Two more days of caching, with one interrupted by other fun.
Tuesday we drove back up to the Poway area since the temperature was cooler and much nicer for hiking. After finding a couple of newly-placed, quick, "cache and dash" micros, we finally found a trail access to "NICE."
On a previous day, we drove around and around attempting to find a trailhead, but a gated community, situated right in the middle of the area, prevents access. Although the cache owner provided detailed parking and trailhead information for another one of his caches, he did not include that information for "NICE."
On our separate attempts to find the trailhead, we spent more than a hour driving around . . . at $2.89 a gallon for gas.
After getting a gardener to move his truck, we were able to drive to the end of a single-lane paved "driveway." We parked in the shade of some trees and took off up the hill. The hike to "NICE" and back to the car was short and we wore our Chaco sandals. However, we changed to our hiking boots before continuing on from there to "NIGHTMARE DEL POINIENTE," which was described as offering a lot of boulder-hopping. It turned out there wasn't much of that, but there were some very interesting rocks up there.
After replacing the cache, which was not hidden or camouflaged in any way, we hiked back to the car and headed off to the "Blue Sky Ecological Reserve" to walk the half a mile to "Keren's Blue Sky Micro." We spent quite a long time looking for the well-hidden cache beneath this spectacular oak tree.
From there we went into the wonderful park at Lake Poway where we hiked about .24 of a mile to "Gone Fishing." We spent a long time looking for the cache, but I think it has disappeared . . .
The views from there were great, so getting a DNF was not an entirely negative thing.
At the end of the evening, we did another cache in the Tranquility series. This new cacher has only been active since May, but, boy, has she been active! Her placed-to-find cache ratio is 52% . . . The caches are sometimes in fun, urban locations and they have sent cachers all over the county looking for them. I sure never knew there were so many fountains in the area until now . . .
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Wednesday it was absolutely beautiful. A mild Santa Ana wind was blowing so we decided to go to Ocean Beach. I don't know if I've ever been down there when it was so warm. We found a couple of caches, but then just walked around town and enjoyed browsing all the food and produce offered at the Wednesday Farmer's Market.
While walking through the Farmer's Market we ran into two other Geocachers, smilinglady13 and a friend of hers. That was great.
While perusing the goods, we watched some children getting rides on three llamas. I got an interesting picture I can use in the Forums, or for a really lame cache.
Finally we left the Farmer's Market, and since it was getting close to 5:00 and we didn't want to get into any afternoon traffic, we decided to walk out to the end of the pier.
We were looking for the first waypoint for "OB Offshore Mystery Cache," but didn't have any luck finding it. We got some great pictures and really enjoyed a rare warm and clear day at the beach, so it didn't matter that we couldn't find the waypoint with coordinates to the final cache.
The view from the end of the pier
One side of the gate combined with the view of the other side
At the end of the day we relaxed at a colorfully-painted bar on Newport Avenue.
The mural on the inside of the bar as seen from outside.
The colorful outside of the bar in the late afternoon light
After logging my finds that night, I was only 13 away from 800 caches. Wow! That's an average of more than three caches per day . . . something I never could have achieved if Princess Toadstool had not brought me along on her weekly hunts.
On a previous day, we drove around and around attempting to find a trailhead, but a gated community, situated right in the middle of the area, prevents access. Although the cache owner provided detailed parking and trailhead information for another one of his caches, he did not include that information for "NICE."
On our separate attempts to find the trailhead, we spent more than a hour driving around . . . at $2.89 a gallon for gas.
After getting a gardener to move his truck, we were able to drive to the end of a single-lane paved "driveway." We parked in the shade of some trees and took off up the hill. The hike to "NICE" and back to the car was short and we wore our Chaco sandals. However, we changed to our hiking boots before continuing on from there to "NIGHTMARE DEL POINIENTE," which was described as offering a lot of boulder-hopping. It turned out there wasn't much of that, but there were some very interesting rocks up there.
After replacing the cache, which was not hidden or camouflaged in any way, we hiked back to the car and headed off to the "Blue Sky Ecological Reserve" to walk the half a mile to "Keren's Blue Sky Micro." We spent quite a long time looking for the well-hidden cache beneath this spectacular oak tree.
From there we went into the wonderful park at Lake Poway where we hiked about .24 of a mile to "Gone Fishing." We spent a long time looking for the cache, but I think it has disappeared . . .
The views from there were great, so getting a DNF was not an entirely negative thing.
At the end of the evening, we did another cache in the Tranquility series. This new cacher has only been active since May, but, boy, has she been active! Her placed-to-find cache ratio is 52% . . . The caches are sometimes in fun, urban locations and they have sent cachers all over the county looking for them. I sure never knew there were so many fountains in the area until now . . .
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Wednesday it was absolutely beautiful. A mild Santa Ana wind was blowing so we decided to go to Ocean Beach. I don't know if I've ever been down there when it was so warm. We found a couple of caches, but then just walked around town and enjoyed browsing all the food and produce offered at the Wednesday Farmer's Market.
While walking through the Farmer's Market we ran into two other Geocachers, smilinglady13 and a friend of hers. That was great.
While perusing the goods, we watched some children getting rides on three llamas. I got an interesting picture I can use in the Forums, or for a really lame cache.
Finally we left the Farmer's Market, and since it was getting close to 5:00 and we didn't want to get into any afternoon traffic, we decided to walk out to the end of the pier.
We were looking for the first waypoint for "OB Offshore Mystery Cache," but didn't have any luck finding it. We got some great pictures and really enjoyed a rare warm and clear day at the beach, so it didn't matter that we couldn't find the waypoint with coordinates to the final cache.
The view from the end of the pier
One side of the gate combined with the view of the other side
At the end of the day we relaxed at a colorfully-painted bar on Newport Avenue.
The mural on the inside of the bar as seen from outside.
The colorful outside of the bar in the late afternoon light
After logging my finds that night, I was only 13 away from 800 caches. Wow! That's an average of more than three caches per day . . . something I never could have achieved if Princess Toadstool had not brought me along on her weekly hunts.
posted by Miragee at
1:05:00 PM
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10-Day Forecast
