Lava Beds

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

Kill Bill meets an Elephant

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

A rose by any other name...

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:

Simulacra

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

The King's Highway

Growing up in Orange County, California, I was constantly reminded about local history during school, plus my parents took us to many historical locations around where we lived so that we knew about the local history of both Orange County and of California.  Local history, no matter where you happen to be can be quite fascinating.  When we went on camping trips in summer to other states, my dad would always make sure that if we were near a state capital building, that we'd get a picture taken near it, or try to arrange a tour of the building.

I've eaten a picnic lunch on the grounds of the state capital building in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  I've also toured the capital buildings in Olympia, WA, Salt Lake City, UT, and Denver, CO.  Curiously, though we did this for other states, we never visited the state capital.  I know one of my sisters took a field trip to Sacramento to visit the capital, but for some reason, I never have been.  This summer, I intend to remedy this with the Tadpole in tow.

Part of the history of California is El Camino Real, the King's Highway, which stretches from San Diego to Sonoma where the Bear Flag Revolt happened, that started California on its way to independence from Mexico and eventual statehood in 1850.  El Camino Real was a road developed over time to link up the missions established by Father Junipero Serra.  Fr. Serra helped establish 21 missions in the late 1700s and early 1800s along the coast of  California and there became a need to link them together for transportation and economic purposes.  Thus became, El Camino Real.  

The actual road today is, for the most part, gone, but there are bell markers along the side of Hwy 101 for most of its length between Sonoma and San Diego indicating where the original road had been.  Other highways are also incorporated into the King's Highway, but the 101 is the main artery north and south of the central coast of California where most of the missions were constructed.  As we were driving down the 101 from our trip north a couple of weeks ago, I noticed several of the bell markers.  There is a Waymarking category for the bells and since I'm going to be using the 101 on a frequent basis over the next several years because of my son's choice of schools, it makes sense to put this one on my waymarking list of things to watch out for in the future.

As is our custom, we found several geocaches on the way down from Santa Cruz, including two at Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, which was established in 1791, the 11th of the 21 missions to be so created.  Most of this particular mission appeared to be recreated.  There were several original adobe walls near the entrance and I found it very curious that these original walls weren't protected in some way from the weather.  At San Juan Capistrano, there are some original walls and they are enclosed in acrylic forms so they are protected from the elements, yet still visible to people visiting the museum.

There also appeared to be some archeological digs going on behind several of the main buildings at the mission and it's probably a work in process.  The mission is 2 miles away from Highway 101, and probably doesn't get many visitors, which probably means that funding for projects are not nearly as plentiful as they would be in Orange County where San Juan Capistrano is located.

We toured the two buildings, which included the church and chapel of the mission, looking at the exhibits first before heading out to get the information needed for the virtual cache there or finding the regular cache hidden by the entrance to the grounds.  It was a nice quiet spot to get out and stretch our legs and learn a little bit more about California.  I have now visited 6 of the 21 missions, with Soledad being the farthest north.  I'm sure there will be more opportunities in the next couple of years to visit other missions along the King's Highway.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Mission Possible - by needlepointone and zieber
Mission: Soledad - by Great Scott!

Tanks

Yesterday, the Tadpole had a cross country meet at the Mt. Sac Invitational Cross Country meet, one of the premier running events in the country.  I decided that I could cache in the area with my friend 3blackcats and then head over to Mt. Sac to watch him run.  Unfortunately, he woke up not feeling well and so didn't run, so most of my day was spent caching.

We found a number of interesting caches in the area and had a pretty strenuous hike right after lunch.  We were trying to find one cache, but couldn't find a way in, so headed to the next cache and missed a small cutoff trail that would have led us right to the cache.  We didn't realize that was happening until we'd gotten all the way to the top of the hill.  The trail kept switchbacking on us, taking us tantalizingly close, them drawing us away so we thought we were on the right track.  It wasn't until we got almost to the top that we realized that we were finally walking away from the cache.

A quick check of the GPSr showed that we were 21 feet away from another cache which we found.  We were also very close to a couple of water tanks, which I took pictures of figuring I could waymark the water tanks in the water towers and tanks category.  There was another cache just beyond the tanks, so we ended up going over to that one as well.  There were some nice house up on that ridge with views of two different valleys. Talk about multi-million dollar views.

