumping into him out at the Groundspeak Series a couple of months ago. Time was also spent with Yosemite John and Debbie and Tevis Clan. Several of us got a great review of Tevis Clan's new Lowrance GPSr. My good friend, Chaosmanor and his wife also showed up at this event and we ended up going on a nice hike in the Punchbowl after the event.

While on the hike we ended up bumping into several other cachers that had been at the event. W_bovine was walking down the trail from a multi-cache as we were heading up to it. That's w_bovine holding the sign in the picture. We had a pleasant conversation and I encouraged him to head over to my neck of the woods if he wanted to do some more hiking and caching. There aren't many hikers in my area, so my caches don't get found very often, so any new finders is a bonus in my mind. He said he would check it out. While on the hike, Chaosmanor and I discussed the different rock strata of the rocks in the Punchbowl, while figuring out the requirements of an earthcache along the trail. We also watched rock climbers playing their game. I'd tried that once when I was in college and made the mistake of looking down about halfway up a pitch. Never again. But then again, I would suspect that those rock climbers might think the game we were playing a little too mundane for them. To each his own.

At the end of the day, I counted my finds. Including the event, I found 8 - an event, a multi-cache, a mystery cache, two earthcaches and three traditional caches. It was a very modest day numbers-wise, but a very good geocaching day. It's not about the numbers of caches you find, but about the experiences you have as you play the game. I think I played the game well yesterday. Thanks Dave.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
10 Years! Antelope Valley, California - by Kit Fox
Devil's Punchbowl - by Yosemite John and Debbie

Old friends, new geocachers?

2010-04-26T21:35:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I was fortunate to spend some time with some old and dear friends of mine. I'd reconnected with some via Facebook recently and one of the women had organized a mini high school reunion for Saturday. There were several people there that I wanted to see again, so I sent an RSVP to her and showed up.

One of the first people I saw was a man who I had worked with very closely on the yearbook staff our senior year in high school. The first thing he wanted to talk about was this geocaching thing that I did. I explained the concept to him and told him there was a geocache right outside the front door to the restaurant where we were having the reunion and that I'd probably be trying to find it later. He told me he definitely wanted to be part of the find for that one.

Another woman, also from the yearbook staff, expressed interest as well and as the afternoon ran down, the three of us went out in the courtyard of the establishment and started the hunt. I showed them my GPSr, told them how it worked and what we were probably looking for. We were getting a lot of signal bounce because we were in a courtyard with two story buildings around us, but told them that was part of the game sometimes.

We eventually narrowed our search area down, thought about the clue, checked in a couple of places until my first friend pointed out something that matched up directly with the clue. We went over and checked it out, he got down and checked underneath, but didn't see the cache right away, so I went and checked it out and had the cache in hand. In his defense, it was hidden pretty well and I had to feel for it rather than see it. We looked over the contents of the cache and I explained the trading ethics of geocaching that if you take something, you leave something of equal or greater value.

Then, I realized that I didn't have my pen with me, so we took it back inside where I signed the log and we decided to take a picture with the cache. Both of my friends were intrigued with the concept of the hobby and I may have created a couple of new players to the game. We shall see, but I have to say it definitely will be fun to see their names in log books later on.

The day was a very enjoyable day of food, friends and fun. I'm planning on attending more of these impromptu gatherings in the future. Who knows, perhaps they'll lead to more geocaching experiences with my friends from high school. That would be fun.

Picture was taken near the following geocache:
Fountains Are Cool (Metrocenter) - by FishfulThinking

Spring is starting to spring

2010-04-22T22:35:00.000-07:00

In Southern California, we seem to be having a delayed spring this year. Granted, our seasons are not the normal seasons that most people would associate with the traditional spring, summer, fall and winter type seasons. Winter is the rainy season. In the past two days, my rain gauge in the back yard has registered slightly over a third of an inch. That doesn't seem like much, but for a desert, it's a goodly amount of rain.

