Inclement Weather

It's raining in Southern California.  I have a weather station in my backyard with a minimum and maximum thermometer plus a rain gauge.  So far, we've received a little more than 2 inches of rain from this first of three storms.  There's been a respite since about 4 in the afternoon so we must be between storms at the moment.  The third one is supposed to pack the biggest punch.

If you're reading this from the east, you're probably thinking that 2 inches isn't very much.  Most of Southern California is desert to semi-desert.  Where I live, we average 13 inches of rain per year.  2 inches in a 24 hour period is a lot of rain.   The hillsides absorb a lot of it, but if there have been fires recently, then there will be problems with mudslides.  The Tadpole and I went out to find some virtual flags today and we actually heard a broadcast from the emergency broadcast network this afternoon, warning about flash floods in certain areas.  I think that's only the second time I have ever heard an actual emergency broadcast on radio or the television.

More to the point however is I used to think rain hindered my ability to find caches.  I don't think that way anymore, although the rain did a number on us today, but I'll get to that later.  With inclement weather, a geocacher just needs to have a different mindset.  On the 30th of last month, Chaosmanor came out here to go on a hike with me.  By the time he got over here, it was raining.  Well, at least raining by Southern California standards, which is mostly a drizzle with occasional bouts of slightly heavier rain.

We could have gone out, but would have been hiking in mud which didn't sound like a whole lot of fun, so we opted to do some suburban caching.  That was the best decision we did because we had a great time and found many caches that I'd passed up in the past due to high muggle activity.  With the rain, muggles don't go out unless they actually have to and so most geocaches that tout on the cache page something along the line of "high muggle area" don't have that problem when it's raining.

This might not be much of a revelation to most, but I hadn't really thought that seriously about it.  My thoughts about rain was it made caching less fun.  My glasses would get wet and I wouldn't be able to see as clearly.  Clothes would get wet when you searched in bushes, etc.  Chaosmanor and I have cached in the rain a couple of times, but that time last month, for whatever reason, was the eye opener for me. We found a lot of caches and enjoyed the time caching and the time together.  As you can see from the pictures, places where caches might be hidden were quite vacant as opposed to what they might look like on a nice day.

Needless to say, I didn't hesitate to go out today, even though it was pouring.  I figured that the rain would slacken at some point and we might be able to get a couple of caches in between the virtual flags we were seeking.  We'd come to an agreement that if it wasn't really pouring, we might try for a cache here or there.  The weather really didn't cooperate with us at all.   It seemed like every time we got to a flag spot, it would be pouring, while when we were commuting between flags, it wasn't raining as hard.  That's how it goes some days.

We did find a couple of caches near the end of our trek today.  One was a lamppost hide in a parking lot.  Rain kept the muggles away and we found it quickly.  Another was by the side of a road.  There weren't any joggers to bother us.  I think the Tadpole and I both decided that we're not going to let a little weather deter us from our "appointed rounds."

Seeing Red

One of the aspects that I so love about geocaching are the surprises that pop up from time to time along the way.  This past Saturday, I went caching at Vasquez Rocks Park (which I'll expand upon in another blog) and then into Soledad Canyon.  Soledad Canyon would have been a quiet trip following railroad tracks that day except for the accident along the 14 freeway, which funneled a lot of extra traffic onto Soledad Canyon Road.  So much for a little quiet, but otherwise, it was a good trip finding caches here and there.

One of the spots along the way was a small micro cache and it wasn't so much the cache that was a surprise as it was a fairly easy find.  It's what was at the cache that made this one interesting.  We'd stumbled upon a graveyard of fire trucks from different parts of Los Angeles County.  My friend, 3blackcats, spotted a truck from the city of Pomona where she works in amongst all the other trucks that were parked there.  It looked like the county just stores the trucks out there and gets parts as needed, although it seemed like a pretty out of the way place for most of Los Angeles County to store the parts for fire trucks.

We parked near the entrance to the lot, then walked along the road back to the cache, taking pictures along the way.  With all of the signs stating "NO TRESPASSING" there was no way we were going to go in and among the trucks.  At the cache site, we'd just extracted the cache from the hiding spot, when a muggle came walking up the road toward us.  This was a very large man who was obviously one of the caretakers of this lot and he was wondering what we were doing.

