And the hard part begins

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

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

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

The Hard Part Begins

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

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

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

Personal challenges

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Graphics created using My Geocaching Profile.

For the Birds

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

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

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

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

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

Icon Challenges

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

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

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

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

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

Challenges

In the past, I've written about the 58 California County Challenge.  This past weekend, Chaosmanor and I worked on two other challenge caches that we'd like to accomplish sometime in the near future.  The first is called Alphabet Soup.  It's a relatively easy challenge.  Find a cache beginning with each letter of the alphabet.  When Chaosmanor showed it to me, I figured, hey, not a problem.  And it really wasn't.  I read a little more closely and found out the caches had to be found after the date of publication for Alphabet Soup, July 30, 2008.

So I went back and checked and discovered I only needed an X cache.  Not bad I thought.  Chaosmanor came out the next weekend and we found a local cache near me beginning with the letter X and figured we were done with it.  The cache is up on the central coast of California between my house and where my son will be attending school.  A trip down Hwy 1 and I could get the cache.  When I was logging that last X cache, I discovered one flaw in my theory that I was done.  All the caches for the alphabet had to be placed before publication date.  This latest X cache had been placed in 2009 so it didn't count.  Fast forward to this weekend, and we found a cache down in Orange County beginning with the letter X.  Now, I'm ready to get Alphabet Soup.

The other challenge is a little more daunting.  Find a cache in each USGS quadrangle in Los Angeles County.  When we first decided to go for this one, I had almost half.  I got three more quads off of my map this weekend, El Monte, San Pedro and Long Beach.  All three of which I've already found caches in, but they didn't count because once again, they had been found before publication date for that particular challenge.  All of the rest of the quadrangles that I need are to the north of me in the mountains and deserts of Los Angeles County, much of which is on fire right now, so we'll see.  I had plans on making this one my 3000th find.  We'll see if that pans out or not.

The 58 county challenge cache I didn't work on this past weekend, but did work on while on our trip this summer.  Since I needed virtually all of the Northern California Counties, any finds up there would be gold for this challenge.  Ten counties later, I'm just 16 counties short of making the requirements for that challenge.  Next summer, the planned trip is up the eastern side of California to Lassen National Park and then south through the central valley to get the rest of the missing counties.  There is a GPS maze exhibit planned in Redding, CA for next summer, so that's also high on our priority list to see as well.  These next few months should be enjoyable from a caching standpoint.

Ungrounded

This week, I was grounded from doing much of anything. Well, not really, but it felt that way since I was on call for jury duty with the county of Los Angeles. Here, we have a one day, one trial system for jury duty. You're on call for a week. So Sunday evening, I called in and the automated system told me that I didn't need to report on Monday, but to call Monday night for Tuesday. I continued to do this and discovered I had to report for jury duty on Thursday of this week.

Because my youngest also had three doctor's appointments this week for various things, none of which were earth shattering or scary, I ended up using the first three days of this week shuttling him to his appointments. He got a clean bill of health for his appendectomy, so he was really happy about that, so happy, he ended up finding a cache on top of the parking structure at the hospital where we were. "Oh, so that's why we parked way up on the top of the structure today!"

Thursday, I ended up sitting around in the jury assembly room for most of the day. At 3:20 in the afternoon, they called about three quarters of the group to head down to the court room and ten minutes later, they let the rest of us go. My jury service having been completed, I'm free for at least a year now. I decided to go out and celebrate a little by finding a couple of caches. Well, actually, I found one cache. The other caches I had in my GPSr at the time were all in direct line of sight with muggles, so I decided to pass on them. The cache I found was also my first cache find on a Thursday since last December. That streak is over too.

I'd chosen this area of Diamond Bar because of another challenge that I'm starting to work toward getting in the future. The Los Angeles County Quadrangle Challenge requires you to find at least one cache in each of the USGS quadrangle maps for all of Los Angeles County. There are 81 quads covering Los Angeles County. The cache was created in December 2006 and one of the requirements is you can't count caches that you found before December 2006. That little requirement has cost me about half a dozen quads. Not that it's bothering me because more than likely, I'd go back to those areas again in the future to find more caches, which is exactly what I did Thursday.

The Yorba Linda quad covers a small area of south Diamond Bar in the southeast corner of Los Angeles County. It's a small sliver and there aren't many caches to be found in this little area. I'd found a couple of caches in the quad prior to December 2006, but those didn't count so I needed to find a cache for that quad for credit on the challenge. It made sense to try on Thursday since the area is only 7 miles from the courthouse where I was serving jury duty. If I got out early, I might be able to find a cache or two and also get home before traffic got heavy.

During my "grounding" this week, I've been going over my cache finds for the past couple of years to see what quads I already had. The geocaching maps work well for this because you can scan the map and see the smiley faces. The USGS website has a nifty little site that allows you to see the boundaries of quad maps using the same Google map interface that geocaching does. All I had to do was zoom in on one of my smileys and then check the corresponding map at USGS to see what quadrants I already had. I found out I had 42 quads already covered out of the 81. I'm now up to 43 with the Yorba Linda Quad.

Saturday, the Tadpole and I are going to be visiting the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. We'll be taking a roundabout way to get to the library, taking the coastal route along the Pacific Ocean. The quad grid I've posted I grabbed from the Los Angeles County Quadrangle Challenge cache page. I'm coloring it for myself so I have a visual record of the quads I have and the ones I need. The greens ones have been done, the white ones need to be done. The light blue ones are ones we'll be attempting to complete this Saturday on our trip to the Reagan Library. Hopefully, some of those blue ones will be painted green after Saturday.