I went up for a hike today, primarily to take some pictures. All of the geocaches up in Johnson's Pasture, located just north of where I live, have been found. It was a gorgeous day, slightly breezy. It was a crisp day for the second full day of spring.
My dog Jack, is not one who's very good at long walks. We've walked him down into village area of our town, which is about three quarters of a mile away and he's really tired about halfway back from there. 
I have been hiking and caching with others who bring their dogs along for the trek. All of these dogs have been much larger than Jack, probably outweighing him by fifty pounds or so. I would think a larger dog has more stamina for hikes of several miles. The last thing I'd want to do is have to lug around a dog who just refuses to walk any more. That would be tough, especially if you're miles from transportation or only midway through your caching day.
Most of the time, the dogs are just with us because they like to be outdoors with their companions and they love to run and/or go for along walk. All of our walks with dogs have usually been over a couple of miles. Yeah, they get tired at the end, but they always seem to have extra energy, much more than I can say for me after some of our hikes. It would be nice to have that kind of stamina.
When you're caching with dogs, you have a different mind set as well. You're constantly on the lookout for them, making sure they're not getting into trouble. Then again, sometimes, they just need to explore, like Sheila did last week when she decided to climb that tree. The cache was there, just not up that high. But she had the right idea for the most part.
Another thing to like about dogs is they don't eat very much while on the trail and if you have the right equipment, they'll even carry their own gear. One dog I went on a hike with had his own saddlebags for carrying his own water and everything else he needed for the day trek we had planned. All you really need is a good container to use for a water bowl and you're really good to go with a dog.
The other thing I've noticed about dogs is they're smart enough to rest in the shade. I'm pretty sure what goes through a dog's mind is something like this.
"Oh boy, I'm going on a walk with food guy!! Walk, walk, walk, pant, pant. Run, run. Oooooh. There's lots of good smells on this trail. SQUIRREL!!!! C'mon Food Guy, let's go!! You're going too slow for me. Oh, wait, you're looking for that geohiddenthingamabob aren't you? That's OK with me. I get to rest and relax in the shade while you look. I hope it's a difficulty Five. That way I get to rest for a good long while, cause I know you're not that good at finding those geohiddenthingamabobs. SQUIRREL!!!"
You know, you can stop me at any time, because I could probably go on for a long time like that. I'll leave you with one more short story before I sign off today. 
Unfortunately, Yrium passed away a couple of years ago after a battle with cancer. Although I'd never met him face to face, we'd written emails back and forth, played fantasy baseball together, and so I felt like I knew a little about the man. Every time I log a cache for Jack my dog, I try to write it in the style that Yrium used to write for his dog and then I dedicate the log to Yrium's memory.
This past month, my friend Craig and his other companion Sheila lost their third companion Gromit. He's on the left in the second picture. Gromit went way too early in either people or dog years. He was a good companion and a good trail walker. He will be surely missed. This blog entry is respectfully dedicated in memory of Gromit.
Pictures were taken at the following geocaches:
Leaf Me Alone - by Whinger
Jumping to Conclusions - by Webfoot
Last Monday, I headed out to the desert to finish up another series of geocaches patterned after the PacMan figure. We'd actually started the series in December, but weren't able to complete the entire series because it had been raining most of the day out there. The last ten caches were located in very rocky areas and we didn't want to risk injury due to a slip on wet surfaces, so we waited until better weather to finish it off.
After lunch, we drove over to another starting spot, hiked up to the cache at the top of the head, then made our way over to the west to get the others. Hiking in a counter clockwise direction, we found an easy path amongst the boulders down to the road. We kept looking behind us and were having a hard time picking out our route we'd traveled down. This was the same dilemma we'd had on the 18th of December. We couldn't see a sensible route up. We really had made the correct decision to hike those last four in the opposite way than we thought about doing them.
