Blog Template Musings about Geocaching: 2007-05-06

Musings about Geocaching

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Well, I did it. I placed four more caches today

I hiked back up to the peak I hiked yesterday and dropped two ammo cans, two Altoids tins, and one bison tube.

I had a really fun time and the day was beautiful.

This is the view from the first cache along the trail, "Slow and Steady."



And, this is the view from near where I placed the ammo can on the top.



Originally I placed the ammo can somewhere else, but then I got to walking around and exploring and I found this really cool double-bed-sized-flat-rock and decided that was a cooler location. So, I retrieved the ammo can from the other spot, put the Terracache there, and then spent a long time rearranging rocks to hide the ammo can so it was still an "Easy Find." I sure hope my coordinates lead people over the ridge of rocks to the right place so they aren't hunting 20' away. My hint is explicit, so the cache should live up to its name, "Hard Hike, Easy Find."

When I started down the hill, I took a different line and ended up in a forest of dead, blackened branches from the previous 8-10' high chapparal that covered the peak prior to the fire. I took a couple of pictures and if they came out, I'll post them to show what it was like.

I had created the cache pages yesterday, so I only had to edit and add some pictures and then state that the caches were active. Marko Ramius published them within 15 minutes. Now, that's good service.


posted by Miragee at 5:58:00 PM | 1 comments

Friday, May 11, 2007

Harmon is in trouble . . .

The other day SD Rowdies posted this picture in the Forums:


I really had not given much thought to that as a cache location . . . but after finding his cache today, "Waddle Up a Widdle Hill," which had a great view of Lawson and Gaskill Peaks,



I had lots of time left, and plenty of energy, so I made my way from the valley up a road I had not found before. From there, I started up a ridge that was fairly clear of vegetation as a result of the devastating fire last July.

During my little hike, I took some great pictures of some of the flowers that are still blooming.





The views from the ridge, and on up to the top, are fantastic.



Even though it is a challenging hike, I think the people who choose to do it will have lots of fun.


posted by Miragee at 5:40:00 PM | 0 comments

Thursday, May 10, 2007

A great day on the lake with fisnjack, Chuck B, and Moonboat




posted by Miragee at 8:16:00 PM | 0 comments

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Two FTFs, more than seven miles of hiking, and a new cache

Out in the Horsethief Canyon area, there were three FTFs waiting. Each of them involved a long hike, and before I got there, I had not decided which one to go for. Without actually making a decision, I started hiking down into the canyon, meaning I was heading for "Behold the lamb!," a Puzzle cache I could actually figure out ... but only because it wasn't a real "puzzle," only a tiny math equation.

So, for the eleventh time in the past several weeks, I headed down the trail I usually come back up when I am going around the loop. This allowed me to go past "Minnie Tinnie Listens to the Breeze" so I could change the container back to the little tin now that I fixed it so the lid comes off more easily.

I took pictures as I hiked along, surprised at how many flowers are still blooming after such a dry winter.










I finally arrived at the point of the trail where I could see the "lamb" and I started following my GPSr up, up, up, high above the trail. Once I got near GZ, I wasn't having any luck, and the terrain was much more difficult than I expected. I doubted the numbers, even though there was no way I could have made a mistake on the coordinates. However, I sat down on a rock and looked for the cache description in my Palm. Whoops . . . not there. Doh! Then I looked at the hint on my GPSr and saw the reference to some quartz. I saw an outcrop on the other side of the rock outcrop and headed over there. Not too far away, in a difficult place to reach, I saw the cache. Whoooo Hoo! FTF.



There were four Trackables in the cache and I retrieved two of them, realizing if I didn't take them, they might be sitting there for a long time. I made my way carefully down to the trail and on my way back, I stopped at a rock outcrop on the trail and hid the plastic container I had exchanged at "Minnie Tinnie." For some reason, the old song "It's Too Late Now" came into my head . . . That became the cache's name.

Once I got back to my car I still had enough energy to go for the closest FTF cache which was up the trail to the west. The views were astounding and I loved making that hike again.











When I got home, I played around with the tracks from the previous hike up to Elevation 3000 and put the location of "Too Late Now . . ." on those tracks.



If someone did decide to go to "Elevation 3000," when they get to the new cache, it really is too late to turn around, they are commited . . . or maybe they should be commited for wanting to make that hike . . .


posted by Miragee at 8:23:00 PM | 0 comments

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Learned about a poet from the forums today

Ted Kooser

Selecting A Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

-- Ted Kooser


Very funny. I like it.


posted by Miragee at 1:54:00 PM | 0 comments

Monday, May 07, 2007

A fourteen-cache, five-mile-hike-day in "town"

It has been a few weeks since I have cached with dillweed. Even though I was pretty tuckered out from our hikes on Sunday, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to get together with her again.

