Finding caches I couldn't find

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

Rectifying a DNF

In the past, I've written about some of my Did Not Finds (DNFs). Many, I've never found and that's all right, while others, I've gone back and finally found. This week, I was able to scratch another one off of my DNF list.

Late last week, I suggested to my friend Chaosmanor that we might be able to take a short road trip up to Santa Cruz for some caching.  My son, who's attending school in Santa Cruz, was getting ready to start his Thanksgiving break and I figured it would be enjoyable to have someone else along for the ride up to pick him up.  We finalized plans and I took off early Tuesday morning to pick up Chaosmanor who lives in Ventura County to the west of me.

Once on the road, we ended up caching up until darkness set in, then we took a more direct route to Santa Cruz.  The following morning, we'd planned a hike in Fall Creek Park, just north of Felton, which is about 10 miles north of Santa Cruz.  One of the caches in that park is IXL, a mystery cache that I've attempted to find twice in the past.  It's not like I've been actively trying to get this cache, but both times we've camped in the area, we've tried for the cache and not succeeded.  This time, hopefully, would be different.

As we started down the trail, Chaosmanor got the necessary numbers from the signs that would get us to the next waypoint.  I already knew where we needed to go to find this cache, but he wanted to go through the process of the mystery, which was fine with me.  On the way, we stopped and found a very nice letterbox hybrid cache and another smaller cache hidden in a redwood stump.  Then, like it was 7 years ago, we were near the spot where IXL was hidden.

As Chaosmanor inputted the correct coordinates into his GPSr and told me what they were, he said, "Wow, you were really close last time."  Yep, that's what was frustrating about it.  In my defense, I had a grand total of 77 finds by the end of 2003, so I wasn't what you might consider an experienced cacher, although I had been caching for the better part of three years.  I was more of a casual cacher, getting a couple per month, or maybe one on a weekend.  Now, the "geosenses" started tingling.  I suggested, based upon the hint, which had been there in 2002, that we try over there, a spot we had never tried on my two previous forays for this cache.

We ended up over what was now looking promising for ground zero for the cache and started looking.  I struck out where I was looking and Chaosmanor struck out where he was looking, so we switched spots.  At this point, we'd both passed about 3 feet from the cache.  I tried where he'd been looking, then tried another spot farther up the hill.  Striking out there, I turned around to make my way back down the slope when I realized what I'd been missing all this time.  I was looking at the hint on the cache page.  I was up too high.

Keeping the hint in mind, I worked my way back down the slope and just about when I got to the bottom of the slope, I spotted the hiding space, no more than about three feet behind Chaosmanor.  He'd been searching the same place I had.  We both had had our backs to the cache hiding spot.  It was plain as day, yet it blended in with the surroundings naturally, that experienced cachers, might miss it, which we had for awhile.

As I posted in my log for IXL
Price of a newer GPSr - $200
Extra supply of batteries, just in case - $5
Rectifying a 7 year old DNF - Priceless

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
IXL - by Diana, Jim & Bryan

Maintaining Caches

Yesterday turned out cool and cloudy. After last weekend, which saw rain and/or cold temperatures all weekend long, it was a welcome respite. The Tadpole and I had thoughts about caching out near the Rose Bowl yesterday and were well into our plans when a perusal of the sports page, of all things, put the kibosh on that little trip.

One of the reasons for going yesterday was to grab a virtual flag just north of the Rose Bowl. The flag actually had been placed by the computer in between two fairways of the Brookside Golf Course close enough to the clubhouse that it looked like we could score from the driving range of the golf course. However, I noticed in the paper that the Tour of California bike race was to end in Pasadena yesterday with several trips around the Rose Bowl. That would surely cause logistical nightmares and parking problems for us, so we decided to pass and do a couple of other things that needed to be done geocaching-wise.

Tadpole's first cache, Vic-Tree, had apparently gone missing. With the weather and his Dad's schedule, it made it a little difficult for him to get up there and check it out, so I suggested that we do a maintenance run on his cache and one of mine that had two DNFs (Did Not Find) reported in the past month. Both caches were located along our favorite trail in the Claremont Wilderness Park, so it wasn't much of a push to get either of us out the door and on our way to a strenuous 3+ mile hike round trip.

