Two busy days of caching and lots of fun
We got a late start Wednesday because I went to the Bela Fleck/Jean-Luc Ponty/Stanley Clarke concert at Humphrey's the night before. While she waited for me to get down to our meeting place, P.T. logged one of the nearby Palindrome locations. She was kind to drive to the other one so I could finally get this stubborn Locationless cache logged.
I already wrote about my first attempt, when I was stopped by an iron gate. On my next attempt I took pictures at the wrong location not just once, but twice. The second time I transposed the last two digits in the latitude, so I was off by about 60 feet.
Finally, after the GPSr settled and I got the picture taken, we were off, headed for the freeway and to the last stage of the Tri-Wizard Tournament -- a multi-stage cache we had been trying to finish for months.
The final cache was a huge bucket suspended from a tree in the middle of horse and nursery country somewhere east of Del Mar. There was lots of good swag in the container including a CD compilation of Blues Greats.
From there we headed to A-Nother Hidden Pond cache.
There is a pond out there somewhere
There were several choices for access and once again, we took the long way around. This took us through some farm-worker camps and the stench of human feces was very evident. When we got to the cache location, we couldn't find it, although we did a lot of CITO and came away with many bottles for the recycling machine. On our way back up the hill we saw some workers returning "home" on foot, and then at the top of the hill, we could see the huge farm where they undoubtedly work.
This is our track showing the ritzy neighborhoods around the location. The farm is located to the northwest of the cache location south of 56.
It made me angry to think that the property owner is not required to provide some sort of decent housing and sanitary conditions for the people who work his fields.
After we left that area, we headed to Penasquitos Canyon where we walked and walked and walked. We found several caches, but couldn't get to one cache because we were on the wrong side of the stream. So we'll make another trip to the area another time to chase down that elusive cache.
Penasquitos Canyon is very beautiful and it is used by many people, in particular, mountain bikers. Ethan's Big Tree cache was in a neat location and we really enjoyed the multi-cache that took us to three waypoints, and a final cache.
That one was almost a DNF. We looked for a long time, but the hint didn't seem to make any sense in the area so prone to flooding. I expected the cache to be up higher, and or, tethered to something so it wouldn't wash away. Finally, in fading light, I moved a branch resting against some others near the ground and heard something fall down. It was the cache.
- - - - - - - - -
Thursday we started out from hot, hot, hot El Cajon and headed north. We had already decided we were going to do some easy micros because we walked so much the day before. It was good that was the plan, because it was 98 degrees in Poway, and long hikes were very out of the question.
Nancy was very kind to let me find some caches she had already logged. In fact, I logged one she had already found, and then later she realized it was a Puzzle Cache. Right now I'm trying to figure it out . . . and I actually think this is a puzzle cache I can do. But if not, my name will be in the log book, but it will never appear on the cache page.
That cache was near the Duck Pond Cache where we saw this egret enjoying the water.
My number 600 cache was the most wonderful "History of Bridlewood" cache. It was cleverly-hidden, but more important was the area it highlighted. There were huge trees and the remains of stone buildings from a long time ago. It was so cool to find a hidden treasure like that, and so wonderful that it still existed after such a long time. If they were doing a development in that area today, they would just bulldoze everything, flatten out the creekbed and erect houses 12 feet apart. Instead there are lovely homes on large lots with all this open space between them.
We found most of the Tranquility caches placed by TheRamonaGirls, but we couldn't find the one at the "Hippos." The hint for the others got us to the cache, if we needed the it, but the hint didn't help us there.
At the end of the day, after finding more than 20 caches, we stopped at Max's Favorite Park to see if the new Duncan! cards had been placed there, and they had.
Finally, at 8:30 we had dinner at Cotija's, our favorite little Mexican Restaurant, near the 125 in Santee. Once I got home at 10:00, it was time to log all my finds while my memory of each location was somewhat fresh.
I already wrote about my first attempt, when I was stopped by an iron gate. On my next attempt I took pictures at the wrong location not just once, but twice. The second time I transposed the last two digits in the latitude, so I was off by about 60 feet.
Finally, after the GPSr settled and I got the picture taken, we were off, headed for the freeway and to the last stage of the Tri-Wizard Tournament -- a multi-stage cache we had been trying to finish for months.
The final cache was a huge bucket suspended from a tree in the middle of horse and nursery country somewhere east of Del Mar. There was lots of good swag in the container including a CD compilation of Blues Greats.
From there we headed to A-Nother Hidden Pond cache.
There is a pond out there somewhere
There were several choices for access and once again, we took the long way around. This took us through some farm-worker camps and the stench of human feces was very evident. When we got to the cache location, we couldn't find it, although we did a lot of CITO and came away with many bottles for the recycling machine. On our way back up the hill we saw some workers returning "home" on foot, and then at the top of the hill, we could see the huge farm where they undoubtedly work.
This is our track showing the ritzy neighborhoods around the location. The farm is located to the northwest of the cache location south of 56.
It made me angry to think that the property owner is not required to provide some sort of decent housing and sanitary conditions for the people who work his fields.
After we left that area, we headed to Penasquitos Canyon where we walked and walked and walked. We found several caches, but couldn't get to one cache because we were on the wrong side of the stream. So we'll make another trip to the area another time to chase down that elusive cache.
Penasquitos Canyon is very beautiful and it is used by many people, in particular, mountain bikers. Ethan's Big Tree cache was in a neat location and we really enjoyed the multi-cache that took us to three waypoints, and a final cache.
That one was almost a DNF. We looked for a long time, but the hint didn't seem to make any sense in the area so prone to flooding. I expected the cache to be up higher, and or, tethered to something so it wouldn't wash away. Finally, in fading light, I moved a branch resting against some others near the ground and heard something fall down. It was the cache.
- - - - - - - - -
Thursday we started out from hot, hot, hot El Cajon and headed north. We had already decided we were going to do some easy micros because we walked so much the day before. It was good that was the plan, because it was 98 degrees in Poway, and long hikes were very out of the question.
Nancy was very kind to let me find some caches she had already logged. In fact, I logged one she had already found, and then later she realized it was a Puzzle Cache. Right now I'm trying to figure it out . . . and I actually think this is a puzzle cache I can do. But if not, my name will be in the log book, but it will never appear on the cache page.
That cache was near the Duck Pond Cache where we saw this egret enjoying the water.
My number 600 cache was the most wonderful "History of Bridlewood" cache. It was cleverly-hidden, but more important was the area it highlighted. There were huge trees and the remains of stone buildings from a long time ago. It was so cool to find a hidden treasure like that, and so wonderful that it still existed after such a long time. If they were doing a development in that area today, they would just bulldoze everything, flatten out the creekbed and erect houses 12 feet apart. Instead there are lovely homes on large lots with all this open space between them.
We found most of the Tranquility caches placed by TheRamonaGirls, but we couldn't find the one at the "Hippos." The hint for the others got us to the cache, if we needed the it, but the hint didn't help us there.
At the end of the day, after finding more than 20 caches, we stopped at Max's Favorite Park to see if the new Duncan! cards had been placed there, and they had.
Finally, at 8:30 we had dinner at Cotija's, our favorite little Mexican Restaurant, near the 125 in Santee. Once I got home at 10:00, it was time to log all my finds while my memory of each location was somewhat fresh.
posted by Miragee at
2:14:00 PM
10-Day Forecast
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