Caught red handed, we had to confess we were geocachers.  He spotted the cache and said geocaching about the same time we said geocachers, so he knew about the hobby, saying one of his relatives participated in it.  He was more concerned about us possibly trespassing because he said that there had been several other people who'd spotted the trucks and wanted to get a closer look, going over the fence, by the warning signs just to get a better look at the trucks.  When we assured him we had no such desires he finally relaxed and became a little more congenial.

Since we were done, we walked back to our car together, chatted a little more and went on our way.  Perhaps we've earned another convert to the hobby, since he seemed to be genuinely interested in what we were doing and we were fairly enthusiastic about it as well.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
Seeing Red? - by Yosemite John and Debbie

Lamp Post Flora

Sometimes, I end up finding lamp post caches. It doesn't happen that often and usually I don't have a lot to say about them, since they seem to be so pervasive in an urban area and usually pretty routine. One lamp post cache find did catch my eye, not because it was different, but because of the experience. Last Saturday was my first full day of vacation, so I figured what better way to spend it than to go out caching with my good friend Chaosmanor.

We met over near a park and ride off of the 118 Simi Valley Freeway, otherwise known as the Ronald Reagan Freeway. We've utilized this particular park and ride in the past and we both commented that it was surprising there wasn't a cache hidden in it since it's a large area, with several landscaped areas that could hold a small cache (not a micro as I don't hide micros). I even came up with a clever name for it should we decide to come here again as a base camp.

This particular park and ride is literally under a transition road for the freeway and so the geocache map would be interesting, making it look like the cache could be in the middle of the freeway, depending upon placement. It's probably because of the proximity to the freeway that there hasn't been a cache placed there. It is pretty noisy and not the most scenic spot in the world, but then again, there are quite a few caches that fit that description.

Which leads me to this lamp post cache we found after we'd dropped off Chaosmanor's car at the park and ride. This was our second cache of the day. We weren't sure what the cache was going to be when we first got there. That's often the case when you run a circle PQ for an area. You go out and you find caches. Some are interesting and some are...well, let's just say they're not as interesting as others.

As we pulled into the parking lot both our GPSrs were pointing at this particular lamp post, so I slowly approached it in the car, looking around to see where the concentration of muggles were, in order to position my car in a good spot to use it as a shield if need be. Once I had parked the car, we were out and had the cache in hand very quickly and then it got interesting. Chaosmanor was about to put the cache back when I warned him of a muggle that had just pulled up behind him in a car. So now we had to go into stealth mode, or actually diversionary mode. I've written about how I've used my camera quite often to distract muggles into thinking that I was only there to take pictures, as opposed to that more nefarious activity geocaching.

I'm not sure this time it worked very well, because the muggle just seemed to be interested in me and Chaosmanor for the longest time as she sat in her car. Perhaps she was wondering what two middle aged men were doing walking around in the planter looking at various weeds and other plants, but eventually she got tired of it and got out of her car and went inside the store. However, there were other muggles about as well, so we had to wait them out. I think this was the first time where I had more trouble replacing the cache than in retrieving the cache because of muggles.

We eventually got the cache replaced when I spied some clover growing near another lamp post further down. This particular clover was immense. The bud was at least quarter in diameter if not bigger. Most of the clover I've seen in lawns in this area are usually small white balls of little flowers. This purple bunch really took me by surprise. Couple that with the other pictures I took of the iris and the dandelion and I actually got some really nice photos at this rather average lamp post cache.

I guess I really need to thank the muggles though. Had they not been there in force, we'd probably have been in and out very quickly and we would have missed these little highlights. Eh. It's a weed some people might say. Yeah, it's a weed, but it made for an interesting picture, so I'll take that weed any day of the week. I still don't particularly like to find a lot of lamp post caches, but I'm pretty sure that I'll look at them slightly differently in the future because of this experience I had with them on Saturday. And that's what it's all about really, enjoying the experience.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
Greens - by shirconn

Red Light Caches

No, this is not about caching in seedy areas. In fact, the area where these two caches were found was very upscale suburbia. Saturday, I went caching with Chaosmanor in the Santa Clarita area. This is where 6 Flags Magic Mountain is located for you roller coaster enthusiasts. We were working our way up to San Francisquito Canyon to drive up the road to get some caching done there and to do a hike. I'd run my PQ around a certain spot in the canyon and Chaosmanor had done likewise and we were in the midst of many of the caches from either PQ.