What this all really means is I've had a decent start to the new year as far as caching goes. I'm averaging right now, slightly over a cache per day. Last year I averaged over 2 per day. My average will go up as we get into warmer weather, but I'm really not concerned about how many I average, but whether I have fun. And, I have another picture in the desert. I already had a Smiley, which is located just to the east of the PacMan. Then last year in April, we completed the Groundspeak Series. Next up on our list, whether it happens this year, or possibly next year is a giant Kokopeli located in the southwest corner of Utah. That one looks to be about a three day adventure, so we'll have to plan this one as an overnighter, possibly camping trip. It should be fun.
Last week, on my hike in the North Etiwanda Preserve (NEP), I tried calibrating my GPSr. 
When Chaosmanor and I hiked to the top of Simi Peak back in November, I put my GPSr on top of the bucket on the peak that held a laminated piece of paper stating the height of the peak, 2403 feet in elevation. I just wanted to see if my GPSr would register the same. It did, after a fashion. We actually watched the number start out at a lower elevation and then watched as the number climbed up to 2403 feet, which was when I snapped the picture. I suppose that if we were willing to wait several minutes of battery life, the unit would have settled down and produced a constant elevation. I might have to try that sometime, but it's not high on my list of priorities.
The NEP has mile markers every quarter of a mile. Those mile markers also indicate the elevation at the point as well. The last time I'd been hiking in the preserve, over a year ago, I did the same thing and got the exact result. This time, the result was four feet different than what the sign post said. After taking the picture, I picked my GPSr up and it immediately registered the "correct" elevation. Then again, does the elevation listed on the marker indicate the elevation at the top of the pole, or at ground level? My assumption would be that it should be a ground level.
Picking up my GPSr, actually brought it up to the top of the pole, which would have been the four feet difference, but once again, it's readily apparent that these gizmos shouldn't really be used for super accurate measurement of elevation or of latitude and longitude. And yes, I'm writing this all with tongue firmly planted in cheek this morning. After all, it's just a game we're playing out here.
Picture was taken near the following geocache:
NEP on the Rocks - by maddmaxxawr
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 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. 
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
In November, Los Angeles gets treated to the annual U.C.L.A./U.S.C. football game. An old saying I've heard in the past was, "On a clear day, U.C.L.A. . . . . . . . . on any other day, U.S.C. Obviously, this one was created by a Trojan fan, but if this past week is any indication, U.S.C. might be in trouble this year. 
Last Saturday, I went on a hike with my friend Chaosmanor in the Agoura Hills area of the Los Angeles Basin. We'd planned a trip to get us several geocaches, plus a virtual flag that would score me the maximum number of points in the game. We found several caches before heading up to the trailhead to begin our hike.
The first part of the hike was on a new trail open for about a year or so. Surprisingly, it had no caches on the trail, so Chaosmanor took it upon himself to hide a couple while on our way. Soon after those hides, we were on a fire road heading up to some caches that hadn't been found in exactly a year. Well, they still haven't been found. One cache we started to attempt, but didn't finish, mainly because the terrain had changed slightly in the past year. There was a lot of plant growth, which concealed the main way up to the cache and any other route that we could see, looked extremely treacherous and so we passed on it.
The second cache was similar, so we didn't even make an attempt to get up to it. The third cache was attempted after a nice lunch at the end of the fire road on which we'd hiked. This one was probably the most frustrating of the three since we were able to hike up to the cache site and do a very thorough search of the area. After calling a lifeline, we were pretty much able to verify where the cache probably had been, but we couldn't find the ammo can that had been placed there. 
After striking out there, we headed further up along a game trail and found another more established trail that took us up to the virtual flag and a couple of other caches, including a virtual cache at the top of Simi Peak, just inside the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. This stop was probably the highlight of the day.
The peak is only 2403 above sea level. I was able to verify that with a laminated sheet at the peak. I put my GPSr down next to the sheet and eventually, it also read the same elevation above sea level. Just after I took the picture, the elevation on my GPSr changed again. I've noticed that on other occasions as well, so I'm not ready to say that my GPSr has great accuracy when it comes to elevation, just that I was able to get the two numbers to coincide.