We came with two decon containers in case either cache was indeed missing. Both had been pretty much filled with stuff from our collection of swag. Yesterday was the first nice day of weather on a weekend we've had in awhile, so the parking lots were both jammed for the park, so needless to say, there were lots of people and dogs on leashes roaming the trails.

Vic-tree lies off the main trail in a canyon wash area. The wash makes a nice right hand bend from the trail affording cachers some privacy without having to worry about muggles while looking for the cache. Tadpole had picked the site out on one of our other hikes and was very proud of his placement. This is why I wasn't too concerned about it being missing since it was well hidden in the stump of a tree up above the wash area around shoulder high to me. You'd really have to be looking for it in order to find it. Yet, when we got there, it was gone. We searched all around the tree to no avail.

At that point in time, Tadpole also decided not to re-hide another cache there, but instead opted for a different hide. I suspect that part of the reason for that was his Vic-tree wasn't in a victorious mood anymore. The cache was so named after Winston Churchill's victory picture taken many years ago. The tree had a V shape to it and it was a natural name for the cache. However, in the recent rains we've been having, a nearby tree had had its roots undermined by the water running in the wash and had toppled, taking one of the V branches from Tadpoles tree with it when it fell. One could still hide something there, but I think he wanted to let it go for now and hide some new ones.

We hiked back out to the main trail and continued further up the trail, checking on my Scenic Value cache and then finally to, Today, I saw a Lizard cache. Both of these caches are decon containers that I have added camoed duct tape to and they, for whatever reason, are extremely difficult to find. I had to search for a minute or so for Scenic Value and I knew where it was. I wasn't too worried about it since someone had logged a find on the cache on Friday, but the same person had logged a DNF on the Lizard cache as well, so I knew there could be a possible problem with that cache.

As we walked, we also scouted out locations for another hide for Tadpole, but none of the spots that we looked at really suited him, so we kept going up to Today, I Saw a Lizard. As luck would have it, there were two muggles back near Lizard, so we kept walking back to another cache that the Tadpole ended up finding. I'd already found this one awhile ago while out hiking with friends of mine. We then walked back down the trail and got to ground zero for Today, I Saw a Lizard.

As noted above, this one is another decon that is hard to spot. Once again, my eyes failed me and I couldn't spot my own hidden cache. All at once, the Tadpole announced he'd spotted it and even as he pointed it out to me, it took me a good 30 seconds or so before I could see it. At least that mystery was solved and it was still there. When we got back home, I ended up posting a note to the page and sent two emails to the last to DNFers letting them know that the cache was still there.

The mile and three quarter walk back to the car took most of the rest of the morning, so we decided that our stomachs were more important than trying to find hiding spots for the two caches that we'd brought along on this hike. I started thinking about my own record of cache maintenance and decided that I need to make sure and check my caches from time to time, especially if there have been DNFs logged recently. I know that I don't like it when I get out to a cache site, try to find the cache and then notice on the cache page a string of DNFs logged. The maintenance run on Today, I Saw a Lizard started that process. After all, maintaining caches is part of the game.

As a side note, all of the pictures were not taken yesterday, although in hindsight, I really should have taken some pictures because the views from up there were gorgeous. In the last picture, the mountain in the background is covered with large amount of snow at this time.

Pictures were taken at the following caches:
Vic-tree - by Tadpole95
Today, I Saw a Lizard - by Webfoot
Scenic Value - by Webfoot

Keeping a positive attitude

A long time ago, I used to golf. My wife used to say she could tell what kind of round I'd had by the way the garage door went up. Needless to say, I really didn't have the temperament for golf back then. One day on the course, I was golfing by myself and I'd just finished up nine holes and thought to myself that I wasn't having any fun. So I went home. That was back in the summer of 1989. In the fall of 1989, my wife and I made the decision that she would stay home with our daughter. Taking more than a 50% pay cut meant many changes in our lifestyle back then, one of which was entertainment. My mind set had been changing toward golf and I had just decided around the same time that I'd like to take it up again, but that went out the window with the other decision. I still have my golf clubs. They're out in the garage. I seriously doubt that I will ever use them again and I really should give them away to a charity, but they are a reminder of where I was and where I want to be, so I keep them there where I can see them when I come into the garage every day.