As we traveled down McBean Parkway, I ended up making several yellow lights and was trying to keep my speed pretty even because it seemed like the lights were timed, so I figured that if I kept it right around the speed limit, we'd make good time and make it to the canyon early. One light defied my timing and I was forced to stop. As we sat there waiting for our green light we noticed two caches in front of us on either side of the intersection ahead of us. As I looked right, I noticed a very interesting sculpture of some birds. I was talking out loud, saying that as long as we're stopped and the sculpture looked kind of interesting, we should check that area out, but I was in the wrong lane, being in the far left hand lane and making it all the way across three to four lanes of traffic would not have been prudent, so we decided to pass on it.

As soon as the light turned green, I had second thoughts again about not getting that cache, so I decided to make a left hand turn into the park on the opposite corner, figuring that I could either back track to it or we could walk over to it. Once the car was parked, we noticed another cache over here in the park, so we decided to check it out as well. As we approached ground zero on this one, I didn't have a very good feeling about it. The place was teeming with muggles of all shapes and sizes. There was a soccer game going on about 20 feet away from ground zero and about 30 feet in the opposite direction of ground zero was a play area, filled to capacity with mothers and younger siblings of the soccer participants.

This was going to be a difficult find if we were even lucky to find it. Very near ground zero was a life size grizzly bear statue. Now this wasn't just any grizzly bear, as it had a pedestal that was meant to explain why it was there, but it wasn't complete yet. We didn't need the pedestal to tell us what it was all about. The bear's skin was completely made of historical pictures of Valencia, CA, where the statue was located. There were some very old pictures on the left side of the bear and some more recent ones on the other side.

While Chaosmanor was looking at the bear, I decided to make a quick look around to see if I could figure where the cache was located. It was pretty obvious, in fact, you can see the hiding spot from one of my pictures. The trouble was, it was a little awkward, but I got away with it. One thing about muggles is, if you don't linger too long in an area where you're really not supposed to be, they forget about you really quickly. Plus, the one woman who even looked at me, got almost immediately distracted by her charge and quickly had to deal with her little one and so didn't pay me any attention as I went into search mode and quickly found the cache.

The nice thing about this hide was it gave you a reason for being there, which I appreciate considering that most people think a middle aged man looking in the bushes is up to no good. The bear had a lot of historical references on it and we thoroughly enjoyed out time looking over it. Who ever created it actually has a sense of humor as well, placing a picture of the local Wal-Mart right below the bear's tail. After taking some pictures of my own, we made our way to the other side of the street and the sculpture that had attracted us to this area in the first place.

The other side of the street was a business area, but the corner was a dedicated art work. There was a walkway over a nice sized pond that was barren of fish. There were several sailboat sculptures in the water as well as a large sculpture of seagulls flying in formation in front of the boats. We got over to the area and I immediately started taking pictures and figuring out where the cache was. I had the cache in hand momentarily and we signed the log and replaced the cache. It was another example of a micro placed in such a way to give the person searching for it a reason for being there.

Too many times, I'll encounter micro caches that make it very hard to search for it because there's no purpose for a person to be there in the first place. Why would anyone hang around a light pole, or walk into a section of bushes? Unless they're working on said stuff, there really isn't a reason and if that lamp post is located in a major muggle area, it makes it difficult to retrieve the cache and then replace it after signing the log. Both of these, the second more so than the first, at least had the cache hidden in such a way that you were supposed to look like you were there. I placed both of these caches on my top 5% list because I liked the environment they were in and I liked the area. They were well planned, quality caches in my opinion.

So this brings me back to my title. Since the only reason we searched and found these caches was because we had to stop, I'm was trying to devise a new term for something like these. Red light caches seemed the most appropriate name for them. They make you stop and look because of their surroundings even though you might not have gone out of your way to seek them. Maybe someday, the term might catch on. Usually, I'm not that grateful when I have to stop at a red light, but this time I was. The forty minutes we spent enjoying the atmosphere of the two sites and searching for the caches was well worth the time out of our day. In this particular case, it was like we had stopped and smelled the roses. Every now and then, we all need to do that.

Pictures were taken at or near the following caches:
Bird's Eye View - by ourflyingpig
Heritage Bear - by Ninja Man

Last summer run

This weekend, I'm taking it easy. It's probably the last weekend that I actually have the entire weekend to go caching and yet I'm staying home. The first couple of weeks of school have done a number on me and I'm tired, so I just decided to rest. The next couple of weekends, I'll be attending my son's cross country meets, so I'll be getting a couple of caches here and there near his meets, but no large cache runs will happen until sometime in November I suspect.

