Its all a luck of the draw to be able to visit Phantom Falls. Conditions have to be right, so we decided that this was a good time to try our luck. Hiked just over 1.5 miles, maybe a little more because we were Geocaching too, and there it was!! Beautiful, and the wildflowers that were blooming also added to the gorgeous terrain here. Its a moderate hike through lava rock and a high water table resulting in some muddy areas that almost suck your shoe off, but the day we arrived was just right for a hike down to the Falls.
Link with maps and weather to Phantom Falls: Phantom Falls hike
YouTube link to a great video of the Falls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMeQqPt43f0
There are a total of 5 falls in the area, we saw 3 and picked up 7 Geocaches.
These are a few of the Caches we logged:
GC5P2KF Katy’s cache (Traditional Cache)
GC1BZ9C Table Mountain basalt (Earthcache)
GC5P4Y7 Table Mountain Wildflowers (Multi-cache)
Spent Saturday up on the LPPT – translation: Lemurian Playground Power Trail! A series of Geocaching Power Trails that intertwine all around the McCloud and Mt Shasta area logging roads. The Link: GC4H8J1 LPPT–Starts Here!
I had some favorite caches that I came across too:
Checking for Geocaches on the way home and saw that there might be a chance to grab an FTF (First to Find) so I mapped it on the GPS and headed towards Hedge Creek Falls!! And YES! I scored the FTF!!
Fireworks on the Beach
It’s a 3 day weekend and temperatures are hitting between 105 and 115 in Redding! I know the coast is much cooler – Eureka is in the 70’s and 80’s much cooler than here in my hometown. The problem is it’s the 3 day weekend and Eureka and the entire coast is very popular in the summer as well as when the temperatures go up around here. Put a request out for anyone that wanted to join me and Maricela texted me and said she was in! YAYY! Packed up the Jeep and left knowing I had a few friends that live over there and I also had some friends camping there too!
Received a warm welcome from Liz who has a little place over there and so Maricela and I unpacked the Jeep, popped open the tent and made our way to all the fun things to do up and down the coast!
Day 1: Arrived at Eureka and heading south to set up camp, we grabbed Geocaches here and there when there was a place to park and was a quick on and off the road cache. If was great just getting over to the cooler weather!
Day 2: Ahhh it was nice to sleep in and it was really nice to sleep in the cooler weather! Headed into town for breakfast and supplies for the 4th of July fireworks. Grabbed the usual, chairs, ice, water snacks and headed into Ferndale for the 4th of July parade and festival!
While we were enjoying the festival some friends called us up and asked if we wanted to go on the boat ride in Eureka! Rounded everyone up and headed up to Humboldt Bay and did a great little boat ride around the bay. Great way to see the Bay!
Humboldt Bay Harbor Cruise Motor Vessel MADAKET
After the boat ride we walked over and had dinner at the Lost Coast Brewery and came back to enjoy the Festival while we waited for the Fireworks
Lost Coast Brewery | Welcome | Enjoy your visit!
4th of July Festival | Eureka Main Street
Here they are the FIREWORKS!! HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!
Day 3: No hurry today, we packed up everything first thing in the morning and headed up the coast. First stop Founders Grove on the Avenue of the Giants Redwood Forest – WOW are these huge trees!! So beautiful and majestic!! Great place to explore the forest!
After exploring the Founders Grove we headed up Hwy 101 to the Ferdale Bridge: Fernbridge (bridge) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Moving on – we visited the Loleta Cheese Factory, sampled some yummy cheeses!
Its getting close to lunch time… cheese samples held our hunger at bay until we got up to Woodley Island. Woodley Island Marina | Humboldt Bay Harbor District , There was a Geocache there that I wanted to get, we had seen the island from the boat tour the day before, and it looked like a great place to explore. We found the Geocache and visited the Memorials and the Table Bluff Lighthouse and then started out again when we noticed the restaurant! We were craving some seafood so this was just the place! We sat out on the patio and had a great lunch!! Elvis the Seal showed up and entertained us. Welcome to Cafe Marina in Eureka, California
We were close enough to the Samoa OHV park that after lunch we took the Jeep down and played in the sand for a minute before heading home.
Time to head for home… we will be back!
Last stop of the day on the way home, grabbed a great cup of coffee and sat on the patio: Wedding Venue & Retreat Center in Junction City, CA near Trinity River |Strawhouse Resorts
Temperatures at home were up to 110 and above, where to go to beat the heat? The beach! Beautiful weather and playing in the sand was a blast. There wasn’t anyone on the beach, so I pretty much had the beach to myself, who doesn’t love that?
I did some Geocaching in the area, but mostly it was just great to be on the beach, and enjoy the cooler weather. One of the Geocaches that I routed to took me to the Samoa Speedway: Welcome to Samoa Drag Strip, so I stayed and enjoyed some of the races. Because my arrival was later in the afternoon I got in free!