I bring this up because I could have had one of "those" days while geocaching today. The first geocache that I attempted today I couldn't find. I'd worked on it last year at this time. For whatever reason, the cache has eluded me and it's rated as a regular. I haven't had the cache page either time I've looked for it either due to some error transferring the data from the computer to the PDA. Next time I look for it, I'll have the cache page in hand.

The next cache I attempted today was behind a sign stating Trespassing forbidden. I'm hoping that there's another way into that cache but I'm not so certain of it. One more DNF followed due to a high muggle quotient in the area. After looking at the cache page, it appears to be a very tricky hide as well. I don't usually do so well on those kinds without extra pairs of eyes with me in the form of friends. I finally found a cache further down the trail, then followed that up with two more DNFs due to muggles again. In one respect, it was a frustrating day, but in many other respects it was anything but.

Along the hike, which followed along the river bank, there was quite a show. First thing I ended up seeing were several orb spiders waiting patiently for some unsuspecting bug to fly into their trap. It was cool and cloudy, but I did find one that was working on a new web. The park where this spider was working was pretty amazing, having lots of the standard jungle gym but also something that looked like rock climbing walls for kids. There were several families having a great time there this morning.

I also took a walk out on the bike/walking path alongside the river because I needed to get over to the other of the road to get one more DNF. Not that I wanted that DNF, but that was the way the day was going for me. While walking under the bridge, I noticed a beautiful mural painted on the bridge abutments. As you can see, it's nicely done. A couple more paces and I spotted a young egret fishing for breakfast. I was fortunate enough to catch him with a small minnow in his mouth just before he decided to partake in breakfast.

So, let's see what happened caching today. Five DNFs, one easy find, a great walk in a nicely laid out suburban park while watching nature at its best. Had I had my golfing attitude from before, I might not have noticed these gems waiting for me to discover. It's all about attitude and if it's positive, it's so much better.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Just Keep Walking... - by Team O-Zone
Sycamore Creek Trail #4 - by Team O-Zone

What's wrong with this picture?

Take a look at the picture to the right. What's wrong with it? I see a barrier, with a No Trespassing sign on it. Beyond the barrier, there appears to be some kind of path. I can tell you that the path is at the top of a river bank. Rivers in Southern California are, for the most part, cement lined, usually with bike paths along them for outdoor enthusiasts to use. This particular one in Orange County is no exception. You can't see it from this picture, but the bike/walking path on top of this river bank is on the far side.

Now I ask again. What's wrong with this picture? Well, I'll tell you what's wrong. There's a cache hidden about 100 feet beyond that No Trespassing sign. Reading the logs, you have to climb down the cement embankment to get to the cache as well. I posted a DNF on this cache with this same picture asking the owner if I am missing something. Perhaps there's another way in to the cache area. Reading the other logs, it appears as if most people approached from the east side, much like I did. That would indicate that these people chose to trespass. Unless I hear otherwise from the cache owner, I guess this is one cache that I'm not going to find.

Lies, Damned Lies, and...

Mark Twain popularized the statement, "There are three types of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics." As I looked at my calendar for the month of September, I knew this particular month would be a lean month. Things have conspired to keep me from getting out on any kind of regular basis to do any kind of geocaching. I was lucky enough last weekend to get out with my friend Chaosmanor and find seven caches, otherwise my streak of finding at least 10 caches per month would end at 34. As it is, looking at my stats, my 2 year streak of finding at least 20 per month is in serious jeopardy and with only three more days this month, I would be willing to bet that it's dead. Yeah, I could go out later on today and possibly again tomorrow to get those elusive 9 caches to save the streak and further the stats, but would there really be a point in that other than to keep a streak alive?

I also thought back over the month. Was it a frustrating month? I'd be lying if I said it was. One weekend, I chose to stay home and rest. I really did a couch potato imitation in front of the TV that weekend watching a lot of football. Another weekend, I chose to grab some flags and dashpoints in some of the other GPS Games I play and not do any kind of geocaching.