This past weekend, I drove up to the mountains near Crestline and Lake Arrowhead with my friend Chaosmanor to do a end of the summer caching run. We did a run right at the beginning of summer and so it seemed rather appropriate to create a bookend on the other end of my summer vacation. One cache we found has already been archived. Apparently, someone was taking issue with the placement of a metal container uphill from a turnout, hidden in a waist high stump of a dead tree. The cache had been destroyed, the owners had come out and replaced it and within three days, the cache had been destroyed again, since that's the state we found it in last Saturday. There's no way the container could have been interpreted as trash; there was nothing else around to indicate that this was a dumping ground. This was just someone's attempt to spoil other people's fun. That's sad in my opinion.

One cache that we did find that was intact made it to my top 5% list. Red Rock Wall is located at a turnout on Hwy 18 which is also called Rim of the World Highway in this area. The turnout is huge and affords at least a 270° view of the Inland Empire located below. We could see the former Norton Air Force Base located in San Bernardino. Had it not been so hazy, we probably could have seen all the way to the Palm Springs area, a distance over 75 miles. We could also see the thunderheads that were building in the mountains to the east of us, mountains where we would eventually be and rain from which we would eventually get wet.

The coordinates for the cache were almost dead on, the hide was well done. It became apparent rather quickly that one of us was going to have to go over the Red Rock Wall in order to retrieve the cache. We couldn't see the cache from our vantage point, but our GPSrs were pointing us about 15 feet beyond the wall. This could be tough since there were a lot of muggles at the overlook, but it appeared to both of us they were more interested in the view than what two middle aged men were doing down on the far side of the lookout. I started thinking how I wanted to do this, so I grabbed my camera and went for a walk. I took pictures at the main overlook, then slowly worked my way back taking some pictures and feigning other shots until I got to a spot where I could go over the wall.

Once on the other side I spotted the well hidden ammo can attached to a strap that prevented it from sliding down the hill. There were plenty of bushes so I wasn't in any danger myself, but I could see where it could become a problem for the ammo can due to where it was hidden just beyond the main line of bushes. During a lull in muggle activity, I made the grab and then gave the ammo can to Chaosmanor who placed it in my car where we could make trades and sign the log more easily than trying to do it on the other side of the wall.

It's really interesting watching people at a large turnout such as this. You would think there would be a constant stream of people, making retrieval or replacement of a cache nearly impossible. That didn't seem to be the case here, or at least it wasn't the day we were there. The muggles seemed to come in waves, all coming and then all leaving at the same time. There were times when it seemed quite crowded and other times when we had the entire turnout to ourselves.

The replacement was just a reversal of how we'd made the original grab. Chaosmanor handed me the ammo can, I hooked it up to the strap and then placed it behind the bush where it had been hidden when we first got there. I took a couple more pictures (some of which turned out quite nicely I think), then made my way back over the wall. I wanted to make sure I'd hidden it back as well as when I found it so I walked back and forth along the wall, looking down to see if I could see the can. Nope. It was a good replacement. Afterwards we both commented on the audacity of placing an ammo can in such a busy place. The cache has been there for over 2 and a half years, so I guess the audacity of hostile bob has been rewarded.

My top 5% list is a very subjective list. It's a list of the caches I've found over my 7+ years of geocaching, that I've found particularly rewarding. Sometimes they make the list because of the view. Others make the list because it was a good hike to get to the cache. Some caches make the list because they made me laugh when I finally found them. Caches get added from time to time and they do get deleted from the list as well. It's an evolving list. I try to edit the list on a regular basis, removing the caches that have been archived, while adding new ones to the list that I think merit inclusion. I've kept a couple on the list that have been archived because I enjoyed them and thought others would enjoy the area and experience where the cache had been originally hidden without finding a cache. If you ever get to my area of caching, I hope you find my list useful.

Well, my summer has definitely ended. I'm back into the routine of school as our my children. My oldest is away at college. My middle child is starting his last year of public education and will be graduating next June. My youngest has just started his last year of junior high school. It's amazing to think about the fact that next year at this time, he'll be in high school and I'll have two children in college. I look back on the times we've had with a smile on my face. Although the time has seemingly gone quickly, in reality it has been a slow journey to now and there are still many more good years ahead of all of us.

