Ocotillo Wells SVRA

http://www.planocotillowells.org/

URGENT– This is the most important post of the year! SHARE with everyone! Do you love recreating in your desert? Do you have an interest in how Ocotillo Wells SVRA is managed in the future? Then GET INVOLVED! The General Plan process can be confusing, but you can get your questions answered at these open houses, and more importantly you can leave YOUR feedback! You, the visitor of Ocotillo Wells SVRA have valuable input, but without you, YOUR voice will not be heard. Do you want someone else to make decisions about your desert park without your input? http://www.planocotillowells.org/

Redwood Forest Trainwreck?

Heading to Willits California to check out the area.  BIG BEAR will be relocating here soon and starting a new job.  Yay!! A new area to cache. Ran the pocket query’s and loaded up the Garmin‘s, I recently discovered how to load more than 10,000 POI’s into my Garmin 60Csx and after I showed BIG BEAR how to do it I think he has more than 20,000 POI’s in his Garmin 60Csx.  Wherever we go we have all the caches that are nearby on our handhelds and we are ready to cache!!

Jumped into the Jeep and made  our way south on I-5 to Hwy 20 west to Hwy 101 and then North to Willits, caching all the way.

Saturday morning after taking care of the new job introductions and tours we head off towards Mendicino and find the Redwoods Series to cache, with our goal being a Waterfall Virtual that is 12 miles from Willits.  We competed the Redwoods #1 through #15: GC2W0H1 Redwoods #1 (Traditional Cache) created by Skycatcher  and then turn around to find the road that takes us to this Virtual:  GC9122 Hidden Waterfall (Virtual Cache) by vallen2

We found the Virtual and it looked like an easy walk to the Waterfall,  wooden stairs started us down the trail to the Chamberlain Creek Waterfall Trail which turned into a nice leisurely walk through the forest.  The cache page said there would be about a 200′ drop, we were on our way and could hear the waterfall,  so I was getting excited the closer we got.  We got about 100 feet down the trail and uh-ohhhh…. we found this:

Redwood Trainwreck

BIG BEAR finds the Redwood Train wreck

Well, what do you we do now?  BIG BEAR says “I think we can get over this”   I am not so sure though, I am not sure that it is safe to even try, but BIG BEAR has already disappeared, so I follow and I find him crawling over, under and through the splintered mess of Redwoods that completely wiped out the trail.  You didn’t know if you were stepping on foliage that could give away underneath you and you could drop 50 feet, so we went slow and very carefully through the downed Redwoods.  Some of the snags were pretty sharp and I didn’t want to be impaled on them. Redwoods are known for being big trees and these were not small trees!

But after about 15 minutes we did make it through and found the trail, and the Waterfall!

Chamberlain Waterfall

Chamberlain Waterfall

There was a Traditional Cache to get too and BIG BEAR and I jumped across the little stream grabbed that cache and BIG BEAR went and posed for pictures behind the Waterfall… what a fun hike, complete with all caches, waterfalls and a little of the unexpected adventure you find out on the trail when you Geocache!

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BIG BEAR at Firestone GC78

GC78 Firestone by Scott Hinds

BIG BEAR’s birthday wish was to do this cache, it was published 10/02/2000 called Firestone.  It is located near Bodega Bay, North of San Francisco. So after biking the Golden Gate park earlier in the day, we jumped in the Jeep and headed north up Hwy 1 to the cache location.  The road into the cache was winding but it was a beautiful drive.

This was rated a 1/1 but we parked at the closest point and walked over, looked down and thought no way this is a 1 terrain.  We did see a trail though and later found out if you parked at the Trail Head (which we passed on the way up to the cache) that you could have an easy hike into this cache that was a terrain of 1.    Since we were at the closest point we through caution to the wind and started our way down to the cache, our terrain was about a 4.  It was very steep, but the views were extraordinary… it was beautiful.  There was no fog and we got there just about Sunset to witness one of the prettiest views of the ocean.

Sunset at Firestone

the view from Firestone

the view from Firestone

Watching the Sunset from Bodega Bay

going through the tunnel

Sunset

BIG BEAR and Tru2Cntry at Firestone

Heading up to Bodega Bay – the tunnel

BIG BEAR on his way to Firestone

BIG BEAR and Tru2Cntry watching the Sunset from Bodega Bay

There aren’t too many of these old caches left and this one filled in a spot, or rather a date on our “Finds by Placed Month” calendar.  The caches with the older years for 2000 and 2001 are few and far between.  They were published when Geocaching was just beginning and now are very sought after caches.  On Firestone at the time there are only 260 finds for the cache.  For being published 11 years ago you would think there would be a lot more finds.  I hope this cache stays active, the owner has stated on his cache page that he has moved and it is difficult for him to maintain it, the Geocaching family is pretty good however at helping to maintain caches if they know that the owner can’t do it himself.  Trying to fill in the Jasmer Challenge Calendar: GC1GBC1 The Jasmer Challenge (Northern California Edition) by jasmerb

This cache for me will be remembered for not only the numbers it fills in for me but the memory of one of the most beautiful spots I have ever been to, and we ended the day by watching the sun go down. Perfect ending to a perfect caching day and it was a great way to honor my best friend’s birthday!

Happy Birthday BIG BEAR!

New Year -> New Bike -> New Caches!