That didn't make the highlight reel though. What made this spot truly noteworthy was the view. Even though we were at fairly low altitude, we had a complete 360˚ view which stretched for miles and miles, literally. Originally, I had been looking to the west from the peak. Chaosmanor had already pointed out the ocean from further down, but once we got on top of the peak, we spotted Anacapa Island and behind it, Santa Cruz Island, both within Channel Islands National Park. Looking at the map, it looks like we were at least 30 miles, probably more distant from those two islands.
Then we got a bigger shock, I believe, when we looked south and could see the ocean and Catalina Island in the distance. 
The weather conditions were just right that day where we were. Other hikers might not be so fortunate, but hopefully, that won't stop them from coming up there. I can imagine that peak in fog. That would give an entirely different perspective to the area, that's for sure. We spent a great deal of time up there, getting the necessary information to fulfill the requirements, take pictures of the scenery, take pictures of the benchmark that's also at the top and also just to enjoy the view. It's not often that the Los Angeles area is that clear. Besides the ocean views, we also had amazing views of Simi Valley to the north and the San Fernando Valley to the east. It was a picture perfect day.
Eventually, we knew we'd have to descend back into civilization and we did it reluctantly. We hiked down the trail heading to other geocaches further down the slopes of Simi Peak. At one point we missed a trail junction and ended up further north than we had originally anticipated being, so that added another mile or so to our overall hike, but it was definitely worth the effort. It had been a good climb up and a good hike totally just over 8 miles. It had been a good day.
Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
Simi Peak Returns - by WM6P
Last weekend, I hid a multi-cache in an area where I hide many of my caches. I didn't figure I'd have too much problems getting this one approved since I seem to be the only one who hides caches up in that area for the most part. 
Apparently, the second waypoint of my multi-cache was impinging upon a secret waypoint for a puzzle cache in the area. The reviewer couldn't give me any more information than that, other than to give me the cache waypoint for the puzzle cache. I was a little confused, since I wasn't aware of any new puzzle caches in the area, but when I looked at the waypoint number for the cache, I realized that it was my own puzzle cache, Cobol Canyon Trail.
I had neglected to take into account my own waypoint when laying out another cache. I found a really nifty site that will take geographic coordinates and calculate the distance between the two points. My two points are 447 feet away, about 80 less than what is expected as the minimum distance for cache waypoints set in the guidelines at geocaching.com.
After some back and forth between the reviewer and me, I decided that I had a couple of options. I could archive my puzzle cache and then there wouldn't be a problem with the multi-cache. This would be the easiest option. In fact, I could probably take the ammo can from the puzzle, move it 80 feet further away and I'd have two new caches. I've decided against this one, mainly because I like that particular puzzle cache. It gets good comments every time it's found. As most cache hiders will probably attest, a good log on your cache page is worth its weight in photons.
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.
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. 
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 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
A friend of mine, who I introduced to geocaching, described geocaching as "Hiking with a purpose." I would respectfully have to disagree with him. I guess it's probably because I grew up with camping and hiking. My first camping trip (to Yosemite National Park) was with my parents when I was four years old. Everywhere we camped, we hiked. If you didn't want to hike, you stayed in camp, unless Mom decided to go on a hike too, which was many the time, so we learned to hike.
When we go camping today, we hike. If it weren't for geocaching, we'd still hike, but I think geocaching has expanded those hikes to new and different places. As a travel enthusiast, I like to take new roads when I go somewhere. Driving the same road, back and forth to the same locale isn't what I'd like to do, although I know people who enjoy that. It's just not for me.
That's probably why we end up going to so many different spots when we camp. Camping in the same place is OK, but different locales afford us new and different experiences. And, obviously, it also gives us more chances to geocache. The hiking aspect of geocaching comes into play, but it's not the reason we geocache, nor is geocaching the reason we hike. We hike, because we like to be outdoors. I like to watch the scenery go by.