Pictures were taken at or near Red Rock Wall - by hostile bob

Bug collections

I'm probably going out caching again tomorrow. As I was looking over some of the possible cache locations that I wanted to hit tomorrow, I noted another travel bug hotel in the local area that I haven't gotten around to checking out yet. I looked at the cache page tonight because it's a puzzle cache, so I needed to figure that part out, but won't be going there tomorrow because it's been muggled. Apparently it can be repaired, but it looks like four travel bugs and a couple of geocoins are in the great beyond.

As noted in the last log, I went out caching last Saturday as well. I picked up quite a few travel bugs and coins on this run. I also deposited five coins and bugs that I've had. And yes, I kept my promise, taking a photo of each one before they were placed in caches. Admittedly, some of the pictures were pretty lame and uninspired, but I like the round gear on top of the round tire. Can you figure out where the cache is? I also like the car perched on the overpass of the freeway. I'll get better as I keep remembering to take the pictures.

The day started out nice and hot. I believe it was over 85 by the time Chaosmanor and I met up in the San Fernando Valley at 8 o'clock in the morning. We drove up the I-5 toward Gorman where we started our caching run. I think we found 12 caches in and around Gorman, dropping some bugs and picking up some bugs as well. In the cache where I dropped the little car, we hadn't really looked at the cache page that closely and I thought we were looking for a guardrail type of hide until I spotted a larger container about five feet away from the guardrail, hidden in plain site. Doh.

The bonus came when we opened it up and out dropped Allison. Yep, Allison, a white jeep! I haven't seen a white jeep in ages, so I was thrilled. I actually had to go back to the car, pick up the travel bug, take a picture of the travel bug before making the trade for Allison. Allison has spent most of her time up in Washington state, but has made it to Utah and now is in Southern California. I'm probably going to take her to Oregon later this summer.

Later in the day, Chaosmanor found a rubber ducky travel bug, FrankenDuck that he was going to keep. I have a travel bug in my possession right now that's similar to it, so I was semi-coveting that duck. Hey, webbed feet should go together right? Anyway, we found another really bizaare travel bug a little bit later in the afternoon that was named after Chaosmanor's wife, so he gave me the duck and took that one. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with FrankenDuck, but it'll be gruesome.

I also found a Diabetes travel bug on Saturday, plus a geocoin. The diabetes travel bug was as surprise as well. I guess I need to read the cache pages more in depth, because it was listed on there so it really shouldn't have been a surprise, but it was. Go figure. That one is going to be a little bit tougher to photograph than the others. I've actually found that travel bugs, due to there larger size tend to be easier to photograph with respect to the background than do geocoins. I don't think the Belgium coin photographed in my hand next to a Joshua Tree is very inspiring at all, but I wanted to show the owner the different kind of plants that are native to California and that's what was at the cache site, so I went for it.

The Bug in a Ball travel bug ended up getting left in a nice cache under a 90 year old Coulter Pine tree. Coulter pines produce some of the largest pine cones and some of the heaviest pine cones in the world. Trust me when I say you do not want to get hit by one of these. There were these huge cones everywhere littering the ground near where the cache was and Chaosmanor even commented about needing a hard hat before going in for this cache. I looked up and saw several cones in the tree, but none that looked threatening. We're both out safe, so I guess that means we escaped unscathed.

Of all the pictures that I took on Saturday of travel bugs, the one that brought back memories was of the wine cork that I hung on a barbed wire fence near a pond up by Gorman. Back in 1991, the area in and around Gorman, CA was host to a temporary art exhibit by Christo. This was his umbrella project. Back in the 70s, he'd constructed a nylon 24 mile long fence in Northern California. I'd been in college at the time, but didn't take the time to go up and view Christo's Running fence and to this day I lament that decision. For whatever reason, Christo's art speaks to me. So when I heard about the Umbrella Project, I knew I had to go up and see it. I got up one Saturday at 4 in the morning and drove the two hours all the way over the Grapevine down into the central valley of California and then slowly worked my way back up and over taking pictures here and there of the umbrellas.

