3 caches in Los Banos

     Well, we though we might get another FTF this weekend.  Stuck on the 33 posted earlier this week and no one posted a find, but by the time we got there on Saturday, someone else had found it earlier in the day.  Oh well, second to find.  Another TINY nano.

     Second cache of the day was probably our favorite of the day.  Neighborhood cache is located on private property (with permission).  We had the right idea from the start, but the cache container was VERY nicely camoed.   We took a cute little duck token and left polished stones and stickers.


     Come fly with me was another nano in a bison tube over by the airport.  Close to a FTF on this one, too, but a little late.  Whenever I see a cache like this one, I wonder how many caches I pass right by every day, in plain sight.

Deb and Bernie's Excellent Geocaching Adventure

      Last week I decided to take the plunge and fork out the $30 for a premium membership on geocaching.com.  That does two things I thought would be useful and/or fun.  The first is the ability to run pocket queries (more on that in a later post).  The second thing a premium membership offers is the chance at notifications.  You can set up lots of parameters, but the thing I was most interested in was being notified when new caches are published in the area. That's really the only way you have a chance at getting a FTF.
     So all of a sudden last week I started getting emails about recently published caches.  The first two cane too late, but then on Saturday there was a notice about a new cache called March Hare on Shell Ridge, about 5 miles from the house.  The cache posted late at night, so I didn't imagine anyone would be after it on Saturday, so we decided to try for a FTF on Sunday.  
     I googled the directions to the cache, and Sunday morning we headed out about 8:30 or so.  It turned out that the cache was about a mile from where we needed to park the car.  We headed up one of the northern trailheads, but got worried about where we had to leave the car, so we looked for another way in.  Bernie drove us up by the Borges Ranch entrance and we decided to give it a try.
     Now for most people, I'm sure this hike would be just a lovely Sunday walk, but for two middle-aged, overweight, out of shape women, this was only slightly easier than an iron-man triathlon.  We hiked up the hills, and down the hills, stopping at every available patch of shade.
     About an hour into our marathon, since I hadn't been tracking every step on the iphone to conserve the battery, I managed to miss our trail by 100 feet or so.  Of course they were 100 incredibly steep feet.  So we stopped to rest on a lovely bench and I decided to see if there were any other caches in the area.  One popped up at 0.0  miles.  So we looked around while we took our break and found Ridge Trail,  a tiny magnetic nano.  At least we had one find.

      Back on the trail again we took a little side trip to look for Mad Hatter, but found ourselves below it and decided not to try to find another trail up.  Another 45 minutes of walking and we were finally zeroing in on March Hare. Now every time someone had passed us going the other way on the hike in, we said to ourselves, "I wonder if they found the cache," so we didn't have much hope of being FTF.  The cache was about 20 feet off the trail down a fairly steep hill for those of us with bad knees and no walking sticks.  We carefully made our way down and Bernie spotted the cache.  When she opened it I saw FTF on the log and thought someone had found it, but it was just the cache owner making a specific place for FTF to be recorded.  After our two hour hike and several dozen rest stops, we actually had our FTF. 

     We left the Galactus travel bug and took the Rabbit with Mrkeff travel bug (which started in the Czech Republic and is on his way to Machu Pichu.  We will send him on his way soon.  We headed back and got to the car about 4 hours after we started (which we realize is about 5 times as long as the real Shell Ridge Hikers would take.)
     We were very happy to get our first FTF, and we learned some important things.  First, we need to be in better shape before we attempt any more hikes of this magnitude.  Second, one bottle of water is not enough. Third, if you use an Iphone as your main GPS device, you must have an external battery (we stopped at the Apple Store in Walnut Creek where I bought the Mophie Air external battery case, which seems to be working well.).  
      We definitely felt a sense of accomplishment with this one, and we'll be looking for newly published caches with a little lower terrain rating in the coming months. 
  

After Margot's retirement...

      Tried for a few caches this evening after Margot's retirement party.  As indicated in some of the logs for this cache, there were actually two almost identical caches that were literally inches from each other.  I am not sure which is the right one, but we signed both logs, and I'm sure one of them is the right one.  We took a little clothespin with a snowman face from one, and a little orange frog from the other.  I wonder how these two caches got so close to each other since geocaching.com doesn't allow caches closer than 1/10 of a mile.  


    We wanted to try for the BART North Concord cache, but I lost my cell phone connection totally, and when you are using an iphone for your caches, that doesn't work well.  I finally found a spot with reception and downloaded the map in case I lost connection again.  We'll have to try the BART cache later.  Instead we tried a few along Arnold Industrial North of Concord.  