When we hiked to Rainbow Falls south of Devils Postpile, we took the shuttle bus from our campground to the trail head. We could have just hiked from the campground up and back, but that would have been the same route. We also had other things to accomplish that day, so by taking the shuttle to the trail head, it shortened what would have been a five mile round trip hike into a 3.8 mile hike. It was still a significant hike, but a little less strenuous and thus gave our legs a little more energy for later in the day.
The hike down to the falls took us through a major burn area from a lightning strike fire that started at the southern end of the park and burned through a major part of the park in 1992. The area, almost 20 years beyond that fire still shows the scars but is slowly rebounding. There were many old snags standing as sentinels over the landscape and just as many fallen trees. We could see evidence on the downed logs of recent bear activity as the bears looked for grubs and termites in their quest for food. The animals were helping with the decomposition, which was further enhancing the soil, allowing the new growth of plants to flourish.
The falls were spectacular and we got there at a good time. The sun was overhead and because of the large amount of water in the San Joaquin River, the water was plunging over the 101 foot precipice at a high rate, causing a lot of mist to spray up at the bottom, creating the signature rainbow for which the falls are named. Actually, if you look closely in one of the pictures, you'll see a double rainbow.
The interactions with other hikers were pleasant and didn't detract from the overall experience I had on the trail. 
Every now and then, I will come upon a cache that I feel is just well done. That was the case last weekend with East Canyon Log-In. The coordinates were slightly off on this particular cache, but being thirty to fifty feet off in a rural setting is a lot different in many ways to being the same distance off in an urban setting. 
What helps is the cache page write up, which is one of the reasons I really liked this particular cache. If you go to the cache page, you'll notice that I've placed it on my top 5% list. Making my list in no way implies that the cache is a great cache. It only means, that in some small way, it either tickled my fancy, or I felt it was creative in some way. This one, I think, did both.
The cache itself, is a small jar, which would be difficult to spot in thigh high foxtails and thistles. However, the cache page write is very much like a decrypted hint in helping the finder find the cache. I'm not saying that's necessary all the time, but it sure is helpful, especially when you have tree cover that reduces the accuracy of the GPSr in your hand.
The second part of this cache that I really liked was the cache container. As stated is was a small jar, but what way the jar was incorporated with the surrounding environment helped get this cache onto my list. I actually would have wanted to be a fly on the nearest tree when the cache hiders brought this cache here. I think it would have been very entertaining.
The only other question I have is, where do you think the cache is hidden? It might be obvious, or it might not be.
On a side note. Some of you might have noticed that I've gone to moderated comments. I have done that because recently, I have been getting spam comments. Obviously, the person who has been doing this hasn't gotten the message and continues to post links to pages that I would find objectionable if my youngest were to click on them. Since he reads this column from time to time, I felt it necessary to go to moderated comments. To that person - if you continue to reply to this blog with links to semi-pornographic sites with no other intent other than to generate traffic to your own site, your posts will continue to be summarily rejected. I apologize to my other readers for this action, but I feel it is necessary to keep this a family friendly blog.
Picture was taken near East Canyon Log-In - by BearandDirtybird
Every now and then I just marvel at the diversity of life in California. You can be at the beach in the morning and on top of a fairly tall mountain within in a couple of hours, or out in the desert rock hounding. It has an amazing array of scenery. This late in May, it's also extremely rare to see much snow on top of the mountains, unless they are the Sierra Nevada. Those mountains, which create the geographic backbone of California run as high as 14,000 feet. 
Still, in May, we usually only see a sprinkling of snow in few spots on our local mountains. Not this year, because we received several very cold storms in April. The storms dumped snow at around the 5000 foot level and it's still there, not in copious amounts, but enough to notice if your hiking in view of them. That sometimes lends itself well to interesting pictures. While on a hike in the Devils Punchbowl, I ended up getting, what I think is a pretty decent shot of a yucca in bloom with the snow covered mountains in the background.
In a month, the snow will be gone, although based upon today's weather, which was cold and dreary, but with no rain, it's not out of the realm of possibility to see more rain storms. We have been having warmer, rather than colder weather over the last week or so and I ran the sprinkler system on the lawn for the first time last night, so I think we only have two chances of getting more snow on the mountains this season and that would be slim and none.