On the way down, we ended up finding a way into the original cache we'd started out to find.  So, in retrospect, it wasn't a bad idea to go after that one cache.  We ended up getting two extra bonus caches because we couldn't get to the first cache right away, plus I was able to waymark those two water towers.  It was a pretty good day.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
El Gordo - by UNCLEJON91
You Can Start Here - by UNCLEJON91

More History

Today the Tadpole and I decided to visit the Nixon Library. One of the draws was the "World's Largest LEGO Flag" which was on display in the lobby of the Library. We found a couple of caches in the morning before getting there and then we found the parking lot for the library. We walked into the lobby of the library and there it was, a massive LEGO flag. It was rather impressive. I asked the Tadpole if he was ready to go and he gave me this quirky look as if to say, "What, are you kidding?" It was then he realized that I was.

We paid the admission price, spoke with a docent for a little bit to plan our day and then we were off to explore. Being early on a weekday, the place wasn't crowded at all so we decided to visit the President and Mrs. Nixon's graves first. I decided to take a couple of pictures, being fairly certain that Mrs. Nixon's grave hadn't been waymarked in the Grave of a Famous Person waymark category. I'm still waiting for approval on that particular waymark.

After paying our respects, we then headed over to his home where he was born and toured that and then it was off to walk through Marine One, the helicopter that ferried four Presidents from Kennedy to Ford to and from the White House, Camp David and Andrews Air Force Base. This is the same helicopter you see in the famous picture when Nixon departed the White House for the last time in August 1974.

Then it was time to tour the museum. The museum has most of the factual parts of Nixon's life down and there are some interesting displays throughout. My favorite part is the hall of world leaders. In this room, there are life sized models of the world's leaders from Nixon's time as Vice President and President. This was the third time I'd been to the Library. The first time was a month after Nixon had died and the crowds were huge, so they had the area roped off, so you could only view them from afar.

Two years ago, my daughter and I revisited the library and that time we got to walk among the leaders. There was Anwar Sadat speaking with Golda Meir. Winston Churchill, Charles DeGaulle and Conrad Adenauer of West Germany. Mao Zedung and Cho En Lai were represented as was Shigeru Yoshida, Prime Minister of Japan in the 40s and 50s. The last two statues were Leonid Brezhnev and Nikita Khrushchev. Growing up, many of these leaders I'd heard of were bigger than life in my mind and now I could walk among them.

The first thing that stands out is how short Nikita Khrushchev was. He was one of the most powerful men in the world and yet stood only 5 foot 4 inches tall, proving that size doesn't really matter. As you can see in the picture, he's several inches shorter than the Tadpole who stands 5 foot 7 inches tall. The next thing that stands out was how massive Charles DeGaulle was. Once again, compare his statue with the Tadpole standing right next to him. I estimate DeGaulle to be almost a foot taller than my son. DeGaulle was truly bigger than life.

Leaving this exhibit, we entered another exhibit that had several international exhibits including a segment of the Berlin Wall. As soon as I saw it, I remembered seeing it two years ago with my daughter and had also remembered being a little confused because at that time, I thought the section was supposed to have been at the Reagan Library. The incongruity of the situation was something that my mind didn't really want to deal with, so I just put it out of my mind thinking that it was just one of those tricks my mind was playing on me. Somehow I must have made a mistake as to where the segment of the Berlin Wall was.

So today, I saw a second segment of the Berlin Wall, just about 10 days after seeing one at the Reagan Library. I knew for a fact that this segment at the Nixon Library hadn't been waymarked, so I took a picture. I'm not sure the picture is the best since I had to hand hold the camera as the library doesn't allow flash photography inside the building. But I now own two waymarks concerning the Berlin Wall, the Reagan segment which I waymarked last month and now the Nixon segment which was approved today in the Preserved Architectural Remnants and Ruins category.

At the moment, we have 12 Presidential libraries, one for every President from Hoover through Clinton. With the addition of George W. Bush's library (#13), only Texas will have more Presidential Libraries than California. But I think California has the two that are closest together geographically. That has been an added bonus for this history buff and the history buff who calls himself the Tadpole. Both of the libraries have some interesting features but overall, I'd say the Reagan library was a little bit better put together. I think part of this was there was a lot of updating to exhibits going on in the Nixon Library.