We've had some warm spring days, but we've also had some unseasonably cold days mixed i there as well. The overnight low yesterday was 39˚. For Southern California, I can tell you, that's a Three Dog Night. The cold has kept some of the flowers under wraps a little bit longer than usual, although some were making an appearance last weekend when we were out in the desert. I don't think the peak of flower production has hit yet, although it seems close.

Getting back to seasons. I think in Southern California, summer starts in late June and continues well into September, when it starts to cool down. "Real" fall, happens usually in December. The deciduous trees need that nice cold weather which we don't really get until after Thanksgiving for them to drop their leaves. Winter is our rainy season from December to March, but this year, it's obviously leaked into April. Spring happens anytime between February to June, depending upon the amount of rain. We actually get a second flowering season in the fall as well after we get some monsoonal rain during August. Allergy sufferers get hit twice each year.

With really wet winters, and this is above average (slightly above 20 inches of precipitation with 15 inches being "normal"), although not extreme, we'll expect to see more and more flowers, which will bloom and die quickly once the heat starts in. Seeds will be spread everywhere and next year might even bring a bigger explosion of color. Hiking on the trails right now should be very enjoyable. They'll be dry in a couple of days and the flowers should be just about right. It's a good time to be out and about.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
BIG BURL - by Big Eagle
The Pit Stop - by Dah Mooser and MsPea

Desert Rats

2010-04-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of people who enjoy the solitude of the desert and many of them have bought parcels of land out there where they can enjoy that solitude. People who live out in the desert, in my opinion, are a different breed of people. The image that one can conjure up of a desert rat, a hermit living out a meager life away from all company and human contact is an easy one for most people to picture in their minds.

Every now and then, when I go geocaching out in the desert, I'll come across a small house, or possibly a trailer of someone who wanted to get away from it all. Obviously, geocaching has brought the "all" to them, and thus their solitude is sometimes intruded upon. Other times, it's possible just to see hints of the desert rat's life. If they really want their solitude, they can erect a fence around their plot of land. Good fences make good neighbors, even if the nearest neighbor is miles away.

We encountered a couple of these out in the desert recently, but my favorite was the Leapin' Lizard Mine. That's what it was called, although I suspect that the owner had placed that sign out there more as another barrier to keep people away from their sanctuary. The dangers of abandoned mines and open shafts are kept in the forefront of most people who go exploring in the desert. On a recent hike, we saw several mine tailings on the side of the hill we were walking next to. The open mine shaft was also sometimes easily discerned. We found a pit, surrounded by chain link fence. I made sure the Tadpole kept his distance from that one.

The Leapin' Lizard Mine was a large plot of land that we encountered while hiking the Groundspeak Series. There was a chain link fence around the entire claim and the gate had multiple signs on it warning us to keep out. As far as I was concerned, that's usually what a fence signifies out here. Keep Out.

The owner also had a sign indicating that the enclosed area was a wildlife sanctuary for desert fauna, particularly rattlesnakes and desert tortoises. I think that's a very noble cause. I had a desert tortoise (permitted) living in my back yard. I feel like I'm helping an endangered species ward off possible extinction. As we continue to encroach on these animal's homes, their living spaces shrink and we'll see less and less of them in the wild. I've never seen a desert tortoise in the wild. The one in my back yard can't be returned to the wild, as that is against the law, but I can own it as long as I have a permit for it. And so it goes.

But I digress. My real objection to this fence isn't that it isn't necessary. If the person wants to erect a fence, that's fine. If they want to place a couple of warning signs on the fence telling people to keep out, that's fine too. I just think this person went a little bit over the top with the signage. The neighborhood watch sign, was the icing on the cake in my opinion. There are neighbors out there who are watching this little fenced in piece of property? I seriously doubt that particular sign is going to cause anyone to think twice should they want to enter the property and if anything, it makes a mockery of the entire situation. But then again, the thought process of someone who lives out there like that isn't something that I really understand. I guess he and I will have to disagree on what's effective on this one.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
Groundspeak Series - Stealth - by HDGC

Old caches

2010-04-12T22:27:00.000-07:00

Today, I was looking at my profile and some of the stats that I have posted there. I don't expect many people to look at it. I keep the stats there mainly as a convenient way of looking over things that I want to keep track of in certain areas. For instance, I have the oldest caches that I've found in one list. 20 caches, all of which are three digit caches, except the last one. Many of them are on my top 5% list.