The pond was one of the locations where four of the umbrellas were placed in the water, so there were some really cool reflections. These were the only ones there were in water in California. In Japan, at the same time, the other half of the Umbrella Project was happening, only with blue umbrellas. Many of these umbrellas were placed in water over there. I can recall once I got home stating emphatically to my wife that I wanted to go to Japan to see the other umbrellas. Sadly, the day I was up there viewing the umbrellas, a storm blew through, lifting one of the umbrellas up and then bringing it back down on a woman viewer killing her. Christo closed the project down immediately. He has since done other temporary works of art similar to this including gates in Central Park in New York City.

I doubt that me making the attempt of photographing every travel bug that goes through my hands played a part in that particular photo because I remembered the pond and was telling Chaosmanor about it before we got to that particular cache. But it helped me make the decision to take a picture of that bug there. I'm having fun doing this and I hope the people who own the bugs are enjoying the work. I already have an inspired photo ready to be taken the next time my tortoises show their heads in the backyard. It's not going to involve a certain white jeep, but then again......

Pictures were taken at or near the following caches:
Tejon Pass - by Castlebrook
ERIC (Turning 48 by the 58) - by TheFisherman & TickBait
Joshua Parkland - by Team Perks
Just Ducky - by Searching Gentiles
Gorman Road - Pond - by fOtOmOm

Camo the Ammo

Since I’ve been home this week, I’ve been working on the puzzle cache, The Window of the Soul. I thought I’d share with you my camouflage technique. Last week I went down to our local surplus store and picked up two ammo cans. The Grade 2 cans were a little bit too worn, so I took two Grade 1 cans for $7.97 each. One is an interesting orange color and the other one is the standard green that most of us have seen.

Last time I posted I was uncertain whether I was going to place this cache on the east or west side of the park. Since that time, the decision was semi-taken out of my hands by the placement of two caches, Where is the parking lot? and The kings Heart on the east side. I was originally planning on placing my final for the puzzle where this cache, "Call" of the Wild, used to be. If you click on the nearest caches, you’ll see that Where is the parking lot? is only 470 feet away from the original placement of the “Call” of the Wild cache, so I figured that for cache density sake, it would be prudent for me to place this new cache on the west side.

Today, I hiked up to scout possible locations for the cache. I’ve had one spot in mind for awhile and actually, it’s where I should have placed my Size Matters…..Especially in California cache. I had so many problems with muggles where Size Matters was placed, that if I’d placed it up here instead, it probably would still be with us today. Why I didn’t place it there is beyond me, but I probably had my reasons at the time. Anyway, the hike was fairly easy, considering that I’m still recuperating, but I found the perfect place for the cache, just off a fire road, yet secluded from muggles eyes and giving a 360 degree panoramic view of the hills and the city below. Today, I didn’t have any kind of view because the hillside was shrouded in fog. It was a different view, but beautiful in its own right.

After coming down the hill, I finished up the camouflage on the ammo can. Yesterday, I painted the ammo can a rusty color using primer paint. Much of the foothills in this area are this color rock, so it’s a good color with which to start. Fortunately, I have a very similar type of bush in my back yard that matches where the cache is going to be placed, so I picked three sprigs from the bush to use as cover on the ammo can. I laid the three springs on the side of the can, then did a quick spray through with both a flat green and then a flat black paint. This creates some break up in the main color of the can and will probably make it a little bit tougher to spot. My purpose is not to make it that much tougher for the cacher, but to make it tougher for muggles to spot it should they wander up in the area. I think if cachers don’t think that muggles will ever spot their cache, they are deluding themselves.

With the camouflage applied to the can, now all I have to do is gather some goodies together to place inside it while the paint dries. Depending upon how well I’m feeling after today’s hike, I may be able to place this cache tomorrow or Friday. Once placement has happened, all I’ll have to do then is send a reviewer note on the cache page and wait for our local reviewer to look at it and hopefully approve it.

There's a balance out there

I have some down time over the next couple of weeks, so I’m thinking about hiding a couple of caches. With surgery scheduled tomorrow morning (outpatient – nothing too major, just something that needs to get fixed), I won’t be doing much of anything for a couple of days, but I figure once I’m walking again, I can start working on some containers and camo. That would definitely necessitate a trip to the local big box hardware store to get some paint. I have a couple of cans of primer and texture, but I need a couple more colors to work on the camo.

I actually went to our local surplus store today to check on the prices of ammo cans. $5.97 to $7.97 isn’t bad. Now that I think about it, why didn’t I buy a couple while I was there? Oh yes, by not buying them, it means I have to go back there again and look around more. I guess there’s some method to my madness.