     We found Cachin' Connection near the County Connection bus station.  Nice little hide.  Quick find.


     Next on the list was another in the model solar system caches, but I made another check on the Iphone, and saw a cache called Dad's New Toy Store , and we decided to give it a try. Previous logs indicated there were 2 caches together here.  We found a cache and decided to check the hint to make sure it was the right one, because the container was shorter than described.  After reading the hint, we were still confused, but the FTF name was right, so we think we have the right one.  I'm going to contact the cache owner to make sure.

     Last cache of the day was VGR2-Earth, which I believe is our fourth find in the solar system series.  We thought you needed to approach from inside the fence, but after taking a look and reading the hint, we determined you needed to be outside the fence.  We originally looked there, but the terrain was more than 1.5 in my opinion.  I wish we had a real, official guide for terrain ratings.  Most guides consider flat ground as a 1 and rough dirt with some minor changes in elevation a 2.  This was rated 1.5, but it was quite difficult to get to with bad knees like I have.  I would implore cache hiders to check the guides and take their advice.

A few older caches ...

 

     Thought I'd post a few of the caches I missed recording in the blog.  This isn't all of them, and they are in no particular order.  While out with mom one weekend we found a cache near Hilmar called Gone Golfin' There was a beautiful view out to the links and we took one of the little cars from the cache. 
I hope the cache owner replaces the container soon because it was pretty badly cracked. 

      This one was a pretty standard parking lot cache.  It's called Where's Windy?, but the spelling may throw you off.  We've had a lot of rain this winter and there was a lot of construction near GZ (Ground Zero), which made it a little more challenging terrain than it should have been.  Nice easy cache on the way home from drinks with friends.

     I grew up in Gustine, CA and this beautiful place wasn't here when I was a kid.  This is a virtual cache, which geocaching.com doesn't list anymore.  Virtual caches have been replaced by waymarking, which is pretty much the same thing.  The idea is to find a place, but no actual physical cache.  Heroes One and All recognizes a little known national cemetery between Gustine and Santa Nella.  It's worth the drive if you are in the area.  The grounds are beautifully maintained and there is a touching monument to Korean War vets.  Drive up the road behind the big hill at the top of the hour,  and you'll hear bells playing various patriotic songs.

      Picked up Bridge Over Romero on the way back from Heroes One and All.  Nice little walk down the canal bank and a pretty easy find.  Had a little bit of excitement putting the cache back.  Seems a black widow was making a home behind the cache and wasn't very happy with us disturbing it.  We encouraged it to go away long enough for us to replace the cache, very carefully.

Got to clear up a DNF on this one.  Well it wasn't actually an official DNF, as we couldn't actually look for the cache the first time.  As we drove up to the area, we noticed the farmer spraying weed killer on the rather large weeds on the side of the road.  We came back a couple of weeks later and everything looked good. The description told us that Holiday Kiss was in a tree with mistletoe.  We narrowed it down to one tree and spent about 10 minutes getting completely covered in foxtails before reading more carefully and realizing the cache was actually IN the mistletoe.  "Carefully read did you not, so covered in foxtails you are," as Yoda would say.  Very nice hide.  In plain sight, but you need the right angle.  

      Found CCCT-Not in the Tunnel on the same day as Where's Windy?  Apparently there are a bunch of caches along the Contra Costa Canal Trail.  It seems like a pretty nice level walk, so maybe we will venture farther down the trail after a few more of these.  Took the cute gorilla.

After tech support.

Haven't been keeping up well with my posts at all.  Today we spent the day at Anne and John's house doing some tech support on their Mac, and we decided to check out a couple of caches on the way home.  Our first one was called VGR-2 Ceres.  It is the third of this series we've found.  It is a scale representation of the solar system, with the sun at Sun Valley Mall in Concord.  This one represents a dwarf planet, Ceres. At first we thought the 1.5 terrain rating should be higher, but it ended up correct.  Nice cammo and nice hide.  Took a small baseball player.

Second hide was called View of the Wind Farms.  We couldn't figure out what wind farms when we finally looked down the hill and saw the far-off windmills.  Unfortunately, you can't see the windmills in this pic.  It was a surprisingly busy street and cars just whizzed by.  Clever cammo and hide.

My students and I got a nice surprise before we left on our field trip this morning. Our first cache, Panda Express was published this morning.