Interestingly, I think almost 75% of the caches in this list are still around. That's a pretty good record, in my opinion for 9 year old caches. Of the caches listed above, there's only one that's not in California (West of Work #4), which is to be expected since most of my caching happens in California. Only six of the caches on that list were placed before I started geocaching. I'm wondering whether I'll be able to find some that predate Wilderness Park Cache, the first cache on the list and also the oldest cache I've ever found.

My first cache was hidden about two weeks after the Manzanar Virtual Cache was hidden and it's still out there as well. It gets about two or three finds a year, mainly because it's in a rather remote area up in the mountains. Most of my caches are like that, requiring a hike to get to and so they don't get many finds.

Black birds, barrels and butterflies

2010-04-08T21:01:00.000-07:00

For the most part, the desert seems to be a pretty barren place. When one thinks of the desert, usually one thinks of drifting dunes, camels and not much life. Contrary to what people think about deserts, California's desert has a high degree of life. Plant life, though scattered is plentiful. Cactus are around and there are animals, be they elusive.

Sometimes the animals almost come to you, usually it's the flying animals, the butterflies and birds. On a hike in the desert recently, we spotted a raven on top of a Joshua Tree. Actually, we heard it first, probably angry at us for intruding upon its territory. We spotted it, then immediately, noticed a second call. I thought that the second one would also alight on the Joshua Tree, but the first took off quickly after the second and they soared across the desert floor together, looking for another place away from the intruders.

Springtime brings out the flowers in the desert. Driving north this weekend, we saw the wildflowers on the hillside in full color. This was not the desert per sé, but I'm sure the desert this weekend would be in similar fashion. When we'd been out in the desert a couple of weeks ago, the flowers had just been about two or three weeks from being in full splendor. Several barrel cactus would have been especially pretty with a ring of flowers around each barrel.

In late afternoon, we spotted a butterfly looking for a place to bed down for the night. There was a slight breeze which probably hampered its ability to find a suitable spot to grab hold for the evening. I enjoy watching butterflies and will, if given the chance, take pictures of almost any butterfly that will pause for even a moment on a nearby branch. The coloring on this butterfly was a little different than what I'd seen in the past, so I was naturally excited about taking a picture.

Once if finally settled down and found a branch, we approached it cautiously, for fear of disturbing it and having it fly away. It appeared that it definitely wanted to bed down for the night as it had its wings closed up tight. I got a couple of pictures of it, but it wasn't going to show us the top part of its wings which would make identification difficult, even with the glimpses that we'd gotten while it was flitting about.

Still, after looking at the pictures, I was pretty sure we'd seen a Desert Marble Butterfly of the genus Euchloe lotta, but it could also be a California Marble. As noted above, there is some uncertainty because it wouldn't cooperate with us and show us the top part of its wings, but that's sometimes the way it is in the real world.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Groundspeak Series - Stealth - by HDGC
Groundspeak Series - Lifeline - by HDGC

Simulacra

2010-04-03T12:02:00.000-07:00

The game where everyone would look at the clouds and tell everyone else what they saw is popular, even today. Imagination never stops and I happened upon something on one of my hikes out into the desert.

Simulacra, as defined by the Waymarking site, are inanimate objects, usually stones, rock walls, old tree trunks, plants, patches of peeling paint, rust spots and so on that have uncanny resemblances to inanimate things. I came across one of these while out hiking, took pictures of it, yet didn't have the presence of mind to take some geographic coordinates.

The first time I became away of Simulacra, was just after Waymarking became its own separate entity. I had been looking through some of the different categories, trying to get a sense of what the entire site was about when Simulacra caught my eye. I had one in mind right away. I was pretty sure there had been a locationless cache for Simulacra and my boys and I had spotted a tree that had a trunk shaped in what looked like an old man with a flowing beard. Since The Lord of the Rings movies were in theaters at this time, we fancied the old man to be Gandalf the wizard.

