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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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.

The Lost Falls of Whiskeytown

The Lost Falls of Whiskeytown

On the radar for more than one goal today was the Whiskeytown Falls.  There is an Earthcache there, actually there are 2 right in the area of the falls.  All total there are 4 Earthcaches in the Whiskeytown National Parks area.  Since you can’t place a physical cache in any National Park area, an Earthcache is an ideal cache to place to bring Geocachers to the area.  All of the Earthcaches in the Whiskeytown area take you to the Waterfalls in the park.  I can now check these two off of my Waterfalls list and plan my next adventure to see the other Waterfalls in the Whiskeytown National Park area!

Before I plan my next trip out to the other waterfalls, I just have to tell you about this waterfall.  I am copying some of the info here from Waterfalls of Whiskeytown – Whiskeytown National Recreation Area website.  It has all the details you want on the parks trails and waterfalls and they also have maps to get you there.

From the Whiskeytown Website:

Whiskeytown Falls
For over 40 years this 220-foot waterfall was only a secret to the few that knew it existed. For a variety of reasons, some people decided not to share the falls’ existence with others. Today, people from all over the world have heard about the hidden secret.

After two summers of work, the National Park Service opened the trail to Whiskeytown Falls. The trail itself has been named in honor of James K. Carr, one of Redding‘s native sons.

I met up Saturday morning with a group of ladies from my church.  They had posted the Event for our Ladies group on Facebook.  Since I don’t get much of a chance to visit or do activities with them because Saturdays are usually my day to go out Hiking and Geocaching, I was thrilled to see an activity that I could do with them.  We got started around 9:00 am and I think we arrived at the falls around 11:30.  This is not a hike for the faint of heart, it was 90% uphill!!  Some of the ladies were up the hill in no time, not me, it took me a lot longer.  I stopped to catch my breath about every 100 feet or so. It was a 3.4 miles round trip hike, and going down was just as difficult as going up.  The hike was well worth it though, it was beautiful.  We arrived just about the time the sun was highlighting the falls.  Beautiful!!  We had a worship time with Tami who packed her little guitar up the trail with her.

I collected the information that I needed for the Earthcache:   GC2JAE4 Whiskeytown Falls (Earthcache) by TeamNulti2003

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I had fun with the ladies who were helping me figure out the answers I needed to log the Earthcache, I learned a lot about Waterfalls that I didn’t previously know.  I have to tell you that I am not all that good with Earthcaches, they are not my favorite cache type, I don’t know why though because I always learn something new.  This was a fun Earthcache to do.  When we got back to our picnic area there was another Waterfall and anther Earthcache there too!!

Time to head back now and have our Picnic Lunch and find the other Earthcache!

GC368QM Don’t Take It For Granite. (Earthcache) by McKenzie~Binns

Lower Crystal Creek Falls

Picnic at Lower Crystal Creek Falls

one of the foot bridges we passed over

narrow path…

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Second Time’s a Charm

GC1G1VQ Second Time’s a Charm by Desert(B)Rats

4/23/12 5:46 PM Find #5495
Let me just say first that I will never forget tonight!

We came last year in March and couldn’t get to the cache because the waterfall was raging and the water was really high, it wasn’t safe to cross over.  Tonight BIG BEAR says remember my cache: BIG BEAR AND A DICE CHECK that we didn’t have the coords to last year? If you have the coords we can go get it tonight, and it is right down the road from Second Time’s a Charm.  I thought we were on our way up to go visit Rat &Mushroom for their Anniversary and to see their new kitchen. I found the coords to BIG BEAR’s cache and we set our Nuvi on it.  After grabbing BIG BEAR AND A DICE CHECK cache and jumping back into the Jeep,  BIG BEAR starts heading up the road to Second Time’s a Charm.  I had no idea that we were going to go to the waterfall tonight, but I was all for it, I had always wanted to come back and be able to get the cache this and the second attempt was perfect.

We have all the coords, waypoints, parking coords, turn waypoints  in the GPS‘r and we start heading towards the fall, this cache has it all: PO, Ticks, Ants, Bushwacking, and no GPS signals,  but we hear the falls and we are getting closer, so we must be going in the right direction.
BIG BEAR yells “I see the falls!”  And as I come down off the trail (?)  I see them too!  They are flowing almost as much as last year!! LOL. Not to sure I want to cross the raging river but BIG BEAR encourages me all the way, I really didn’t want to bridge the gap from the rock to the log, I have much shorter legs than BIG BEAR, but he helped me make it on to the log and we got across to the side where the cache is. I left the iPhone, the Garmin Nuvi and the GPSr on the other side though so they wouldn’t fall into the water!  So with no coords, no GPSr, no hint BIG BEAR heads toward the cache, good thing BIG BEAR has a good memory he went right up the cliff to the cache!! WHOO HOO!! I stamp the log and get a Smiley this time!!

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Now the adventure begins!!

We start back down the way we came, hanging on the rocks, there is not much ground over there because the waterfall had cut the ground away. I was watching where I stepped very carefully but I made a wrong step and the  ground that I thought was there gave out from under me and down I went, I almost recovered and thought I could catch myself but nope down I went, I hit the pointy part of a big rock on the way down with my rib cage and went in face first. Soaked from head to toe, BIG BEAR comes back and reaches down to pick me up. Got up and out of the water, I have a big scratch on my side, I am sore, but ok. We had back very carefully, now that I am wet everything is slippery!

LOL, got back across ok with no further mishaps and climbed up to the rock where I left my iPhone, Nuvi and the GPSr and start collecting them. This is the same rock a year ago that we shared our first kiss!! I look down and BIG BEAR is not coming up, I asked him if he was going to join me up on the rock he says “No I am safer down here and he starts to pull a box out of his pocket!!!” By now he is on one knee and he says “Will you Marry Me?” I say “Oh Wow! YES!!
We are both shaking, me from the cold, him from nerves, he took out the ring and it took both of us to put it on my finger!!  This is a very very special place for BIG BEAR and Tru2Cntry, I look forward to spending the rest of my life with my best friend,  thank you for bringing us here… we will be back! What a night, what a place and what an adventure, that’s why we love to Geocache…

We headed back to the Jeep and on up to Rat & Mushroom’s to dry my clothes and share our good news!!  They had no idea when they opened the door and welcomed us in that they would have to supply me with some clothes and dry my soaking wet ones, but welcome us they did.  We shared our adventure with them over a nice cup of hot coffee and a piece of pie in their beautiful new kitchen.  They have some great dating and engagement stories too!, and they just celebrated their anniversary, fun night with good friends

This gets a Favorite Point for me, and yes Second Time’s a Charm, and has been a sort of theme to our day to day adventures too!
Love from BIG BEAR & Tru2Cntry

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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