Rock Crawling with NorCal Jeeps…

NorCal Jeeps headed out to Rock Creek for some off roading.  Joe was our trail leader, the 3 other Jeeps followed. The trail followed the Power lines, so we went as far as we could until we hit a locked gate with a group of trailers, not sure if it was a campsite, or a temporary rv park, but it stopped us.

We doubled back along the Power Lines and some of us did some extreme rock crawling and some of us videoed the rock crawling.

Joe & Teresa (White YJ) and Jason & Michelle ZTRLTOY (Grey Jeep) were the Rock Crawlers. I love watching them; with a lift and some bigger tires they had all kinds of fun on the trail today. Great place to check out the flex in these Jeeps.

Having a stock Jeep limits you to some of the rock crawling we did, but we, I had a great time out on the trail.  I am always up for a challenge, I am ready to go again… 😉

 

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Oregon City Covered Bridge

After visiting Phantom Falls today, we turned the Jeeps toward home.  Just down the road maybe .25 of a mile is a sign saying covered bridge!  Who passes up a sign like that?  We sure don’t, so we took a right turn and about .5 down the little country road we came upon this little covered bridge!  Being crazy Jeep people that we are, we parked all 3 Jeeps for a photo op.

I checked to see if there were any Geocaches in the area, to our surprise there were none!

I siezed the opportunity and placed one here, and after doing some research I found out that this is the youngest covered bridge in the state, built 1983.

My Geocache: GC6CBV1 Covered Bridge (Traditional Cache)created by Cali~Bear.

“Oregon City Covered Bridge, built in 1984, can claim it as the newest covered bridge in California. The bridge is near the Oregon City, CA, State Historical Landmark #807.”

Oregon City Covered Bridge, Oroville, CA – Covered Bridges on Waymarking.com.

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Phantom Falls – February 28, 2016

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)

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Off Road Fun in McCloud

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:

• GC538BG Death of a Phone
• GC5WB4J Mount Shasta Visitor Center GeoCache
• GC5YCZC Signal Going To The LPPT

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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!!

GC5Z0KM Hedge Creek Falls

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Celebrating the 4th of July

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!

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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!

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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

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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

 

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Here they are the FIREWORKS!!  HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!

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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!

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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!

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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

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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.

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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

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Jeep Play on the Beach

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

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Spring has Sprung and so have the Geocaches!

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  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 […]

Do you know your Scientists?

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 😉

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The highlight of the day was when we found our way into another Lookout Tower Cache, one of my favorite type of caches to do! The views are always amazing and this one didn’t disappoint:

GC1X37W *Almost On Top* by Olcowboy-N-Eyesofice2Us.

Munzees in Gilroy

What a fun place to Munee!  Teamed up with YoursTruly, Hans415 and OldZee and headed South to Gilroy.

Munzee held an Event down in Gilroy at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in 2013  Lots of Munzee’s were deployed so there were a lot of Munzee’s to capture!

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We spent the entire weekend tracking down Mystery’s, Diamonds and Virtuals, what a great weekend.  Met up with Fisherwoman for lunch on the last day and then headed home.  I was hoping to “Level up to 102” while I was there but by the time we started home it wasn’t in the bag.  Looked at my numbers and OldZee and I put our heads together thinking maybe it was doable on the trip home??

Well I – or rather WE did it!!  I leveled up to #102 – Very cool and it ended the Weekend Gilroy trip on an up note for me!!

Gilroy Munzee Team: Yours Truly, Hans415 and OldZee!

The above photo is Larry thinking he could fly AND capture a Mystery Munzee in mid flight…. lol

I did it!!!!!!  This last stop had a Mystery Munzee that gave me the points to push me up to Level 102!!!  Whoo hoo!!!

 

 

 

 

Black Butte-y is #10,000!

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.

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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.

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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)