Around Lunch time I headed down for some crab at the: Seascape Restaurant Trinidad.
All in all it was a fun day and much cooler than my hometown… how do you beat the heat?
#CaliBear #NorCalJeeps
Apr 7
This gallery contains 38 photos.
Spring is showing up all over in Northern California, and a new Geocaching Series showed up also! Off to grab the newest series in our corner of the Caching world. The series was just above Shasta Lake on one of the arms or rivers that feed Shasta Lake – the McCloud arm. Known world […]
Had a great time today out exploring the mountains of Northern California. Sean came up to take delivery of his new Jeep and we just had to go off roading and get some dirt on it. He picked a 4 door Rubicon in the Baja Yellow with all kinds of options on it. The destination was Harrison Gulch Ranger Station up on Knob Peak – see the link for the posted Geocache we placed.
If your asking me, I do not… 😉
but there is a Geocacher or two in our area that has the lowdown, or should I say the rundown on the Scientists and he recently published a series of caches with names as titles and gave a brief description of each one. I enjoy when a cacher puts this much time and effort into a cache or a series of caches. I usually pickup a piece of knowledge that I might not have known, or as in this case I added a few names of scientists that I never knew about. I spent yesterday with my Geocaching buddy Cantseem on the hunt for the Scientist Series.
We had rain clouds all around us, not a drop on us, that is until we finished the last cache, jumped in the GeoMobile and started heading home 😉
GC1X37W *Almost On Top* by Olcowboy-N-Eyesofice2Us.
So honored that my best friends and fellow geocachers SeanStafford&GCWidow invited me along to capture their 10,000 cache!! Sean wanted to hike the Black Butte, with this Geocache as his goal:
GCJJGZ Black Butte-y (Traditional Cache) in California by MtnMike
I am posting the honoree pictures first, as this was our goal for the hike. Sean and Melissa’s #10,000 Geocache! I was honored to be present!! Scroll down for pictures of the beautiful hike to this goal.
Today is the day! We set our GPS‘s towards Black Butte and head out. The weather looks great, we have water, snacks and Sean is hard to hold back at this point. Sean and Melissa had attempted this geocache on a previous trip up Black Butte, however they encountered some muggles (non-geocachers) on the path down to the cache. For whatever reason they would not move, not having much room to maneuver up there, and not having another way to the cache they had to abandon the goal. This was not going to happen today, Sean was going to get his cache, and nothing was going to stop him!! We parked at the trailhead, which was also a challenge to Sean and Melissa on their first attempt. They never found the road into the trailhead, so they ended up hiking another mile just to get to the trail head. This day is already off to a great start!!
To the top of Black Butte!
Here we go… change the shoes, grab the water and we are off. Melissa is in the lead, she was soon out of sight! Sean and I are stopping to take pictures and making sure we are well hydrated. The views are immediately gratifying. Its a gradual hike up, the elevation gain is 1850 ft.
For more information here on the trail: http://mountshastatrailassociation.org/trails/west-of-mt-shasta/black-butte/)
Picturesque Muir’s Peak (Black Butte, 6500 ft.), northern California, U. S. A., by H.C. White Co. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Sunset over Black Butte (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Black Butte, California. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
GC49AE Hoodo, through the rocks (Virtual Cache) mtnsteve.
This has been on my radar for a long time, for some reason it just looked like it was going to be a hard one to locate. Looking at the maps and the access in to the area, so Cantseem and I set our sights on this one, it has long been on his radar too! I go to pick him up and doubt is written all over his face… hmmmm he is wanting to change up our plans. Nope! We are going, it’s what we planned so lets G-O!! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Gotta say that it was probably one of the best days of Geocaching that I have ever done! It was beautiful!! The access in was no problem, however it would be in the winter with snow on the ground. So glad we stuck with our plan, now I have a smiley 🙂 there!! We were able to grab 2 others in the area too:
GCGFBB SkyHook (Traditional Cache) by MtnSteve and Sequel
GCB3F4 Come and Get It (Traditional Cache) by Mtnsteve and Sequel.
The CO does an awesome job of maintaining these caches up here! I liked this trip so much that I am putting together a Jeep run with my Geocaching family back up to the area, I want to get the other 2 caches in the area too!! So stay tuned, its gonna be a day of off roading, Jeeping and Geocaching in a couple of weeks, before the snow flys!!
Sign up here if you want to come along: GC4KYN6 Off-Road Geocaching Adventure (Event Cache) in California, United States created by Tru2Cntry.
Reblogged this on Jan~Mari.
haha.... ok your on!!
Thanks! Maybe sometime when you're not sliding down mountainsides hoping to hit the rock between you
You are so sweet, you don't have to go with me, just share my adventures vicariously with me? But an
That looks like too much fun for me! What an exciting hobby - and it takes you all over the place. I
oh yeah!! ;)
No way! :) \o/
wish I had more time to tell about the adventure, because it was YOU who encouraged ME!! love you to
NorCal Jeepz 
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