I'm now trying to figure out when to take my camping vacation this summer. The plan is to camp at Lassen Volcanic National Park this year. I've been to Lassen probably 3 or 4 times, but I've never been able to get to the top of the mountain. It's not a real tough climb, but it is 11,000 feet and because the park is much farther north, there will be more snow on the peak, especially this year. Because of when work starts in August, I don't have the luxury of waiting until then when it's quite warm and probably snow free, so we'll have to take our chances with the snow. But, as my son says, "It's an adventure." Snow, or no snow, we'll be there sometime this summer.
Picture was taken at or near the following geocache:
Devil's Punchbowl - by Kit Fox
The nice thing about hobbies is everyone can enjoy them at their leisure and no one needs to be recruited or feel that you're out of step if you don't partake in a particular hobby. Just like everyone else, I dabble in a variety of activities that keep me relatively busy. 
As we were hiking this past Saturday in the Devils Punchbowl, we stopped several times to watch some rock climbers on the opposite side of the Punchbowl work their hobby. Even with my acrophobia, I considered this particular sport at one time when I was in college. Several of my friends in the dorms at Humboldt State University would drive up to Patrick's Point State Park and climb the rocks there on the weekends.
They invited me to go on one of their excursions one time and I incredibly, now that I think of it, accepted. One friend let me borrow his climbing shoes and another friend set me up with his climbing harness and soon they had me hooked up, on belay and climbing up the face of this rock. First thing they had me do was fall. I had to know that I could depend upon them to brake my fall. That, actually, was the hardest thing about the sport. That initial rush, or rather, the trepidation of just letting go of the rock probably scares a lot of people off the face of the rock more than anything else.
Once I passed that test, it was on to the actual climb. The rock that they would climb was probably no more than 50 to 75 feet to the top. There was a parking area on top, complete with railing and viewpoint, so it made a perfect place to anchor in the ropes. Then, they would drive down to the bottom of the rock and practice different ways to climb the rock, trying different techniques to improve their abilities. The rock was pretty much vertical, so it was a good test for most rock climbers learning their craft.
I started up and was doing pretty well, getting encouragement from my friends while I tried different routes. 
Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
Burbling Brook - by steveel
Devils Punchbowl - by Kit Fox
In the spring of 2000, President Clinton signed an executive order allowing for the removal of selective availability of GPS satellites. The implications of this meant that hand held GPS receivers would be more accurate and navigation systems would start to become standard features in many cars. 
On May 3, 2000 Dave Ulmer hid a black painted container in the state of Oregon and challenged an on-line community at sci.geo.satellite-nav to go and find it. The first geocache was born, although at the time it was called the First GPS Stash. Within days, that first stash had been found. Contained within that five gallon bucket were a Delorme Topo USA and 2 CD Roms, a cassette recorder, a "George of the Jungle" VHS tape, a Ross Perot book, 4 $1 bills, a slingshot handle, and a can of beans. The original cache is no longer there, but the spot can still be visited where there is a plaque placed commemorating the original stash. The can of beans, heavily rusted but preserved, is now a travel bug.
This weekend, I traveled to the Devils Punchbowl to celebrate ten years of geocaching. Events were held all over the world, but I found myself in a void, with the nearest event more than 30 miles away driving distance. I decided to attend the event in the Antelope Valley mainly because it's a very scenic spot, plus there were going to be opportunities for some hiking after the event. After all, when I started geocaching back in 2001, that's what it was all about. The requirements for a 10 year event, as posted by Geocaching.com were that the event needed to have a picture posted showing at least 10 people at the event plus a sign indicating the coordinates of the event in the picture. Our event picture is here.