We met at "Golden Joe's" at a Starbuck's in La Mesa and headed towards a parking area CTYankee told me about. My GPSr was set on auto-routing, but it got confused, so we went around a few more turns than we needed to getting to the end of Tyler Street.

The grass has grown up quite a bit, so the trail is not very evident at the bottom, but you can see where it is a bit up the hill. I changed out of my sandals and put my Lowa shoes on. I had 48 ounces of water, which I thought would be enough, even though it was going to be a hot day.

Once we were on top of the hill, we didn't have too much change in elevation until we got to a bradybunchboys cache. My "Found It" log for that frustrating cache is almost as long as some of my DNF logs where I have looked for a long time . . . but then since we were going to call this a DNF until duganrm called back, that makes sense. I don't know if the coordinates are deliberately off for that one, but where they brought us led us to look in the wrong place for a long time . . .

Near one of the caches I found a cactus with some blossoms open.

There was another huge cactus plant up there that will be incredible when it blooms in a week or two. It made me think of that cache Princess Toadstool and I found two years ago near a Grande Cactus.

This is what our tracks and profile looked like when I uploaded them to the Maps.



All together, we found 14 caches. At the end of the day I placed a cache to mark that parking spot. It is at the dead end of Tyler Street, so I named it "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too."

I used the piece of Manzanita burl I got up on Gaskill Peak the other day. It is an obvious hide where it is now. I had wanted to put it where is would look very natural and be quite a challenge, but that didn't happen . . .

It was a warm day, but a nice breeze was blowing most of the time, so we never got too hot. However, the wind sure helped dry us out. We finished off all our water and, as soon as I got back to the car, I drank another bottle of water. Now is the time of the year to make sure we are more prepared for the hot temperatures. This was only a five-mile hike and 48 ounces of water was almost not enough. Just last week, on a cool, misty day, I hiked ten miles and did not drink half that much water . . .

It was a beautiful day up there on the mesa, the air was clear, and the views were great except for the view of a mountain to the north of El Cajon they are bulldozing to put in luxury homes with viewsites. I hate it when that happens . .


posted by Miragee at 9:27:00 PM | 0 comments

Sunday, May 06, 2007

A TrailGators' cache for 3cd's 1000th find

3cd's was going to hit his 1000th cache today and since TrailGators "Clevenger Canyon Cache" had not been found in over a year, he chose that two-mile hike for the adventure.

On our way to the trailhead, we found one cache called "Oh Chute." That was a fun one, but it sure was tiny . . .

I love seeing artifacts of days gone by while out on these caching adventures. This one is very close to another cache and the 528' rule, but that's okay. On our way to the other cache two years ago, I didn't see this. I'm glad I had to stop this time.

We didn't get going from Alpine until after 8:00 and met up with Chuy! at the trailhead a bit after 9:00. It was a nice day, perfect temperature for the long, uphill climb, with no other caches along the way to break up the hike.

At the top, we took the requisite picture to log the find. Here is 3cd's and his boys celebrating #1000.



After visiting, and resting, for a while, our little group started back down. We found a couple of spots on the trail where a couple of little caches could be placed, and if there were more caches on the trail maybe more people would make the hike to that viewpoint.

Chuy! left us at the "Breeder Memorial" cache and we headed up, up, up to the "Southwest Clevenger Viewpoint." I wasn't feeling too well for part of the hike up, so two of the 3cd's had been on the summit for a long time before 3cd's and I got there. The cache was a large ammo can hidden behind some large boulders.

After signing the log, we started down and when I got to the truck, it felt good to sit down. It was quite a hike as evidenced by the tracks and profile.



As we worked our way back home, we found a few more caches, all of them close to the road. For that I was thankful. This artifact was at a cache called "Laura Ingall's SUV."

I even liked finding a "lamppost micro," a cache generally spoken of with derision in the Forums, because when we got to the location, there was no worry about where the cache was . . .

Once again, it was a great day, spent with great company. The only negative was having to go into town to get gas . . . I was tired and just wanted to go home, but that little yellow light on the gas gauge was lit up and I didn't want to risk running out on my next trip to town. Gas is now almost $3.50/gallon, two dollars more per gallon that when I got my Toyota Matrix in 2003. This fill up was the most expensive one ever. At these prices, I don't know how many times a week I can drive the car. Just going down the hill to buy groceries costs me more than $3.00. I sure can't do that very frequently.

When I finally got home, I was really tired, but after dinner, I perked up enough to get the caches logged. Then I deleted the waypoints from my GPSr, did a quick filter in GSAK with MTRP as the center point, and reloaded the GPSr with caches for tomorrow's caching adventure with dillweed.


posted by Miragee at 9:54:00 PM | 0 comments

 

Web Counters
Office Max Coupon