We never went back camping to that part of California before they shut down the locationless sites and moved them all over to Waymarking, so that was one of those that got away. Another one that got away was one that I spotted while out walking the Groundspeak Series of geocaches that Chaosmanor and I found on the 13th and 20th of last month. There was an old dead gnarled Joshua Tree lying in the river bed. As I approached it, I kept looking at it and thinking where have I seen that before?

Then it hit me that it looked very similar to one of those pictures that have been posted about the Loch Ness Monster. Up close, it wasn't so apparent, but farther away, it certainly looked like Nessie until I walked to the other side. Then it looked like Sebulba from the movie The Phantom Menace of STAR WARS fame. For those uninitiated, Sebulba was a champion pod racer who'd stop at nothing to win. In other words, he cheated. He finally met his match halfway through this movie when a young Anakin Skywalker beats him. As he crashes and burns out in the Tatooine desert, his famous last words are "Poo Doo."

Anyway, this particular dead Joshua Tree looked like the profile of Sebulba. I took pictures, but forgot to get coordinates for the Simulacra. I'd have to be very lucky to find a way back out to the same spot again so I could get the coordinates and thus, waymark it in the Simulacra category. I guess it will just have to another waymark that got away from me and I'll let you decide which way it was looking when I saw Nessie and which was it was looking when I saw Sebulba.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
Groundspeak Series - Charter Member - by HDGC

Red Letter Day

2010-03-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

This story is not about geocaching. It's a story that has taken 21 years to tell and is not finished even today. Twenty one years ago today, my wife and I were clueless. I don't believe anyone is totally prepared for parenthood, no matter how many books they've read, no matter how many pieces of advice they've received. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, yet we had no choice, because that path had been chosen earlier. At 8:52 PM, on March 29th, 1989, our first born made her appearance into the world. My wife's OB let me deliver my baby girl.

I have a bundle of thoughts running through my head today, too many to keep straight, so excuse me if this rambles a little bit. She did the normal things. If I could find her baby book, which is buried in a hall closet, I could probably tell you the exact date she showed her first tooth. I know it was sometime around her first birthday. I watched her crawl for the first time on Christmas Day that year. I got lucky enough to videotape it, but was still unprepared for it, because I can remember thinking, "Wow, she just crawled over here, and I didn't even note it in the video."

Her favorite book to be read was Moo, Baa, LaLaLa, a silly little book describing animal sounds. Did you know that three singing pigs say "La La La La?" Well, that's what the book says. Later we graduated to Dr. Seuss's ABC book. It lends itself well to singing, so I ended up doing that a lot. "Big A, Little A, what begins with A? Aunt Annie's Alligator........A...a.....A." A third favorite was Love You Forever. This was probably my favorite, more than hers, but she liked me to read it to her at bedtime nonetheless.

As she grew, she developed new tastes. I introduced her to camping, taking her up for a night in the mountains near Lake Arrowhead. The following spring, we went camping at Joshua Tree National Monument. Every spring and summer after that until she reached the age of 13, we would go camping somewhere. One summer, Daddy forgot the tent poles, so we ended up buying a backpacking tent to sleep in for a week. Have you ever slept in a backpacking tent with a 6 year old who thrashes around in her sleep a lot?

She also developed a passion for music and started taking violin lessons when she was in kindergarten. Several years later, she joined the Claremont Young Musicians Orchestra and played with that group for a total of 10 years. She is now playing in her college orchestra. Because of this love of music, she toured Europe after her senior year in high school and was fortunate enough to play in several cities in Austria and Italy. She attended Interlochen Center for the Arts one summer and also Tanglewood during another summer. She's gone back as a camp counselor twice at Interlochen.

Braces, proms, homecoming dances, high school graduation, college applications were all a part of her life. We went on road trips to different colleges, scouting them out. She fell in love with one college on one of the worst days the campus was having, with torrential rain and wind and bitter cold. I told her that if she liked it at its worst, she definitely would love it on other days. Today, she is in her third year at the University of the Pacific, located in Stockton, CA, over 300 miles from home, too far away to give her a hug in person today on her 21st birthday.