A Little Experience Goes a Long Way

We won't be breaking any land-speed records anytime soon, but we are getting better at this.  We started the day going after three caches that were DNFs (Did Not Find) for us on our first day of geocaching.  The first one was Watt's the Connection?  This was a very clever hide.  It's a 3 difficulty, which is the hardest we've found so far.  If you are just starting geocaching, look at some of the custom cache containers that are out there so you'll have a clue what to look for.  We were excited to find this one, but the next was even tougher.

On the way to look for The Rocky Fountain, I noticed a cache called Strata which was also in Heather Farms Park.  We found the spot easily enough, near a sculpture commissioned by the city of Walnut Creek.  I can't say the sculpture spoke to me.  We spent more than half an hour on this one before finding it in a place both of us had looked before.  We had planned to try again for The Rocky Fountain, but there was a wedding in the area and we though it best not to be part of the ceremony.


Next on our list was Bullseye.  This one drove us crazy when we tried it before, because we had no idea of the kinds of places one might find caches.  This time, we agreed cache hider who said it was a pretty standard parking lot hide.  After you start geocaching you can never look at a light pole the same way again.


Sam's House of Torture is a creepy name, but a pretty quick find.  This one reminded us that we need to buy mirror that telescopes to help us see over, under, behind, etc.  We headed back toward home and stopped at REI hoping to find some camo tape, but no luck.  Salesman said to try Home Depot.  No camo tape, but they had the telescoping mirror :)  


Last cache of the day had our first travel bug!  On the way out of the Home Depot parking lot I noticed a cache in the next lot over.  We found VGR-1 which is part of a model solar system.  I'm embarrassed that we used the hint for this one but it was getting late.  Nice camo.  Hope we can find the other "planets."

Waiting for the reviewer

This morning I checked the listing for our new cache and found a message saying it could not be reviewed until it was made active. Apparently that button was unchecked. Whoops. So I checked it and when I got to school an hour later I had an email from the reviewer. S/he said that another listing was holding that area. I don't know if we are too close to the end of a puzzle or multi, or if there is some unpublished cache in the area. After several emails back and forth, the reviewer said s/he had tried to contact the owner and would list our cache on Monday if she didn't hear back. I also found out I could ask the reviewer to check coordinates to make sure they are available before we hide. Fingers crossed that the cache goes live on Monday. Hope to get some caching in tomorrow.

First Hide

So yesterday my class hid its first geocache. We took a walking field trip to the park near our school and chose a hiding place. We used a handheld GPSr to find the coordinates and then went back to the classroom to fill out the listing page. Before we posted I told the students we should check the coordinates we got on google maps to see if they looked right. So I typed them into google maps and when the map came up on our smartboard, the students said, "That's not right!" I told them our coordinates must be off and I would have to go recheck them later. Then the student who held the GPSr said, "Wait, it should be 011 at the end." We had written down 11 instead of 011 and it put us about a block or more off. Excellent lesson in how important accuracy is.

Jacob's 1st birthday

Started the day at our great-nephew Jacob's first birthday BBQ. Very nice time. Decided to try a couple of caches on the way home. First one was DVC 123 #2 on the Diablo Valley College Campus. Nice cache. Hidden in some shrubbery. Can't imagine how many students pass it every day and never know it.

Second cache was also on the DVC campus. Had a little harder time finding this one. Very small cache wedged into a tight space under a table. Beautiful area with ponds and trees where students can Relax and Study.

The last cache of the day was back in Concord, and this was the tough one of the day. We found the coordinates easily, but we just couldn't figure out where this cache could be. GPS put us right there, but we couldn't figure out the hide. Finally, just before we left, I told Bernie I wanted to look from the bottom of the box we thought it was near. I think our next investment will be some kind of a mirror to help us look under things. Up in Downtown was a good challenge.

Our best day ever

Almost up to date now. 5/1/10. We found 5 caches today. First was in downtown Newman. Very clever hiding place in a box on a telephone pole. Don't know if this was added just for the cache or just a lucky find of a hiding place. Took a toy tractor and left beads and stickers. I can see why this is a historic area, but not sure why it's Newman's Historic Homeless District:Part 2.

Headed toward the freeway to find the I-5 diaper changing station. Nice name! Wow, what a tiny nano cache. Tucked in behind another freeway sign.

#3 was down the freeway a little toward Crows Landing. Didn't know why it was called Covanta until we saw the sign. Nice hide of a 35mm film type canister in a knothole on a fence post behind the sign.

Our first DNF in a long time was Kit Fox. Thinking maybe it was muggled. Looked for quite a while with no luck.

On to find #4, The DPC Too. Nice drive a short way toward an off road park. Lots of local bovine company. Found the cache behind a post. Took a chicken and left our regular stuff. With this one we had to actually go back and download the maps. Seems the GPS works fine without a cell signal, but the maps don't.