Once I get the camo done on the containers, it will be just a short trip out to one site anyway, a quick hike in, place and take the coordinates and then I’m out. But I will have to work on the page because this one’s going to be a mystery/puzzle cache. I have one other mystery hide, the Cobol Canyon Trail, which is a math substitution puzzle. This new one is going to be a little bit more of the “think outside of the box” type of puzzle. It’s not going to be anything elaborate, just something similar to what I’ve already seen on-line. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out once I’m done with it.

In the past, I’ve been accused of being wordy on my cache pages. Who me? Wordy? Yeah, well, I guess I am wordy, but in my opinion, cache pages that don’t tell a little story about the cache are pretty boring. Usually that means that it’s probably a lamp post or newspaper rack hide. Yep. Those are a dime a dozen, and so I’ve vowed not to hide any like that. I’m trying to take the tack, that if you can’t at least hide a geocoin in it, it’s not going to be hidden by me.

I also like to have my caches be a little bit of a walk from the parking area, so mine are not “park and grabs.” There are a lot of those out there, and I feel they don’t take a whole lot of thought or effort to place them. Slap a slip of paper in an Altoids tin and plop it under a lamp post. I heard one person in the forum call this “microspew” and I tend to agree with him. There’s very little cost involved, so there doesn’t seem to be as much ownership of the cache, because if it gets muggled, the person can always slap another one out there.

That’s one of the reasons why I don’t have as many hides as other people do. My basic strategy has been to hide one for every 100 that I find. That’s a 1% hide to find ratio, which is very low compared to others who have been caching as long as I have, and it’s also lower than many who have been caching less than I have, but that’s the ratio that I’ve decided to maintain. I can’t imagine having 100 hides. I think all I would be doing would be maintaining caches with no time to find any. Thanks but no thanks. With the ratio I’ve chosen, I get a nice balance. With 1861 hides, I have 19 finds, so I’m slightly above my average and if I hide this next one, I’ll really be above it.

With most of my cache hides, I usually post some pictures as well, so obviously, these pictures are all from my cache hides. I would say that all the pictures on the cache page help tell the story of the cache. I’ll post more about my next hide after I’ve recuperated a little and after I've hidden it.

Pictures and graphics are from the following caches:
Hotel Devore
The Cats Made Me Do It
Today, I Saw a Lizard
7 Miles Away and a Half Mile Hike

Group Caching or Going it Alone?

In the main forum a question was posted about how many caches have you found in one day. I gave a three part answer.

With a group? 37
With one other person? 31
By myself? 26

Obviously, I do a little of all three types of caching. I think the largest group I went with was following an event where there was a FTF available nearby. Several car loads of people decided to head over there and give it a group effort, especially since several people at the event had already come up empty earlier in the day. We ended up finding the cache, but it took close to a half an hour to come up with this well conceived cache. I’m sure the owner was loving every minute of it, since he and his wife were both there watching the entire process play out in the dwindling twilight of a cool summer’s evening.

Most of the group caching that I’ve done is more on the order of three or four people. There were four people in our group the day that I found my personal best of 37 caches. It was an interesting day, starting out in the morning going after several puzzle caches and some other larger caches. We had decided the area where we were going and each of us independently of the others had solved a puzzle or two, and so we drove around getting the puzzles first, actually bypassing some caches to make sure each person in the group got to find the puzzle they’d solved. After lunch, it became a numbers run to see how many we could get before we ran out of energy. The 37^th cache actually became a milestone number for me as well, #900. I wasn’t actually planning on getting that many that particular day, in fact, I would be willing to bet that everyone in the group was surprised by the number that we got. The point is we had fun.

Most of the time, when I get larger numbers like that, it’s usually because I’m caching with one other friend. The particular run where I found 31 caches was a very quick run, done in about three hours on a Saturday in July. I’m sure we probably could have done a lot more as it was a pure numbers run, but I hadn’t slept well the night before, my PDA had died on me that morning, so I was taking notes longhand and hand inputting coordinates into the GPS. Trying to keep track of all the caches we’d found without the use of my PDA was a logistical nightmare. I was absolutely exhausted after the day was over. I’m pretty sure I slept well that night though. I had fun that day, especially since I was with my friend and so we shared jokes along the way, but it’s not something that I’d care to repeat. 31 caches would be cool, don’t get me wrong, but I’d just like to stretch those 31 caches out over a little longer period of time.