Last weekend, I went caching both days, Saturday with my youngest son and Sunday as noted above. The Tadpole and I found three and were quite happy with the finds as were Chaosmanor and I on Sunday. I went out caching today and had 5 DNFs for a variety of reasons, mostly muggles in the nearby vicinity, but there were other things that caused them as well. I'll post about one attempt separately. The walk was nice, so it wasn't a frustrating day. More on this as well in another post.

I guess the stats don't show everything. There are a lot of month out there where I found a lot of caches. There are also a lot of month where I didn't find very many at all. The more important part, I think is that I had fun doing both. This month was slow, next month might see more cache finds or maybe less. It's all a game anyway, isn't it? The stats pic just shows my caching per month over the time I've been caching. Click on it to get a bigger image if you'd like to look at it in depth. At a quick glance, you can see September on the far right of the graph. It was just a slow month, that's all, and that's fine. The statistics aren't going to lie on this one.

A Spectacular DNF

There are some Did Not Finds (DNFs) that are just routine, run of the mill, you just can’t find them and then there are other DNFs that can be blamed because you had a cold or your geosenses weren’t sufficiently working. Then there’s that third category, the one where everything that could go wrong, probably did, or one you can blame on your own stupidity, or inexperience. I’m talking about those spectacular DNFs that you really don’t want to write home about, but will anyway, because it makes a good story.

One particular cache stands out as a spectacular DNF and it’s one that my sons and I tried to find while on a camping trip, not once, but twice. Interestingly, this particular cache is the only cache that makes my top 5% bookmarked list that I haven’t found. Why is it in my top 5% if I haven’t found it? I feel this cache is what geocaching was all about when the hobby first got started. It involved a hike, some puzzles to solve to gain all the coordinates, plus heavy tree cover that places your GPS’s ability to work properly in jeopardy as well. In short, it’s a fine cache that I just haven’t been able to find yet. In fact, had I known ahead of time that a friend of mine was going to go camping up in the same area last month I would have recommended that particular cache for him to attempt as well because I believe he would have enjoyed the hunt.

I originally picked IXL back in 2002 as one of the caches we would attempt because it was near where we were camping at Big Basin State Park just north of Santa Cruz, California. The cache is actually in Henry Cowell State Park, but they’re fairly close to each other. There’s a nice parking lot that you start out in where the trailhead can be found. You then have to find the missing coordinates by reading interpretive signs along the trail and doing some (GASP!) math. Eventually you end up near ground zero. I should add that I’d only been geocaching for about a year and a half the first time I attempted this cache and probably only had 20 finds at the time. Yep, I’m making excuses already for this one.

Once we got near ground zero, the fun began. At that time, I had a Garmin 12 (I can already hear the argument of Garmin vs Magellan and it’s sort of like Mac vs PC – each person has their own preferences). The batteries were losing strength, but I had extra in my backpack, so I wasn’t worried. The tree cover was heavy, due to the large Redwood trees and heavy forest cover, so my GPSr kept losing signal from time to time. Finally, the batteries died, so I pulled out two new batteries that I needed and opened up the unit to put the new ones in and take the old ones out. Imagine my surprise when I let the dead batteries fall out and not two, but four batteries plop into my hands. Oooops. I’d forgotten this particular model needed four batteries. I didn’t have another two batteries so I improvised.

Taking the two good ones, I put them in with two of the dead batteries and tried to get a signal. It took awhile under the tree cover to acquire a signal, but we got one eventually, but soon the unit went dead again. I tried this method again using the other two dead batteries and the fresh ones, but that didn’t work any better. Eventually, we were forced to give up, not finding it. When we got back home, I was too embarrassed to even write a DNF log on the page. But then again, I didn’t write DNF logs at the time. I usually will write a DNF if I’ve given a cache a good enough search and I feel I’ve exhausted all possibilities. Back then, I just didn't write them.