Before the National Archives took over the Nixon Library in 2007, there wasn't a lot of information on Watergate in the Nixon library. They'd started changing this when I was there two years ago with my daughter, but they still have a lot to do before it's complete. One piece of paper in this part of museum was very striking in its simplicity and that was Nixon's resignation letter to the Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. It simply stated, " I hereby resign the office of President of the United States." Dated August 9th, 1974, it was received and initialed by the Secretary of State at 11:35 AM. Interesting how simple the transfer of power can happen in our country.

Pictures were taken at or near the following waymarks:
Berlin Wall Segment - Richard Nixon Presidential Library

History and waymarks

This past Saturday, I took the Tadpole out to the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. We cached a little bit before heading over there around 10:30 in the morning. One of the four surviving copies of the Magna Carta was on display there and when we got there, we both realized that the day we were there, would be the last day for that particular exhibit, so needless to say, the library was probably more crowded than usual.

After paying the admission price, we walked in and toured the first half of the library. The first part of the library is dedicated to the early years of Ronald Reagan, up to his becoming governor of the state of California. There were displays about his loyal following of Franklin Roosevelt during the depression ear. His governor's desk was on display as well as many other pieces of memorabilia from his movie and governorship days.

We then got a little waylaid by a movie about Air Force One. After watching the movie, we were directed out of the library an into a three story building where we were confronted by Air Force One. Not just the fuselage, but the entire plane from wing tip to wing tip in all its shining glory. This plane, which serviced Presidents Nixon to Bush 2 was a Boeing 707. During the Reagan administration, the current 747 was ordered and it was delivered during Bush 2's term in office. The entire plane was disassembled, shipped out to California, then reassembled back inside the building. We were able to tour the inside of the plane and see how the President traveled. Unfortunately, they wouldn't allow photography of the inside of the plane, so I can't show any of those details. Suffice to say, it's not your ordinary plane. After getting home, I ended up "visiting" a current waymark in the Static Aircraft Displays category.

We decided to eat lunch under Air Force One right next to Marine One, the helicopter that ends up taking the President from the White House lawn to the nearby airport where he'll board Air Force One. Marine One wasn't open for any kind of tour, but I've actually been on Marine One at the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda. The helicopter at the Nixon Library is open for tours and although not nearly as impressive as Air Force One, it still was very interesting.

After lunch, we toured the rest of the library, learning about Reagan's career as President and after leaving office. We then got in line for the Magna Carta. We spent about an hour in line queueing through the hall of Presidents and then into a small gallery, where the history of the Magna Carta was presented. At the end of this gallery was a document, probably not much larger than the Declaration of Independence, inside a glass climate controlled case. This particular copy usually resides at the Lincoln Cathedral in London, but is also designated the "traveling" copy. It's been in the United States before, most notably in late 1939. That stay lasted a little longer than anticipated due to the outbreak of World War II. The US government kept it for the duration of the war, storing in at Fort Knox next to the original Constitution.

There were several things that struck me as I looked upon this document. I noted to my son that we were looking at a document that was close to 800 years old. The writing, written with quill pen looked to be about 8 or 9 point font size maximum. It was incredibly tiny, yet there were no smears from the ink, so whoever had written and copied it down (in Latin) did a very good job. However, what I found the most intriguing about this noble document, was that sometime in the last 800 years, someone had taken this particular document and folded it up as if they had intended on putting it in their shirt pocket. Perhaps someone did do this way back when, but it was amazing to see this documents with crease folds throughout it. Unbelievable. I can't imagine anyone ever doing that to the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, but yet it had been done to an old copy of the Magna Carta.

After viewing the Magna Carta, we went out on to the back lawn of the library. The back lawn is a full scale replica of the south lawn of the White House. At the edge of the lawn is a full segment of the Berlin Wall that was presented to President Reagan by the Berlin Wall Commemorative Group in 1990. We took pictures there and then headed over to the east side of the lawn to pay our respects to the President at his grave site. After getting home, I also "visited" the waymark for his grave in the Grave of a Famous Person category.

