Musings about Geocaching: Oh boy, what a great day for another MTRP hike

Because of its proximity to the ocean, the San Diego area frequently has an "onshore flow" of air. All the water vapor in the air gets in the way of distant views, so even on a bright sunny day, the views are obscured. It is rare to have an awesome crystal clear day like we did today.

I met up with dillweed, rnblver, and a young friend of dillweed's in the Mast Blvd. staging area for Mission Trails Regional Park. This is the same place I have hiked a few times in the past month and is an incredible area for hiking and caching. I don't think many cities the size of San Diego have an area of Open Space quite like MTRP within the city limits that is so easily accessed by nearly everyone.

After I put on my nearly-new boots, we started off on the trail that heads north towards the overpass that carries the traffic on Highway 52. As we hiked, we marveled at all the different flowers that were blooming along the trails and on the south-facing hillsides.

For some reason, the subject of politics came up as rnblver and I walked along the trail. I have strong opinions, but try to keep those to myself, unless they are challenged. Politics as a subject doesn't come up very often when I am Geocaching because I think most cachers, unless they already know the others in the group are likely to agree with them, realize a "discussion" would be as productive as trying to convert a Mormon to Catholicism or an born-again, Evangelical Christian to atheism. In other words, it ain't gonna happen.

People who depend on the "Fair and Balanced" source of FOXNews for the facts on which they base their hardened opinions do not want to listen to people who have formed their opinions from other sources, including Bill Moyer's "NOW" on PBS . . . And, having your chosen news source denegrated by another is not the way to continue casual Geocaching friendships . . .

So, after dillweed scolded us for getting off onto the subject of the war in Iraq, I went back to the business of documenting our day by stopping to take a few more pictures in the side canyon we were hiking up.

Much later in the day, after rnblver left our little group to find some caches we had found previously, we had an interesting adventure trying to get to a cache. When we ultimately couldn't figure out the access to that one, we took a non-approved route to get to a new cache by T.R. Violin where I dropped off a cute TB I picked up a while ago. I took a picture of it with the cache container.

From there, I could see the trail we hiked a few weeks ago and, on the map screen of my GPSr, saw one of the caches we found that day as a Custom POI. Dillweed needed that cache, so off we went towards it. Before we took that little detour, I had forgotten that cache was near the end of a southbound trail. Once there, it was too late to turn back, so we continued down the ridge getting some great pictures from unique vantage points.

Here is the interesting-looking Profile of our more than eight-mile hike:

It was another incredible day and I am thankful to dillweed for suggesting we get together for the hike. Although that is a bit of a drive for me, I was able to get all my errands done afterwards to justify the couple of gallons of gas it took to drive there. Since gas keeps going up and up and up every day, I topped off the tank, putting in $16.00 worth of gas . . . an amount that would have filled the tank when I got the car back in 2003 when gas was only $1.59/gallon.

Now that it takes nearly $7.00 in gas every time I make a trip into town, I have to stock up on a lot of groceries to justify that extra cost . . . I do envy people for whom the enormous increase in the price of gas over these past few years has not affected their lifestyle . . .