Blog Template Musings about Geocaching: A mountain bike ride, a Terracache, and a lonely cache

Musings about Geocaching

Friday, June 01, 2007

A mountain bike ride, a Terracache, and a lonely cache

Yesterday, on a wonderful day of caching with fisnjack, we completed a nice "menu" of caches, but first, we saw T.R. Violin at Horsethief Canyon. We had a nice visit with him for a while as he put the "snake guards" on his legs in preparation for a hike east of "Blame it on Miragee." Then, we drove to the "Meadow" trailhead where we got on our mountain bikes. The first stop was at one of my caches so I could drop off a Geocoin. From there, we continued on to find a CTYankee9 cache. At that location, we left the bikes and walked down to a cache fisnjack had not found before when it was in an area overgrown with poison oak.

After making that short walk, we were off to find the first waypoint for a Multi-cache the bradybunchboys put out called "Kiss the Bottom of Horsethief."



It was really a fun bike ride and it sure felt good to get on the bike again. At one point on the road, fisnjack's cute puppy behaved true to her breeding when she roused some cows from their slumber in the shade.

After we finished up that cache, we rode back to the truck. Along the way, I took this picture.



We covered more than eight miles on the bike. Here is what our tracks and the profile looked like:



Once back at the truck, we took all the stickers out of our socks and loaded up the bikes to head off for more adventures. On the ramp to the freeway, there was a guy hitchhiking and I said, "We could give him a ride." I thought he looked okay, since he had a backpack and looked "normal." Boy, was I glad we were only giving him a ride to the Rest Area at the Buckman Springs offramp . . .

After that quick stop at the Rest Area, we took off for a new cache placed by the Splashes called, "Where does this go?" Others have parked their vehicles and walked the .6 because the track is rough, and narrow. But fisnjack didn't care about scratching his truck up any more than it is already, so we bounced and bumped down the little road to the cache location. We were looking for a "small" container, and since I can never spot caches hanging in bushes, I missed this one until he pointed it out to me.

After signing the log, we bounced and bumped and scratched our way back out to the road that goes up, up, up to the trailhead for T.R. Violin's Terracache called "CLIFF." It gets its name from the name stamped on the nearby benchmark.



At the Rest Area it was 99°, but up there on that peak, there was a good breeze blowing and the temperature was mild. In fact, most of the way to the top along the ridge, the breeze kept us nice and cool, even on this warm day. The views from the cache location, with the contrasting black granite rock outcrops high above lighter-colored rock outcrops hundreds of feet below, were incredible.



On the hike, on a "trail" that was barely visible at times, we came upon this colorful horned lizard.





After we found that cache, which was very well-hidden, we walked back down and decided to go for another nearby cache that had not been found since last August. ON the trail, we found this very wrecked car.



A little over a month ago, the car was in perfect condition, as evidenced by a picture posted on the Terracache page by another Terracacher. Too bad. I wonder what happened to the driver . . . ?

There was a little spring near the cache where the vegetation was quite different from every other place around there.



We walked back up out of the valley and finally made it back to the truck. I was pretty sore, and tired by then, even though we had only walked a bit more than three miles.



It sure was great to sit in the truck as we drove slowly down the road that offers spectacular views of the valley below.





I had a great day. I always feel so much better when I am outside in really fresh air like that. So, even though I'm tired today after all that exertion yesteday, I'm looking forward to the next caching adventure.


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