When searching through the waymarking database, I was surprised to find that these were the only two waymarks at the library. I thought for sure that some other waymarker or geocacher would have already created a waymark for the segment of the Berlin Wall. It was not the case, so I decided to create one for the wall segment. I did have one problem in that I hadn't gotten coordinates for the wall when I was there. Fortunately, I was able to use the USGS map locator to pinpoint the coordinates for the Berlin Wall segment. Using the satellite view, I zoomed in on the wall at the library. By putting the cursor over any point on the map, the map locator gives a coordinate reading for that point. By zooming in to its closest point, I was able to get very accurate coordinates and now have an approved waymark in the Preserved Architectural Remnants and Ruins waymarking category. Next time you're in the Simi Valley area, stop in at the Reagan Library and visit my waymark.

Our visit complete, I asked the Tadpole whether there was anything he wanted to look at again. His answer was negative, so we took our leave, found a cache down the road from the library, and then headed home. Researching this blog, I discovered that the largest American Flag flag built out of Lego bricks is now on display at the Nixon Library. Guess where the Tadpole wants to go next?

Pictures were taken near the following geocache:

Road to the Presidency - by Alamogul

Geocaching and waymarking

This past Saturday, I was able to get out for the first time in a week to do some geocaching. The Tadpole and I met up with Chaosmanor near Hollywood to do some GeoVexilla and some geocaching up north of Lake Castaic. The afternoon was primarily a cache run with a strenuous hike along the lake shore to find a couple of caches.

Along the trail, on a ridge overlooking the lake, we came upon an old water tank. I'm not sure what area or town was being serviced by this tank, but it was clear that this tank had seen better days. As you can see by the picture, the tank has been struck by graffiti numerous times. Surprisingly, there wasn't a lot of trash in the area, probably because the narrow road leading up to the tank and beyond had a locked gate on it. Too often, less populated area tend to become dumping grounds for people that either can't afford the fee to take their trash to the dump, or don't want to be bothered. Places, that could be very beautiful, become blighted in the process. At least this hadn't happened here outside of the graffiti.

The tank was situated in a copse of pine trees. The trees were obviously planted to obscure the tank, making it less of a public nuisance. I decided I'd waymark this tank, since the water tower category is one of my interests at Waymarking.com. We continued our hike beyond the tank and came to the cache we'd set our sights on earlier in the day. This particular cache gave us a lot of trouble because it was well hidden. My GPSr kept telling me I was at ground zero in the middle of the trail, only about 6 feet away from the cache, yet I never did spot it. All three of us probably walked right by it several times. Eventually, Chaosmanor spotted a small portion of the lid of a decon container peeking out and we had the find. The view from the cache site was spectacular.

After finding that cache, we headed down below our parking area to another cache. This particular cache had been hidden west of a former picnic area overlooking Lake Castaic. Unfortunately, the area had been closed for some time. The road down was in disrepair and the picnic area were overgrown with weeds. The two bathrooms had been totally trashed and it was evident that the local graffiti artists had been at work on several of the structures.

We would have actually missed most of this had we paid better attention to our geosenses and GPSrs. At one point, we had the opportunity to either stay on the road, or take an overgrown trail. It looked like the road was going to take us to the same place, so I opted for that route, since the main overgrowth on the trail was foxtails. Anyone who knows me very well knows that I detest foxtails. In reality, we encountered foxtails all day long so it really wouldn't have made much of a difference and had we taken that particular trail, we would have avoided all of the graffitied buildings, etc. that we passed on the hike.

Eventually, we ended up out on a point overlooking the lake. The GPSrs were pointing us in a variety of directions, but we didn't have much room to maneuver around because the trail became, in Tadpole's words, "Uber steep." and would have become treacherous had we continued, so I figured the cache had to be close. I needed the hint on this one, but eventually I was able to put a couple of pieces of the puzzle together and I went around a large bush and finally found this cache. The views, again, were great and I decided to leave a travel bug that I picked up in Stockton last weekend in this cache. I couldn't think of a better place to put a fish than in a cache right by a large lake.

