What a fun hike . . . with a "tour guide"
It had been more than a week since I had hiked with dillweed. I saw a whole bunch of caches in the Lakeside area when I Exported a .gdb file from GSAK to Mapsource, and she was up for it, so I met her at the Rancho San Diego library and we took off. First, I wanted to find a Puzzle cache I figured out a couple of weeks earlier. If it was easy enough for me to "sort of" figure out on my own, I knew dillweed could also figure it out. So, as my GPSr directed us to the cache, we turned first this way, then that way, then this way on a number of suburban streets in the RSD/La Mesa/El Cajon area east of Mt. Helix.
From there, I thought the trailhead would be obvious, once we got in the area. It wasn't . . .
My auto-routing GPSr was sure not getting us to the right place, and the cache owner did not include trailhead coordinates for the beginning of the powerline trail. In desperation, dillweed got out her Nuvi and entered the coordinates of one of the first caches in the series. Her GPSr got us closer to a workable trailhead and finally, more than an hour after starting out from the library, we were on the trail.
I didn't expect to hike this far, or that high up the hill today. Here is the Profile of our hike:
A weak Santa Ana was still in place, after record high temperatures over the weekend, so the air was clear, giving us fantastic views along the series of trails I had expected to be one long continuous powerline road . . .
One of the first caches we found was an ammo can containing a few Travel Bugs and several Geocoins . . . I was really surprised to see so many coins in the cache and to get all the numbers written down, we had to sit down for a while and squint at the tiny numbers on some of the interesting coins, including one from Alaska that had the image of a mosquito on it.
I wish I had remembered to just take a picture of the coins. That is a much easier way to deal with the numbers.
While looking for one cache, dillweed and I heard someone holler at us from the trail below, "Are you Geocachers?" It was Hammer stone and after we found that cache, he offered to be our guide for the rest of the caches up the trail. This is the view from near one of the caches high up on the hill.
Along the trail, high on the hill near the "Burnt Post" cache, we saw this cute little horned lizard. Dillweed picked it up so I could get a closup picture of it.
We found not one, but two, fire hydrants today. I don't know where they came from, but they make fun cache containers . . .
It was a really great day, with good company, and once again I owe thanks to dillweed for doing the driving after I met up with her in Rancho San Diego.
From there, I thought the trailhead would be obvious, once we got in the area. It wasn't . . .
My auto-routing GPSr was sure not getting us to the right place, and the cache owner did not include trailhead coordinates for the beginning of the powerline trail. In desperation, dillweed got out her Nuvi and entered the coordinates of one of the first caches in the series. Her GPSr got us closer to a workable trailhead and finally, more than an hour after starting out from the library, we were on the trail.
I didn't expect to hike this far, or that high up the hill today. Here is the Profile of our hike:
A weak Santa Ana was still in place, after record high temperatures over the weekend, so the air was clear, giving us fantastic views along the series of trails I had expected to be one long continuous powerline road . . .
One of the first caches we found was an ammo can containing a few Travel Bugs and several Geocoins . . . I was really surprised to see so many coins in the cache and to get all the numbers written down, we had to sit down for a while and squint at the tiny numbers on some of the interesting coins, including one from Alaska that had the image of a mosquito on it.
I wish I had remembered to just take a picture of the coins. That is a much easier way to deal with the numbers.
While looking for one cache, dillweed and I heard someone holler at us from the trail below, "Are you Geocachers?" It was Hammer stone and after we found that cache, he offered to be our guide for the rest of the caches up the trail. This is the view from near one of the caches high up on the hill.
Along the trail, high on the hill near the "Burnt Post" cache, we saw this cute little horned lizard. Dillweed picked it up so I could get a closup picture of it.
We found not one, but two, fire hydrants today. I don't know where they came from, but they make fun cache containers . . .
It was a really great day, with good company, and once again I owe thanks to dillweed for doing the driving after I met up with her in Rancho San Diego.
posted by Miragee at
9:40:00 AM
10-Day Forecast
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