The 26 cache day when I was by myself, was on my roadtrip last weekend. Most of the caches were easy finds, not taking too long. Most were of the larger size, there were a few micros thrown in, but for the most part, they were smalls or larger, so the finding was a little bit easier as well. This was an incredibly enjoyable day. The scenery was great, the infamous snake incident occurred during this cache run and there wasn’t any set agenda or time frame that I was stuck with, outside of darkness. It was a fun day.

I guess my point to all of this is that caching can come in many forms. Group caching has its own dynamics which are entirely different than when you’re by yourself or only with one other person. I can remember one group caching effort, my first actually, where I was ready to go home after our first ten caches found. I’d never cached for more than 8 to 10 caches and I had had a great day and was ready to call it quits. My friends convinced me to come along for the rest of the afternoon and I’m glad I did. We found 10 more caches, two after dark, so I’d discovered another interesting aspect to caching on that group run – night caching.

The planning probably takes a bit more time when you’re going out with someone else, but the benefits of having a partner that shares your passion of caching, that helps you out when there are muggles around and is just there to share stories with you and laughs at your jokes is really priceless. Sometimes going alone is fine, but I’ve found that my most enjoyable times were when I was caching with someone else.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:

Curiouser and Curiouser - by Terra Girl, Bean Dog, and my faithful sherpa Max
Walt Disney Concert Hall - by EMC of Northridge, CA
Mid-State Parking - by General Grant & The Mad Dog
Sunset Crater - by wolfb8 (libby)
SwitchBACK! - by WestwardHo

Distractions

I like to cache, usually with other people because with more than one person, it’s usually easy to make distractions so that the other one can make the grab on a cache that might be in one of those muggle prone areas. But what do I do when I’m caching all alone? Tying your shoe can only work so many times, as does talking on your “GPS cell phone.” That’s one of the reasons why I usually bring my camera along. Photographers can get into some interesting places with a camera, just because they can explain themselves away as trying to get a different angle on a particular subject.

As I was looking over my gallery of photos, I realized that some of my more interesting shots have come because I was using my camera as a distracter. Today, I went out to find a travel bug hotel, but ended up abandoning the hunt because of a couple of muggles across the street from where the cache was hidden. They weren’t going to move away and even when I got out my camera, they kept looking over at me to see what I was doing. I got a very interesting shot of a bee on some wildflowers, but the muggles didn’t want to budge from their spot so I left, found four other caches and came back later. The muggles had moved away and I was able to make the grab quite easily then.

Caches hidden near fountains and sculptures provide excellent photography spots to use your camera as a distracter while you search. The fountain pictured had all sorts of interesting little sculptures around it and I had a great time taking pictures of them while searching for the cache. I particularly liked the one I got of the guy trying to lift the cement slab up. You can almost see him straining to lift the piece of concrete.

Earlier this year, I was driving down from Northern California when I happened to take a break from driving to find a couple of caches in this small town. As luck would have it, I ended up getting to ground zero about fifteen minutes before a church service started across the street from where the cache had been placed. I could see the cache, but there was a very small chance of success in retrieving the cache at that time due to the high amount of muggles in the area. It was then I spotted this beautiful water tower, so I decided to walk the half block down to the water tower and get a couple of pictures, figuring as long as I was here, I could probably get a Water Tower Waymark along with the cache. By the time I came back after walking around the block, church was in session and I was able to make the grab quickly, without any muggle interference.

I’ve used two different kinds of cameras when I’ve gone caching in the past. My first digital camera was one of those point and shoot varieties. It took great pictures, and its small size made it easy to carry around. However, it was one more thing that I had to carry around in my hands, because it didn’t have a neck strap like my current camera does. My current camera, a SLR digital, has a neck strap so I don’t have to have it in my hands when I’m out caching, but it is a little bulkier than the point and shoot. Either one worked well as another type of distraction to dissuade muggles that I really wasn’t up to no good, so it’s probably a personal preference as to which one you choose. By taking your camera with you when you cache, you can give yourself another option with which to search for caches. It will also give you some pleasant memories of the place where you cached, that probably won’t fade as quickly if you’d just retained them in your mind.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:

Kellogg Hill TB Hotel - Just up from "My Town" - by jcworshipper clan
The Plaza - by juniperb
Power Me Up! - by mountain_mmike