21 years seems like a long time, yet it goes by so quickly. Where once was a giggly little girl, now is a confident grown woman, less dependent upon her Daddy now to soothe skinned knees and other assorted aches and pains. And although I can no longer hold her in my arms and carry her around cradled in the crook of my elbow, she is still my baby girl, one who I love very much. As any parent would say, I have enjoyed watching her grow up, helping her to explore my world, and will now enjoy watching as she spreads her wings and explores her world. I'll end this with a quote from my favorite book that I got to read to her when she was younger.

I love you forever,

I'll like you for always.

As long as I'm living,

My baby you'll be.

Happy Birthday Sweetheart.
Love,
Daddy

Old School

2010-03-28T20:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Chaosmanor and I found an "Old School" cache. We found a rather longish trail that started in Topanga Canyon near Malibu. In the link, our caching trip started with the cache right near Topanga Canyon Blvd., went east, then south paralleling Topanga Canyon Blvd. We'd met in the area, so we had two cars to use as a shuttle for this hike, since it was 6+ miles one way.

We found a variety of different sized caches from hidden bison tube micros to full scale ammo cans. The variety of the caches is what makes any kind of trail like this very interesting, although this one didn't need many caches to keep it interesting. Hiking along the ridge above Topanga Canyon afforded us with views of Los Angeles, as well as Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean. It was a good hike.

Now, get out your flux capacitor, get it up to 88 miles per hour and go back in time to December 2001. At that time, there was one cache along that entire trail. But that's the way it was back then. You hiked in, usually several miles in the process, you found one cache, and then you hiked back out.

My very first cache find was a large 5 gallon bucket painted black. Most of the cache containers were like that. They usually contained log books, real log books with large pages where one could write down what they had experienced during the hike. Usually, the view was decent to good and you sat, perhaps ate your sack lunch and contemplated the day. Geocaching was like that.

As Chaosmanor and I walked along, we realized that we had an older cache situated along the trail. In fact, he'd tried to get it four years ago, but had missed an important side trail and wasn't able to find it at that time. Coming at it from the north, we had a do or die decision to make. There was a trail leading up to the ridge where we knew the cache to be. Should we take it, or continue on and try to find a back door to this cache?

We chose the back door route and as we walked along the fire road, we realized we might have made a mistake as we kept getting closer and closer. My GPSr, at one point, read only 235 feet away. However, there was probably 75 to 100 feet of vertical elevation to deal with as well. As we started to go away from the cache, we looked ahead and realized the fire road went around a bend up ahead and it was there that we found the access trail that led up to The Pit Stop.

The trail walked along a ridge with plenty of vertical drop off on both sides. It definitely wasn't for the faint of heart, but the views were worth any thrill we might be getting due to acrophobia. Once near ground zero, we found a magnificent benchmark which we both admired. I took a couple of pictures and then we started our search for the cache.

I went one way and Chaosmanor went the other and he ended up finding the cache first. Being in that remote of an area, it didn't really need any camouflage and as you can see from the pictures, it didn't. The log book didn't disappoint either. Full pages, complete with full descriptions of experiences in the beginning, diminishing down to single line entries in the later years, or perhaps just signatures.

We spotted some old time cachers from the Southern California area, names that everyone knew because there were so few of us back then that we would literally follow each other to new caches every weekend. I recognized names, such as gpsdave, sr.hikers, erik, and PezCachers. Of those four, only PezCachers do I predate as far as geocaching longevity. Erik has been geocaching since October 2000, sr.hikers since February 2001. Gpsdave signed up two days before me in March 2001. All appear to be still active in geocaching, based upon activity on their profiles.

Chaosmanor and I spent much more time here than we did at some of the other caches we found on Saturday. We read through many of the log entries, getting a feel for what others thought of this cache. We were reliving some geocaching history at this site. The enjoyment of the hike was more than enough at the time. It wasn't all about the numbers, it was about the experience.