The following summer, we were back in the same area, so we tried this one again. Did I mention that the cache is 317 miles away from our house? Not only was this cache going to be a spectacular DNF, but it was going to be a long distance DNF as well. I’d thrown away all of the clues for the puzzle so we did the puzzle over again. Long term memory kicked in to help us down the trail and it went more quickly, but when we got to ground zero, we still couldn’t locate the cache. We searched for about an hour before giving up this second time.

This second camping trip was starting to turn into a DNF trip all the way around, because we’d DNFed "Red My Lips... I'm Not a Crook" up in Big Basin State Park, but we were pretty sure that it had been muggled. We were now 0-2 and heading for The Redwood Barely There! in the area. We spent a great deal of time looking for that one as well and gave up on it as well. As we were hiking out from that particular cache, I saw the cache alongside the trail. Based upon the name of the cache, that’s where it was supposed to be, so I can only assume that the tree cover was playing havoc with the GPS again. At least we found that one. Afterwards, we ended up driving down to Santa Cruz and got our one and only Webcam cache.

Should I go back again, and I’m sure I will sometime in the future, we’ll try for IXL again. I have a new GPSr, so it will be interesting to see if the new one helps us out. My youngest has the older model, so we’ll be able to compare notes on the cache to see how accurate we are. Or maybe, just maybe, my experience will kick in. Like I said before, I had only about 20 cache finds at the time of my first attempt, and not many more than that a year later, so experience at finding caches might help this third time. If we end up posting another DNF, then it will make this one even more spectacular. Even DNFs can be fun if you have the right attitude about geocaching. But I think the third time will be the charm, won’t it?

Pictures were taken at or near the following caches:
"Red My Lips... I'm Not a Crook" - Kaveh, Team Bench Leader
The Redwood Barely There! - by Scott, Becca, Travis, Max
Eye Spy Another Eye in the Sky! (Webcam Cache) - by Just a Short Walk

Serenity

You ever had one of those days where you should have just stayed at home surfing the Internet as opposed to going out and finding some hidden caches? That's what happened to me today. I wanted to get some caching in today. I have a couple of find streaks going, that I'd like to keep intact, before the middle of the month because I'm going to be out of commission after March 17th for a couple of weeks. Anyway, I have one streak that dates back several years that I've found at least 10 caches per month. Another streak dates back about a year and a half where I've found at least 20 caches per month.

So I went out today alone. Originally I thought I was going to be caching with one of my caching buddies, but that fell through due to miscommunication. Eh. Stuff happens sometimes. So I first went out to find this one cache that's been eluding me for awhile. Bam. Another DNF on this one. I'm getting beaten by a five year old girl on this one. I think that's five times and I knew where it was supposed to be because I'd talked with one of the owners at an event last month. Sigh. This is not a good sign on how the day is going.

Two other micros merited quick drivebys. The muggle quotient was way too high for either one of these today. Ditto for number 4 as well. Number 5 looked intriguing, but it was hidden in a pooch park and Jack wasn't with me. I really need to bring him back here so I can get that cache and he can have some fun.

After that one, I started thinking back to when I had a consecutive streak going. I'd started it as a lark really, just to see how many days in a row I could find a cache. Because of different commitments I had that weren't happening at that time, I figured I had 33 days in a row, where I could conceivably find a cache. So I decided to do it. The only day I was worried during this streak was Easter Sunday, but I got up early that day and was able to actually get a hike in and find a nice cache. The streak ended on day 56, mainly because I got tired of finding micros all over the place that had bad coordinates. It wasn't like any of these caches had bad coordinates, but thinking about the streak, I can remember that as I'd missed a cache and thought about going for another to extend the streak, I thought to myself, am I having fun here? The answer was NO, so I went home.

That's what I did today. Granted, it was only one DNF, and four DNA(attempt), but I think I should have just stayed home today. Nah. It was a beautiful day and the sun was shining. It was a good day, even if I didn't find a cache. It's days like today that make the other days when you're just on a roll finding caches all get put into perspective. As the saying on one of my geocoins says, "God grant me the serenity to accept the caches I cannot find, find the ones I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." There have been days in the past when I didn't necessarily know the difference. Today was different, even if I can't find a cache hidden by a five year old.