The hike back up was strenuous, but we made it up without too much difficulty. In a couple of months, the trail will be very difficult because of the summer heat. There was little to no shade. Hopefully, someone else will be down there to pick up the travel bug, otherwise it might stay there awhile. All in all, it was a good day. But then again, when I go out caching with the Tadpole and/or Chaosmanor it usually ends up being a good day.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Lake View Cache-taic - by Team Magpie
Below the Castaic Overlook - by Don J

Environmental Awareness

This is not what most of you probably think it's about. When I first heard about locationless caches, it was in February 2002, less than a year after I started caching. It was an intriguing concept; find a thing that matches a particular criteria, take a picture with your GPSr, note the coordinates and then post the log with those coordinates and the pictures. Usually, locationless caches had to be unique, so people couldn't log the same thing over and over again. Once someone logged Yosemite Fall in the Beauty of Waterfalls locationless cache, then no one else could log that particular waterfall. Other waterfalls could still be logged, so the longer the caches hung around, the more interesting some of the logs and pictures tended to be because the less famous, yet still beautiful waterfalls started appearing on the cache page.

There were several things that I liked about locationless caches. I may be wrong, but I think you had to have a picture taken at your locationless find in order to get credit for the cache. I liked that, since there was no log book to prove you'd actually found what you were looking for, but there was at least visual evidence. The second reason I liked them was it made me more aware of the environment around me.

Probably the most famous of the locationless caches was Yellow Jeep Fever, where you had to get a picture of your GPSr with a yellow jeep. Sound easy? Not really. I can remember right after I discovered locationless caches, I was driving up to Lake Arrowhead and I passed a yellow jeep going the other way on the road. It was very frustrating to see something that you could log, yet not be able to for safety reasons. I actually saw another jeep, possibly the same one, when I was heading back down the road later that same day. I eventually found a yellow jeep in a parking lot in Upland, CA while I was out doing some other caching. I'd stopped to find a cache, looked over, and there was a nice jeep with Colorado license plates parked rigth there.

There were so many locationless caches during their heyday, that it was virtually impossible to keep track of all of them. I kept a running total in the back of my head of about 20 locationless caches that I found the most interesting. I figured that was about the most I could keep track of at one time without writing them all down. Once I would find one of them, then I'd substitute another one from the main list, so the list was ever changing. I liked the little challenge associated with finding them. I'd see an American flag, take the picture, get the coordinates and then go home and attempt a log. Many times, it wouldn't happen because that particular American Flag, or waterfall had already been logged. So it was important to have back up plans as well.

Every time we'd I would make sure we'd find a couple of the locationless caches. Some are very easy, like an American Flag. Since we would always camp in national parks, it would be fairly easy to get one of the American Flags at the park headquarters or visitors center. That same trip, I also wanted to get a park headquarters locationless too, but I didn't want to do the same area for both flag and headquarters. I wanted a little bit of a challenge.

That particular year we were going to be camping at Cedar Breaks National Monument in Utah and Great Basin National Park in Nevada. I figured I'd be able to get an American Flag at one park and the park headquarters at the other park. I ended up getting the national flag before we got to either park. We'd stopped for gas in Mesquite, NV, right on the border of Nevada and Arizona along I-15. Across the street from the gas station is the Oasis Hotel and Casino. Flying out in front of the casino is the largest American flag I've ever seen, so I decided to waypoint it and take a picture of it just in case. When we got home, I discovered the flag hadn't been logged as a locationless cache yet, so I decided to log it.

Locationless caches were all archived in January 2006 and have been moved over to the Waymarking site that Geocaching.com also maintains. It's basically the same thing and yet it's not. Keeping track of locationless caches on Geocaching.com was easier for me at least. I know there are some people that have embraced Waymarking. I can take it or leave it at this point. I am an officer in the Water Tower group at Waymarking, but I haven't marked a water tower in quite some time. The thing about Waymarking that is good is the fact that you don't have to stop in a particular category after you found one. Just because I've already found a water tower, doesn't mean I have to stop looking for other water towers. With locationless caches, it was "One and Done" with a particular category. If I wanted to find more Presidential statues, I could, but I couldn't log them anywhere. So, I guess in that sense, Waymarking has taken care of that aspect of the game.