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BIG BEAR got me a bike for Christmas! I haven’t had a chance to get out and use it until today when we went to Anderson River Park to get some more of Shampoodles caches that she has placed down there. I also purchased a couple of Garmin 60csx mounts for our bikes and wanted to see how they would do out on the trail. After church we loaded up the bikes and headed out. There are several trails that criss cross throughout the park and some of them dead end with a river that is way to big to cross, we headed towards the closest one and all went well, we had to walk the bikes several times when the cobblestones became the size of cantelopue or the river washed sand was just too fine and deep you sunk, otherwise we had a great little bike ride to the first 3 or 4. Well then it got tricky, headed down a few of those trails that ended with the river right in front of us, so we turned around and tried the next trail. We just kept on moving, and my new bike did very well.

Caches we did on the trail today included:

GC395YN #1 Shampoodles Remembers Her Horse by Shampoodles
GC38HTW #1 Shampoodles Rides To Hide Again by Shampoodles – 4 in the Series
GC39N4M #3 Shampoodles Rides To Hide On Christmas by Shampoodles
GC39N4Z Shampoodles Plays Frisbee Golf by Shampoodles
and one I’ve been meaning to get for a very loonnnng time:
GCZZ92 CHRISTMAS CACHE crowshoot/floflower

Before I rode it today we installed a much softer, wider seat, the seats that come on some of the new bikes hurt your buns after awhile. My new bike seat worked out well too, as did the Garmin 60csx mounts that we put on the handlebars, we had a great afternoon biking the trails at the park in 73 degree weather! The moon came up as we grabbed our last cache, loaded the bikes back onto the Jeep and headed to the grocery store, BIG BEAR said he wanted to make a big pot of chili with cornbread, sounds good after a good bike ride, well that was the plan anyway… the iPhone started going off… THERE IS A NEW CACHE 9 MILES AWAY!!

Reconfigured the Nuvi and we are on our way to get GC3AJCY Another Easy Hanger by Cable Cache 1 – we scored the FTF!! Whoo hoo!! Ok, NOW its time to head to the grocery store and get the Chili fixins, yummmm can’t wait for a nice big bowl of Chili and some cornbread to end the day. By the way it was really good Chili and I made the cornbread which was really good too! 😉

IGOR – GCDE – A very old Cache!

GCDE Igor

Nov 27, 2011 – BIG BEAR and I got up early this morning to make our way to this cache site… its got a very old GC#. This cache fills a spot in our “found for that year and date chart” that we both needed, and that’s why we seek these older caches out.

The terrain/difficulty rating was a 1/1.5… but that was the hardest 1.5 terrain I have ever done,

Susanville’s Smiley Face

Susanville is a great place for cachers to hide series of caches in the shapes of icons. After doing the Valentine Series that is in the shape of a Heart in June I was really looking forward to doing the Peace Sign and the Upside Down Smiley.

This Smiley Face series is placed on the side of a 4000 ft terrain mountain. There are no trails, or “Geotrails” to follow when doing these kinds of series, you are heading straight to each cache via the way the direction the GPS is pointing you in. At times you are bushwhacking, or following an animal trail, so it can be challenge for some cachers.

GC2MGYT SMILEY FACE 1

These caches are not caches series that all cachers can do, you have to know your physical limits, your time limits and know your GPS! You don’t want to run out of daylight, or batteries or water, and always tell somebody where you are!

I went with my good Geofriends: Swimbait and HookRN, and the views from up on top were beautiful. We scored the last Cache in the Series just as the Sun dropped behind the mountain, it had taken us most of the afternoon to hunt down each of the caches that gave us all the “Upside Down Smiley in Susanville. On our way back to the Geomobile, we got the chance to say Hi to the CO, this series is in his backyard and he was there. Thanks for a great series!!

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Potem Falls – Who doesn’t love Waterfalls?

Oct 23, 2011 – Wow! This weekend I got to visit Potem Falls and do BIG BEAR’S FALLS cache… if you haven’t done this one yet its a must do!! Put in on your Geocache bucketlist. The trail in is not a tough trail at all and we added some new spoiler pictures to help with finding it. The GPS is pretty useless down in the canyon so go prepared with pictures and you won’t have a problem. Its off of Fenders Ferry road which is only paved part of the way in then its a dirt road, but any vehicle is fine. We took the Jeep but a Mini Van or even a small car will have no problems at all. Great place for a picnic and I have heard there are fish in the little pool at the bottom of the falls… 🙂

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GCH3P5 BIG BEAR FALLS

T2C Hits 4000 and gets a Heart! ♥

S & J's Valentine

June 12, 2011 – So for my 4000th Cache we went over to Susanville and did the Valentine Heart Series. We started a 11 and ended at 5:30, a 10 mile hike. It was a great hike and BIG BEAR was with me, cheering me on, he is my best friend, my biggest fan and he is my Sweetheart too!  We hiked in to the middle of the Heart Series to get the Valentine and I made that my 4000th cache… it was awesome!!!  We celebrated with P-Nut M&M’s  !!

GC2NAB8 S & J’s Valentine

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ROUTE 66 – Video Update

January 2011 – Very cool video of all the cachers that have done the Route 66 trail

2011 – FEB 13th – Sweetheart Event

GC2315H Sweetheart Event

DC won the Jeep Ammo Box

My Birthday in Chico – BIG BEAR & Tru2Cntry grabbing an FTF

Rat & Mushroom put on a very cool Event every year called the Sweetheart Event.   We meet at the Roundtable Pizza in town, it’s fun to meet all the new Geocachers and hear all the Adventures all the “Been Geocaching since” Geocachers!  The raffle prizes are very cool too!  This year we had one especially for all the Geocachers who Jeep to the Caches and Dakotachix won an Ammo box that she will be launching soon!  Thanks goes to Rat & Mushroom for an outstanding job putting this Event together, can’t wait till next years! P.S. I didn’t know I had a Sweetheart… 😉