Monthly Archives: January 2011
2011 – JAN 29th – Route 66
BIG BEAR. and I, loaded up the Garmin Nuvi‘s and grabbed our GeoGear and left Redding at 6 pm Friday Night headed South to go do the Route 66 Series. We stopped at Sacramento Airport and picked up a Kia Minivan, its much easier to cache in. Then headed to Manteca to pick up SeanStafford.
We drove all night, got to 001-Route 66 at 6 am Saturday morning and started Caching! It was still dark, but we had flashlights and headlights and plenty of Energizer rechargeable batteries, it took some looking but as it got lighter we located them fairly quickly. The coordinates were all right on and we only replaced 1 or 2 caches that were missing. We replaced a couple of containers that had been chewed on or just needed replacing.
So we got our rhythm down and knew what we were looking for, each of us took a 100 Cache find turn, as it got warmer we cut this in half. It was a beautiful weekend and the temperature was just right, we stayed hydrated with Powerade |and Vitamin Water, and we were keeping a good pace.
It was dark around 5 pm and so we once again got the flashlights out and started hunting in the dark, it was tougher but we got it done. The terrain for this series is nothing like the ET Trail, the terrain on most of the series is a 2, and they take a little while to find, but by 6 p.m. we were logging 800-Route 66! 12 Hours to do the Series, and Sean is a human Tornado, he is nothing but fun to cache with. There were a few more caches in front of us and we tried to continue but it was unanimous… we were done and headed off to the AVI Resort in Laughlin, NV for dinner and a nice hot shower! We were caked in dirt and so was the GeoVan!
BIG BEAR Logging #800!
SeanStafford logging #800!
Tru2Cntry logging #800!
Grand total of Caches for the day was 811, another record day of Geocaching for all of us. Weekend Total around 875, when I finish logging them all I will update this to reflect the exact count.
What a blast… Where else can you combine a Road Trip, Treasure Hunting, Computer Tech, Adventure, Memories to last a lifetime? A BIG thank you to Team Stevecat (aka Ginny & Steve) for the Route 66 Series, we loved it!
After a good dinner, hot shower and a good night of sleep we were on our way again at 6 the next morning. Headed towards Barstow to do the Yer-Mo (Yermo) road series. Very nicely done trail just Northeast of Barstow, we started with Yer End and finished the trail in an hour. Thank you to JohnMac56 for a great little road series.
Now to fill up with gas again, and start the trek home.
Just as we headed towards the Tehachipi Pass we saw a the start of a rainbow, it grew into a full rainbow rather quickly and it followed us, then shrank down and was gone. It was a beautiful weekend for a road trip, great weather and the views from sun up to sun down were spectacular. And that is why we Geocache!
BIG BEAR ran a pocket query to look for some Virtual Caches in Bakersfield and came up with several we could do. So we made our way to Bakersfield, did some really fun virtual’s and then went to the Rice Bowl for lunch, this restaurant came highly recommended by BIG BEAR, and it didn’t disappoint, we all had the Chinese Chicken Salad, very good!
The Sunshine Express – we stopped for this Virtual and there was a great little Gift Shop with a Starbucks located inside, so I seized a much needed cup of Starbucks Coffee, and some fun with the California Raisin… lol!
Tru2Cntry and the California Raisin
2011 – JAN 23rd – Leap Frog
We were down in the Palo Alto area picking up caches and I get a call telling me there is a new series that just got published with 27 caches! Then we got another call from another geocacher with the same good news, well the questions started, where was it, how many again? who put it out? and the plan started forming. Not sure if BIG BEAR. even slept that night, we thought about going home Saturday night but we were all pretty worn out from the bike ride we did.
So do we get up at 3:00 am and go? No…. we slept in till 5:30 or so… packed the Jeep, filled up the tank and headed home. We had to drop Dakotachix off, she was in no way going to do a hike today, the bike ride was enough for her. After we dropped her off we filled the tank again and now we are on our way out to Hogsback Lake to do the Leap Frog Series.
We got the FTF on 20 of the 27 caches, another cacher had gone out at 6:00 that morning and grabbed 7 of the series. It took us 2.5 hours, to grab the caches and another half hour back to the Jeep. We were at the first cache at 11:05 and the last one logged at 1:30.
I had a great time hiking this series with Big Bear, it was a beautiful day to be out doing these caches, we saw some deer and not much else! That is a record for me and BIG BEAR. for the most FTF’s in one day! Thank you to georooks for the Leap Frog Series!
Now home to unpack and make plans for the next adventure!
2011 – JAN 22nd – Alameda Creek Trail
Alameda Trail – January 22, 2011
This weekend we drove down to Sean’s area, we first met up with Sean when we did the ET Trail. He invited us down to his neck of the woods and showed us a great trail to take our bikes on and do some Geocaching too! Alameda creek runs through Niles canyon and flows to San Francisco Bay ending near the Dumbarton Bridge. Bike trails run along both sides of the creek down for about 10 miles ending at Coyote Hills Regional Park. Had a great time with Big Bear, Dakotachix and Sean this weekend, they are a whole bunch of fun to Geocache with. We did about 60 caches in this area and we will be back to do some more!
A Few of the Caches we did on the Trail
Dakotachix
grabbed her 2000th cache today!
Dakotachix grabbing her 2000th Cache!
2011 – JAN 16th – La Moine & Holy Lady Bugs!
The day started out innocently enough, we were meeting up with Sean, he was in our area and we were all going to to some caching in the area. He is working on the #1-#60 Series up on Gilman Road and there were 2 new caches up there that I wanted and Big Bear too. Dakotachix had already gotten the first to find on them earlier this week. So… here we go, meeting up with Sean at the first caches of the day:
Then we headed down to La Moine to pick up some caches there, had a snowball fight, I think Dakotachix lost, it was two against her. 🙂
2011 – JAN 16th – Bleeping at the Moon
Sometime on the ride back from LaMoine Dakotachix starts talking about the cache called “Bleeping to the Moon” It is a combination Night Cache/Chirp Cache in which you have to have a Chirp enabled Garmin to get the location. Sean says my Garmin can do a Chirp cache! Well that was all we needed to hear, Dakotachix says Sean I hope you don’t have to be home anytime soon because your being “Geonapped” LOL!! She was calling her brothers to meet us out there and we were on our way to do Bleeping to the Moon!
We got there and started wandering, not really knowing where to go, you have to be within 50 of the signal to get the “Chirp” that downloads the coordinates to your GPS. We wandered around awhile and scratched our heads, then decided to head back to square one, the parking area.
Got back to square one and it was getting dark enough that we got our first clue, you see it really should be dark when your trying to do a night cache. And when we first got there it was still way to light. Ok, now we are starting to see the trail pop out! We are on our way down the trail following the flashlights and Bleeping to the Moon all the way. After a while following the trail sure enough Seans Garmin starts to Chirp the location. Now we have to find the cache. And it was a full Moon. This was a whole bunch of fun for all of us!!
NorCal Jeepz 
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