When they were around, I found 25 locationless caches. Of those 25, I think I'd still try to find 24 of them again if I could. Ironically, the one that I wouldn't find again, was the one that got me started with them. It was called Where's in a Name? and it involved getting help from someone on the other side of the world to help you log the cache. I wasn't at a particular point to take a picture and get credit for the cache. But it did get me interested in the overall process and got me to look around me a little more closely as I was out and about. You never knew when you were going to run across an astronomical observatory or a Rails to Trails that you could log.

And yet, as the locationless helped me become a little more observant about what was around me, it also didn't for some reason. I know that doesn't make sense, but when I logged the observatory locationless, there was a virtual cache at the same location. For some reason, I wasn't aware of this virtual until a couple of years later when I got back up to the same area and logged the virtual. To this day, I'm not sure why I didn't log the virtual at the same time.

Pictures were taken for logging the following locationless caches:
Yellow Jeep Fever - by Team CBX2
Make a Break for the Border - by The Dam Trolls
NPS HQ - by MartyFouts, Adopted by bullit
Sundials - by outforthehunt
Observatory Quest - by Anton
Speleo - by Melak

Discrepencies

It's interesting how different GPS units measure the same information. This past Saturday, my friend Chaosmanor and I went out Geocaching, Geodashing and capturing some flags as well. It was a fun day, with a lot of variety in it. I guess you could say it was the balm that made missing the camping trip a little bit better.

The first dashpoint we attempted, our GPSrs were agreeing with each other almost down to the smallest detail. The picture of our two GPSrs are each pointing at the rock in the center between the two. When they were placed down, they both read zero. After we had taken our pictures and notes, we looked at the GPSrs and they were both pointing at the rock and registering 1 foot away.

Surprisingly, later in the day, at our last dashpoint, the closest we could get to one another while trying to zero out on the point was about 25 feet. We've noticed similar things on other caching trips we've taken, but usually it's a difference between makes, the old Garmin vs. Magellan type of thing. Saturday's discrepancy was between different models of Garmins. I have a eTrex Legend C and his, I believe is a 60 Cx. I haven't talked with him yet, but I also waymarked another water tower near the dashpoint we got early in the day. He also took readings but I'm not sure how they compare to mine for accuracy. With the hand held models, I wouldn't expect the greatest accuracy, but I found the difference as we went through the day curious.

Pictures were taken out in the Antelope Valley near dashpoints:
GD86-AKAP
GD86-AKOR

Stuff Happens

Sometimes when you're out caching, nothing happens you have a great time and everything is good when you get home. Other times, you can get injuries. Usually, they aren't life threatening, more annoying than anything else. But why does it always seem to happen all at once? I usually have a code about geocaching. It really hasn't been a good day geocaching, unless you bleed. Obviously, that's said tongue in cheek, so when I do scratch myself up, I can always say that and still have a good time. Today I didn't bleed, but I did get banged up and I still had a good time.

I took my younger son out to play with the GPSr today. The first thing we did was capture the flag of Bermuda. I wasn't sure whether it was actually going to happen or not, since I'd pretty much realized before we went that the flag was going to be behind a gate, but I figured that we'd get close enough that we'd score the point, which we did. We also waymarked a water tower today. I've mentioned that particular water tower at the bottom of this post, and we finally were able to get back to get it today.

The caching was fun. There was a neat puzzle that I'd solved about a year ago that I finally got around to finding. The rest were small caches, a couple of which had geocoins in them, another was large enough to place a travel bug in. But what happened to me at some of the caches makes me wonder whether I just should have stayed home. Let's see, let me count the injuries.

Injury one happened when I didn't heed the warning on the cache page. The warning stated,

"A note of warning, it seems many people are getting whacked on the head with this cache so please be carefull (sic) and watch your noggin."

Now, my thought process was that the cache could fall on you. I really didn't have a clue other than that until about 15 seconds after I made the grab and suggested to my son that we sign the log back in the car, since we were standing under a staircase and I didn't want us to look so suspicious. That's when it hit me, literally. I smacked my head into the underside of the support beam of the staircase, the one I'd just ducked under when I went in to find the cache. My son volunteered to replace the cache when we were done signing the log, which I gladly accepted.

