Countertop

The excuse for the day to go cache hunting was ordering a new bathroom countertop in San Ramon. But first I had some unfinished business in Pleasanton.

I had all but given up on SuperGenius #17 — Lil Camo, which is in a nifty park in Pleasanton. I had looked at least two times earlier. Today, after a bit of searching, I found it at 0931. Perhaps the vegetation is just a bit thinner this time of year. By the way, this park has some cool play structures, especially a very long slide like a toboggan run down a hill.

Iron Horse This is on the Iron Horse Trail, obviously. I found it at 1136, but not without quite some effort. I thought I knew where, generally, it would be hidden, but I couldn’t find it. Finally, with a lot of manuevering I caught a glimpse of it, but it still took me a while to get it. It’s on a bridge that is high enough that you can’t reach anything from below. The cross braces are box beams, and I figured it was in one of them, but I couldn’t figure out which one, and in several I tried, I couldn’t feel anything. By walking down the creek bank, I could get views into many of the box beams, and in one of them I could just barely make out an object sitting on the bottom of the beam. Trying to reach into the bottom of that beam I couldn’t feel anything. Finally I felt a wire at the top of that box beam, and it was connected to the cache container.

Danville Trolls showed up as close by, and I gave it a shot even though it’s a multicache and logs indicated trouble at stage 2. As the title suggests, each location is associated with a pedestrian bridge over a small creek that was nicely flowing this time of year. The first cache at the given coordinates was an easy find—in fact, I’m surprised it hasn’t been muggled. It’s that obvious. It’s the largest magnetic cache I’ve seen and it’s in plain sight for anyone who looks under the bridge.

1. I was then directed to stage 2 at N37° 47.726 W121° 58.388. I couldn’t find this cache, just like others who logged in the past month or so. I used the hint, but that just seemed to confirm that the cache was missing. The hint says it’s behind rocks on the east end of the bridge, but the rocks have been scattered. Rather than give up, I decided to walk on down the path to the next bridge and see if I could find stage 3.
2. When I got to the next pedestrian bridge, I used the hint, and quickly located the stage 3 cache. I got diverted for a bit because the first bridge I came to was a vehicle bridge, but after reading the hint I knew it couldn’t be the right bridge. The pedestrian bridge did have the fence posts talked about in the hint and that led to find it under a fence post cap on the west side of the bridge.
3. Stage 4 took just a little bit of hunting, and then it was on to the next. This stage was at N37° 47.937 W121° 58.570. It was a small magnetic tin hidden down along a handrail post.
4. Stage 5 was also pretty easy and quick. It was at N37° 47.923 W121° 58.635 and under bridge tucked up against a vertical pipe and clearly visible.
5. Stage 6 (the final cache) was harder. There was tree cover and the GPSr kept pointing a bit differently. I used the hint and finally found it.The final coordinates are N37° 47.829 W121° 58.666 and the cache isn’t under or on the bridge. It’s in a hollow part of a nearby tree and its a large container. Just after I found the cache and extracted the log a gardener started blowing leaves off the trail and coming right toward me. I had to take the log and go wait on the bridge for him to finish before I could replace it.

From here, I went to Livorna Road in Alamo and hiked up into Diable Foothills Park. The first one I found was But I Really Gotta Go. It was easy to spot the hiding place and the joke from 100 yards away. A quick find. It’s a small magnetic micro at the base of a sign that says Dumping Prohibited.

I found Sam’s Stash in Diablo Foothills Regional Park at 1429. I came from the Livorna Trailhead, but there is probably a closer parking place. The cache was an interesting plastic container wrapped in a black plastic bag, which is now starting to show wear and tear. Someone has added a jar full of pennies that they want moved from cache to cache, but it’s very heavy. Probably pulls the plastic apart even more. The cache is hidden in a hole under a large rock, and then masked with some smaller rocks in front. Even this may not last, because the rock is crumbling away.

From Sam’s Stash I headed over to get How Now Brown Cow, which I found at 1451. It’s on a very steep hillside that overlooks an Alamo subdivision. Right at the cache site, kids (I assume) are building some wooden structure, and they left a saw. There are other structures on the back side of the hill that look very interesting–like ramps and jumps. One ramp is about 15 ft long, 1 ft wide, and over my head. Looks like maybe they’d ride their bikes off it.

At 1602 I found Limit Warning on the Iron Horse Trail in Alamo. It wasn’t easy to find, and the hint wasn’t helpful. Finally, by just thinking carefully, I figured out where it must be, and found it. It’s a magnetic micro stuck up in a hidden area in the railing right behind a lable plate that gives the load limit for the bridge.