This was my 9th event in just over 9 years since starting this silly game. I don't know why I don't attend many events. I could probably go to at least one event a month if I so choose, I just don't and there's not really a reason why I don't. This event, hosted by Kit Fox, was a lot of fun. I met one of the hiders of the Groundspeak Series and Smiley Series, Bigdaddygrc. I had a very pleasant conversation with him about geocaching and other things. I also spent a good deal of time with a fairly new cacher, HD-MsTree. I got to meet mcattk again, after bumping into him out at the Groundspeak Series a couple of months ago. Time was also spent with Yosemite John and Debbie and Tevis Clan. Several of us got a great review of Tevis Clan's new Lowrance GPSr. 
While on the hike we ended up bumping into several other cachers that had been at the event. W_bovine was walking down the trail from a multi-cache as we were heading up to it. That's w_bovine holding the sign in the picture. We had a pleasant conversation and I encouraged him to head over to my neck of the woods if he wanted to do some more hiking and caching. There aren't many hikers in my area, so my caches don't get found very often, so any new finders is a bonus in my mind. He said he would check it out. While on the hike, Chaosmanor and I discussed the different rock strata of the rocks in the Punchbowl, while figuring out the requirements of an earthcache along the trail. We also watched rock climbers playing their game. I'd tried that once when I was in college and made the mistake of looking down about halfway up a pitch. Never again. But then again, I would suspect that those rock climbers might think the game we were playing a little too mundane for them. To each his own.
At the end of the day, I counted my finds. Including the event, I found 8 - an event, a multi-cache, a mystery cache, two earthcaches and three traditional caches. It was a very modest day numbers-wise, but a very good geocaching day. It's not about the numbers of caches you find, but about the experiences you have as you play the game. I think I played the game well yesterday. Thanks Dave.
Pictures were taken at or near the following geocaches:
10 Years! Antelope Valley, California - by Kit Fox
Devil's Punchbowl - by Yosemite John and Debbie
For the most part, the desert seems to be a pretty barren place. When one thinks of the desert, usually one thinks of drifting dunes, camels and not much life. 
The game where everyone would look at the clouds and tell everyone else what they saw is popular, even today. 
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."
Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
Groundspeak Series - Charter Member - by HDGC
Yesterday, Chaosmanor and I found an "Old School" cache. We found a rather longish trail that started in Topanga Canyon near Malibu. In the link, our caching trip started with the cache right near Topanga Canyon Blvd., went east, then south paralleling Topanga Canyon Blvd. 
We found a variety of different sized caches from hidden bison tube micros to full scale ammo cans. The variety of the caches is what makes any kind of trail like this very interesting, although this one didn't need many caches to keep it interesting. Hiking along the ridge above Topanga Canyon afforded us with views of Los Angeles, as well as Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean. It was a good hike.
Now, get out your flux capacitor, get it up to 88 miles per hour and go back in time to December 2001. At that time, there was one cache along that entire trail. But that's the way it was back then. You hiked in, usually several miles in the process, you found one cache, and then you hiked back out.
My very first cache find was a large 5 gallon bucket painted black. Most of the cache containers were like that. They usually contained log books, real log books with large pages where one could write down what they had experienced during the hike. Usually, the view was decent to good and you sat, perhaps ate your sack lunch and contemplated the day. Geocaching was like that.
As Chaosmanor and I walked along, we realized that we had an older cache situated along the trail. In fact, he'd tried to get it four years ago, but had missed an important side trail and wasn't able to find it at that time. Coming at it from the north, we had a do or die decision to make. There was a trail leading up to the ridge where we knew the cache to be. Should we take it, or continue on and try to find a back door to this cache?
We chose the back door route and as we walked along the fire road, we realized we might have made a mistake as we kept getting closer and closer. My GPSr, at one point, read only 235 feet away. However, there was probably 75 to 100 feet of vertical elevation to deal with as well. As we started to go away from the cache, we looked ahead and realized the fire road went around a bend up ahead and it was there that we found the access trail that led up to The Pit Stop.
The trail walked along a ridge with plenty of vertical drop off on both sides. 