Two caches later I bumped my head looking for a cache under a bridge. After I came up for air, I noticed that the GPSr was now pointing 40 feet away from where I'd been looking under the bridge. Yep, that's where it was, but now I had matching bruises on each side of my head. The very next cache, although there was a good amount of time in between the two since we'd made a stop for lunch, I ended up slipping on a slope of grass and landed on my rear, rather unceremoniously. I have to give my son credit. Had I been in that position as a youngster, I probably would have enjoyed a good belly laugh with that pratfall, but his main concern was whether I was all right. Not bad for a 12 year old.

Two caches later, in a parking lot no less, I apparently brushed my hand up against some stinging nettles. Now I've touched stinging nettles in the past and they really do sting. This felt exactly like it, but it was really in an odd place, in a parking lot, on one of the many landscaped islands that you can find in any local Big Box parking lot. Very strange, but over three hours later and my finger was still feeling the effects of it.

Fortunately, that cache was the last cache of the day, otherwise who knows where I'd be if I'd continued caching today, perhaps in traction? I guess this is more of a public service announcement more than anything. Injuries do happen. The slip could have been avoided, the head bumps as well. The stinging nettles was unexpected, but at least to protect myself in the future I need to remember to use glove whenever I'm working around plants of unknown origin. There's a lot worse things out there than just stinging nettles.

Pictures were taken at the following waymark:
Placentia Water Tower - by Webfoot

The Sounds of Caching

We all see the sights of caching all the time. For the most part, caching is a very visual experience, which is one of the reasons why we spend so much time making the camo on our caches just right. Even on a hike, we primarily use our sense of sight to enjoy the scenery as we make our way to ground zero and the cache zone. Very rarely do we use our ears.

Last week, I was fortunate enough to find one of those caches where the area literally sang to us. The cache is called Pass Cache, and it's located along the Tehachapi Willow Springs Road, right at Oak Creek Pass leading from the Antelope Valley up and over to Tehachapi. It's also an area of high winds and there's some enterprising business that's taking advantage of it by placing windmills all through the area. If you've ever been through Palm Springs along the I-10 leading away from Los Angeles toward the Colorado River, you know what I mean. These windmills are huge and they catch the wind and generate electricity.

Now, whenever I've driven out to Palm Springs, I never had my windows open, mainly because I'm driving 70+ mph along the interstate and it's usually hot out, so I have the air conditioner going as well. I've never had the chance to actually hear what these windmills sound like until our encounter with the windmills near Pass Cache a week and a half ago. It was really eerie.

As soon as we got out of the car, my prime concern was finding the cache. It was hot that day and we hadn't been spending a whole lot of time outside of the car because of it. Immediately I was struck by the sounds I was hearing. To me, my first impression was that of a very large windchime, the kind that many people have in their back yards that catch the breeze and give back pleasant tones on a cool summer evening. These were just like that, only very deep in pitch. We kept hearing different frequencies, but there was an ethereal quality to it all that made the entire experience quite haunting. I noted to Chaosmanor what I thought it sounded like and he said that he heard singing.

Hmmmmm. Now I couldn't hear the singing that he defintely said he heard, so in my mind, that made the place even more interesting. We were hearing the same thing, yet they were saying different things to each of us. Then I heard the singing too. About five feet from where the cache was hidden, there was a benchmark, so I had to go back to my car to get the camera so I could document it as well, and that's when I heard the singing. It literally sounded like some kind of Gregorian chant, or possibly some druid elves chanting to each other. You couldn't understand it, but you definitely knew it was singing. It was a very cool effect and all done by the wind and these windmills.

Usually on a large cache hunt like I did that day, I'll go back over them and think about the coolest cache that I found that day. I keep a running 5% bookmark list, of what I consider the best caches that I've found. The list is constantly in flux with additions and subtractions occuring when some caches get archived and when I find new ones that I think fit the bill. The list includes caches that I find whimsical, or that I found particularly challenging, or they could be on the list because of the great view. This one was a no brainer to make the list because of the experience. I got to find a cache, I got to document a benchmark and post a visit at waymarking and I got sung to all at the same time. You really can't beat that in my opinion.

Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
PASS CACHE - by rborch