Stopped for a drink at Westley on the way home and decided to try one last cache. A Lone Tree was just that. Fast find on the way home.

Note: Returned to The View and replaced almonds with beads and stickers. Afraid animals might smell them even in the sealed package.

Welcome to Stevenson

4/24/10.

Started with a cache on the way to Mom's. This was on the Altamont Pass in an area where commuters park their cars to carpool. Pretty easy find now that we have a little experience. Log was very wet. We'll bring a new one by if we get a chance. Too bad the muggles that use this place don't take their garbage away. This one was Out in the Sticks.

On the way to Turlock, we thought we would see if the tiny town of Stevenson had a cache. Sure enough we found one called Welcome to Stevenson. This was the first time we had seen a cache container like this. It actually replaced the cap on the pole of a cyclone fence. Very clever.

Last cache today was at Hagaman Park. It was outside the park in a nicely hidden metal container magnetically attached. Took a coin and left beads and stickers.

The View

So today was 4/17/10. We started with a cache find on our way down to my mom's house. Stopped at the brake check area on the top of the Altamont and there was a cache listed. Went up a small road toward the Verizon Wireless Wind Farm (never knew that was there). This was our first traditional size cache find. Not hard to find, right in the bushes in a cammoed water bottle. Lots of little goodies in this one. We took a toy mouse and left a bag of almonds. More on that later. The cache was called The View and was true to its name.

Berry Blast - 1st cache with mom

So I wasn't sure if my mother would think we were nuts (I mean more so than usual) when we told her about our new hobby. She's a trooper, though. And she really wants to get out of the house :) So on our way to Turlock, we went through Hilmar. We thought we found one at the welcome sign, but it ended up to be a letterboxing cache. We headed toward the next one called Berry Blast. I knew there must be one near Hilmar Cheese, because it's such a tourist stop. Sure enough, we found this small metal tin under a bush. Couldn't open it, though, because it was rusted shut. Guess when we hide our own, we should try plastic containers.

End of the road

Feeling very successful from our first find, we stopped at a freeway exit cache on the way to visit my mom in Gustine. You'd be amazed how many freeway exits have caches. This one was called End of the Road, and it was a pretty fast find. Bernie spotted this one first. The next time you are entering or exiting a freeway, take a look at the poles the signs are on. See those little 35mm file canister sized holes on the sides... I believe we found this one on 4/10/10.

1st Find!

You've probably noticed I am posting these one after another on the same day. I decided today that I had better start logging these finds somewhere besides just on the geocaching site. I know I won't remember the details soon. So here goes. Find #1.

Finally we had a successful find! We navigated easily to the coordinates and saw a creek area and what looks like a private road going back onto a farm next to it. I'll admit, we had to use the photos on the listing of the cache to give us a clue, but Bernie finally found it.

This first one taught us a lot about how we had to search. I kept thinking the caches would be out in plain sight. Uh...no. This one was actually stuck up into the pipe of the gate. Bernie reached under and found it. Finally...success!!

Another DNF

DNF stands for did not find. And, again, we did not find. We looked for two caches today, one called The Rocky Fountain at Heather Farms in Walnut Creek. Sat right where we thought it must be. Followed the clues. Looked at the photo that looked like it was take from right where we were sitting. We'll be back to look for this one again.

We also looked for Watts the Connection with no luck. Again we were sure we were in the right area, but couldn't find it. Looked around electrical boxes and in the vegetation. I'm sure after we come back and find this one later we will wonder how we could have missed it.

No luck :(

Well, we had an inauspicious first day of geocaching. We tried to find a geocache in Downtown Walnut Creek. We looked for a cache called Bullseye in downtown Walnut Creek. We searched for a while, but lots of muggles (non-geocachers) around, so it was kind of uncomfortable. We kept thinking we were going to have security questioning us. We will be going back to this one when we have some more experience.

Geoaching is fun!

This blog is mostly for us, so that we will remember the many caches we hope to find through the years. I also wanted a place to post the photos of the areas we see while geocaching. Since it is for us, there will definitely be spoilers in the entries, so if you don't want to see the spoilers, you'd better not read any more.

We are doing our geocachng using the Groundspeak iphone geocaching app. We've heard that the iphone GPS is not accurate enough for geocaching, but after learning some of the ins and outs of caches, we have found the iphone to be very accurate. We love the app, too. It lets us just decide that we have an extra few minutes, bring up the app, and see the caches in the area. Very nice.