I went one way and Chaosmanor went the other and he ended up finding the cache first. Being in that remote of an area, it didn't really need any camouflage and as you can see from the pictures, it didn't. The log book didn't disappoint either. Full pages, complete with full descriptions of experiences in the beginning, diminishing down to single line entries in the later years, or perhaps just signatures.
We spotted some old time cachers from the Southern California area, names that everyone knew because there were so few of us back then that we would literally follow each other to new caches every weekend. I recognized names, such as gpsdave, sr.hikers, erik, and PezCachers. Of those four, only PezCachers do I predate as far as geocaching longevity. Erik has been geocaching since October 2000, sr.hikers since February 2001. Gpsdave signed up two days before me in March 2001. All appear to be still active in geocaching, based upon activity on their profiles.
Chaosmanor and I spent much more time here than we did at some of the other caches we found on Saturday. 
There was no doubt that this cache would make my top 5% list. I also decided to use this one as my qualifying cache for the LA County Quadrangle Challenge cache. I only need 10 more quadrangles to qualify for that cache. I suspect that I will be doing some more hiking, particularly in the fall when it cools down, to get some of the rest of those quadrangles. Most of the ones I have left are fairly remote and will require some hiking to get.
At the end of the day, both of us were extremely tired. Looking at a trail map, it looks like we walked about 6 miles. I would suspect that it was over 7, because many of the caches were not placed directly on the trail. Many you had to hike off the trail quite a ways to get to the cache. The Pit Stop was an extra .15 mile each way off of the main trail. That doesn't seem like much, but add a quarter mile to half a dozen caches and you have an extra mile and a half. That's OK. We were doing some Old School caching yesterday.
Pictures were taken at or near the following geocache:
The Pit Stop - by DahMooser and MsPea
Out where the Smiley series of caches is located, there is a new series of caches called the Groundspeak series. My friend Chaosmanor spotted it about 2 weeks ago and alerted me and we planned over the next week to assault this large G+ out in the desert. 
When we first planned the trip, we figured we'd be out there sometime around 10 o'clock in the morning, plenty of time to get the entire series right? Nope, not even close. Plans changed. We realized that if we started right at ten, that we'd be getting hungry partially through the circle. Granted, we could have each taken a sack lunch along for the trek, but we didn't talk about that, so we ended up caching along a road that had a string of benchmarks and caches along it.
Once we got hungry, we ate lunch at a local establishment and then headed out to get the Groundspeak series. This particular hike was a little bit different than the Smiley series as it's much longer. I'll need to take a screen shot of the two locations to show the difference, but suffice to say, the Smiley circle would fit easily inside this large G+ spread out over the desert floor. The G+ is big enough that parts of it encroach upon the foothills surrounding this particular area. I think the G, or the circle of the G has a 2 mile diameter and each cache is approximately 2 tenths of a mile between caches.
There are roads out there which we could have used to pick off many of the caches, but we chose to walk, starting on the back side of the G and work around it, going south and counter clockwise. We got almost over to the crosspiece of the G on the far side and realized that there was no way we could complete it in the time we had left before the sun went down, so we utilized one of the road and hiked back to where we'd parked the car.
The plan is to make another trek out there this weekend and finish it off. Spring break starts on Friday for me and we have an extra hour of daylight so I don't think we'll have too many problems getting the rest of the caches. There is one bonus cache associated with this series and a mystery cache. Two of the caches out there have the coordinates of the mystery cache. After doing some research, I was able to discover that this bonus cache is one of the two that has the final coordinates. Whether we make it to that bonus cache and thus, the mystery is something that we're researching at the moment.
The bonus cache is rated at 4.5 terrain. Neither of us have a 4WD vehicle, and so we're not sure if we'd be able to get close enough to it, either by driving or by walking. Based upon Topo maps it's a really steep climb, but as Chaosmanor stated in one of his emails to me recently, "There are over 1,000,000 caches on this blue marble of ours and we're not going to get them all." I've always approached caching as a man's gotta know his limitations. We'll see how this turns out, but either way, I'm looking forward to this weekend and some more caching with my friend.