There was no doubt that this cache would make my top 5% list. I also decided to use this one as my qualifying cache for the LA County Quadrangle Challenge cache. I only need 10 more quadrangles to qualify for that cache. I suspect that I will be doing some more hiking, particularly in the fall when it cools down, to get some of the rest of those quadrangles. Most of the ones I have left are fairly remote and will require some hiking to get.

At the end of the day, both of us were extremely tired. Looking at a trail map, it looks like we walked about 6 miles. I would suspect that it was over 7, because many of the caches were not placed directly on the trail. Many you had to hike off the trail quite a ways to get to the cache. The Pit Stop was an extra .15 mile each way off of the main trail. That doesn't seem like much, but add a quarter mile to half a dozen caches and you have an extra mile and a half. That's OK. We were doing some Old School caching yesterday.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
The Pit Stop - by DahMooser and MsPea

Dry Bones

2010-03-26T13:07:00.000-07:00

No matter how prepared you are, the desert can be a pretty inhospitable place. We had cell phones, we had plenty of water so we weren't really worried about ourselve, yet we found evidence in our last couple of weeks out in the desert that it can still be cruel to those that don't have these luxuries.

I noticed from some of the other logs that are appearing on some of the caches we found the first weekend out at the Groundspeak series that several of the cachers found the same thing as we did; dried out bones. The first thing I noticed as we approached the cache was a pelvis, bleached by the sun, completely free of any sinewy material that would indicate that it hadn't been out there for a long time. These bones were picked clean, so they'd definitely been out there for awhile.

Near the pelvis, we found two sections of vertebrae, fairly intact and two long bones, what I thought to be thigh bones. The sizes of the long bones gave me the impression that this particular animal was probably a coyote. But then, we found a jawbone which messed up those theories post haste.

The jawbone was of a herbivore. Cutting teeth in the front, with molars in the back for chewing, with no canines for ripping like you'd see with a carnivore or possibly an omnivore like a desert wild pig. The size indicated a deer, but I was puzzled since deer aren't usually found here. Yes, you will see them, but they're usually found at higher elevations where the food is a lot more plentiful.

There were a lot of green plants around, but it's spring time in the desert and it's expected that green plants will be around. They will flower soon, produce their seeds which will be scattered by the wind and then they will die, only to come back after the winter rains. There is not much food during most times of the year out here, so it still didn't make sense. The only thing I could think of is a deer got lost and wandered into this region, perhaps already sick or injured and the harsh conditions finished it off.

Whatever the possibility, it gave us a reminder that most animals don't have the luxuries that we have when it comes to our health. Death in the wild, is usually not pretty and I would suspect that very few animals die a peaceful death. The animals get recycled quickly as is the way with nature, so that they will give back to the plants what they took from them when they were living. How long these particular bones had been out there is anyone's guess. My hope is they stay for a longer period of time and aren't picked up by others as they hike through the desert. Let the sleeping bones lie.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Groundspeak Series - Power Caching - by HDGC

Trail Meetings

2010-03-24T16:44:00.000-07:00

The first time I met someone on the trail while geocaching was the second time I ever went geocaching. I actually think that's pretty significant since there weren't that many geocachers out there. But, on the other hand, there weren't that many geocaches either, so those of us who were into this hobby back then, were all out going for the same caches on good weekends. I met Stantastic and Seldom Seen John along a trail in the Chino Hills State park south of where we live. All of us were going after San Juan Hill. Both are still active in Geocaching, although at different levels of activity.

This past weekend, while hiking out in the desert, Chaosmanor and I came across four other hikers doing the same Groundspeak Series. All of these cachers were from my local area (Chaosmanor lives about 60+ miles away from me) and I hadn't met any of them face to face, but had seen their names in logs and had communicated with one of them by email and on the phone several times over the past couple of months.

When we got to the first cache we were attempting to find on the second day, I noticed right away when we opened the log book the RangerG/76, Larry the Pool Guy, Guns and Cockpits, and Maddmaxxawr were somewhere out on the trail. I had Maddmaxxawr's number in my phone so I called him to figure out where he was. And of course, they were on the opposite side of the G+ from where we were. I figured that we might bump into them, since our plan for this day was to drive to some. By the third cache, our paths crossed for the first of four times. We discovered each other's personal bugs and coins, shot the breeze a little bit and then parted ways. It was nice to finally put faces to the names I kept seeing in logs.

We ended up crossing paths on Saturday three or four times, with the last time when we all ended up at the mystery cache for the series. This was pure serendipity, because the two groups had decided to do different things. They were hiking the entire series, then planning on hiking up to the top of Lookout Mountain to get the bonus cache up there, while we were driving to many of the ones that we had left. It should be noted that I use driving loosely, since we ended up doing short hikes into the desert at most of the caches and our last hike was several miles in length due to the worsening condition of the roads and our lack of a high clearance vehicle. Still, it was pure luck that we ended up at the same cache later on.

It was also nice to find other people in my local area who enjoy hiking. If I plan to go on a hike, I can probably get in contact with any of them and they'd probably go along, if for nothing else, just the enjoyment of company and the hike. My trail meetings are usually the way I meet other cachers. I don't go to many event caches for basically unknown reasons. Every event I've been to, I've met nice people. I just don't go to many events. So to meet local cachers that far a distance from home was a nice surprise.

Pictures were taken at or near the following cache:
Groundspeak Series - by HDGC

Done

2010-03-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my friend Chaosmanor and I trekked back out into the desert to complete the Groundspeak Series of caches. Last Saturday, we'd completed the lower half of the G+, getting 19 of the 40 caches in the series. We hiked the lower portion, putting in about 6 miles of hiking to get the 19 caches.

Fast forwarding to this week and we heading up to finish it off, getting the other 21 caches plus the mystery cache and perhaps the bonus cache. We were also playing GeoVexilla, the virtual "Capture the Flag" game that we both play, so we figured that since time might be short, we would try to drive to many of the caches still needed to complete the series.

We still ended up hiking about 4 miles on Saturday, giving us over 10+ miles of hiking on the route to get all of the caches. We'd looked at the terrain maps and without a high clearance vehicle, the bonus cache was going to be too tough of a hike, especially late in the day, so we opted not to do that one. The last 7 caches were part of a 2+ mile round trip hike over extremely rough terrain. We were up to the challenge and it was in the very last cache that we found the last set of coordinates for the mystery cache.

We'd also run into other cachers out on the G, all of which were from my local area. Funny how you have to drive 45 miles to meet up with people who live in your own neighborhood, but that's the way it worked. We ended up running into them on four different occasions including at the final mystery cache. After the log had been passed around, we told some geocaching tales, enjoyed each other's company and then parted ways to head back to our respective homes. This was a series well worth the adventure.

Warm weather concerns

2010-03-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

From the looks of it, I think we did the easy section of the Groundspeak series last weekend. Based upon Topo maps and satellite images that I've been looking at, plus some comments I've received from Chaosmanor over the week, the southern part looks to be a little bit easier to maneuver around than the northern part of the G+. I guess it's good that we have an extra hour of daylight now. More daylight, means more time to cache.

It's been warming up nicely in Southern California. That's good in one sense, but not so good in another. Last weekend, it was downright cold and I don't recall seeing another animals of the reptilian variety out while we were hiking out in the desert. I noted to Chaosmanor that there were some spots where caches were hidden where it could get really interesting if the weather warmed up at all. We hiked through some rocky areas on Saturday, the kind of areas that are prone for lizards to be found sunning themselves and also for other creatures that aren't as benevolent.

Last November, we had a cacher in our local area get bit by a rattlesnake, without any warning. It bit, then rattled its tail after the fact. You can read about the experience here. November is not a month where one would usually be concerned about rattle snakes, yet here we have an incident that should also serve as a wake up call for anyone who lives in warmer climes. My only encounter with a rattlesnake while geocaching happened in May of 2007. We had been making quite a bit of noise that morning and we still ended up near a five to six foot rattlesnake, who wasn't at all pleased with its morning siesta being disturbed the way it was. Needless to say, we always need to remember that snakes can be there, no matter what the season.

Picture was taken at or near the following geocache:
Groundspeak Series - Latitude - by HDGC

G+

2010-03-17T17:55:00.000-07:00

Out where the Smiley series of caches is located, there is a new series of caches called the Groundspeak series. My friend Chaosmanor spotted it about 2 weeks ago and alerted me and we planned over the next week to assault this large G+ out in the desert. We had visions of grandeur that led us to believe that we could conquer the entire series (40 caches spread out over a much larger acreage than the Smiley series) in one day.

When we first planned the trip, we figured we'd be out there sometime around 10 o'clock in the morning, plenty of time to get the entire series right? Nope, not even close. Plans changed. We realized that if we started right at ten, that we'd be getting hungry partially through the circle. Granted, we could have each taken a sack lunch along for the trek, but we didn't talk about that, so we ended up caching along a road that had a string of benchmarks and caches along it.

Once we got hungry, we ate lunch at a local establishment and then headed out to get the Groundspeak series. This particular hike was a little bit different than the Smiley series as it's much longer. I'll need to take a screen shot of the two locations to show the difference, but suffice to say, the Smiley circle would fit easily inside this large G+ spread out over the desert floor. The G+ is big enough that parts of it encroach upon the foothills surrounding this particular area. I think the G, or the circle of the G has a 2 mile diameter and each cache is approximately 2 tenths of a mile between caches.

There are roads out there which we could have used to pick off many of the caches, but we chose to walk, starting on the back side of the G and work around it, going south and counter clockwise. We got almost over to the crosspiece of the G on the far side and realized that there was no way we could complete it in the time we had left before the sun went down, so we utilized one of the road and hiked back to where we'd parked the car. While on that road, we picked up two more of the caches for a total of 19 cache finds in this series.

The plan is to make another trek out there this weekend and finish it off. Spring break starts on Friday for me and we have an extra hour of daylight so I don't think we'll have too many problems getting the rest of the caches. There is one bonus cache associated with this series and a mystery cache. Two of the caches out there have the coordinates of the mystery cache. After doing some research, I was able to discover that this bonus cache is one of the two that has the final coordinates. Whether we make it to that bonus cache and thus, the mystery is something that we're researching at the moment.

The bonus cache is rated at 4.5 terrain. Neither of us have a 4WD vehicle, and so we're not sure if we'd be able to get close enough to it, either by driving or by walking. Based upon Topo maps it's a really steep climb, but as Chaosmanor stated in one of his emails to me recently, "There are over 1,000,000 caches on this blue marble of ours and we're not going to get them all." I've always approached caching as a man's gotta know his limitations. We'll see how this turns out, but either way, I'm looking forward to this weekend and some more caching with my friend.

Spoilers

2010-03-14T13:19:00.000-07:00

This really isn't a story about spoilers in geocaching, but more about the name of the cache that I found yesterday. It's actually one of several I found yesterday, but I'll be writing about this particular one, since it has special meaning.

My friend Chaosmanor pointed out a series of caches just north of where the Smiley series was which we attempted and completed last year at the end of February. This new series, is larger than the Smiley series, with about 40 caches as opposed to the 26 involved in the other series. It creates an overlarge Groundspeak symbol on the desert floor and surrounding foothills. Each cache was named after a different part, or aspect of Geocaching, things like GC Codes and Archive. One of the ones I found with Chaosmanor yesterday was the Spoilers cache.

With a planned geocaching trip out to the desert yesterday, we both knew I would cross over a major milestone of cache finds on Saturday (3000). It really didn't matter which cache ended up being the 3000th, more that I was out with a friend enjoying the game and having a good time. As luck would have it, the 3000th also happened to be a larger sized cache. This ended up being very fortuitous, since I had a Donald Duck travel bug in my possession that I had acquired in Northern California over Presidents Day weekend. Both of us couldn't think of a better way to celebrate than to drop a web-footed travel bug in Webfoot's 3000th cache find. Here's to Spoilers and other caches that I will find in the future.

Picture was taken near the following geocache:
Groundspeak Series - Spoilers - by HDGC