On the way to Cayucos

Yesterday we brought Karen’s Mom back home and today we headed west on highway 46 towards Paso Robles, eventually to end up at Cayucos for a few day stay. West of Blackwell’s Corner, a small county road leads off to the southwest through Bitterwater Valley. There are a number of caches dropped along this road. It was scenic this time of year; hillsides were green and wildflowers were popping up.

We found Tower Gate at 11:12 AM followed by Why Ask Y? at 11:30 AM. Found BowJon at 11:44 AM, even though the coords were a little off (we were on the wrong side of the road). I thought better coords are N 35° 32.861 W 120° 059.27. This is claimed to be the site of a compressed air windmill, but it was too far away to make out any details. Then we got Gypsum Water at 11:54 AM; site of a large gypsum mine, but not much left. Pallet Town followed at 12:07 PM, then Greensberg Store at 12:21 PM. There were a few more on a side road, but we were getting kind of bored with this area.

We joined back up with highway 46 just west of Cholame. I had known for years that James Dean was killed in a auto accident near here–at the intersection of highways 41 and 46. I did not know that there was a memorial at Cholame, which is now a virtual cache; James Dean.

Just a few miles west is a rest stop (just before Shandon) where I found Take a Break at 12:52 PM. Then we took a short drive to the Shandon Cemetary to find The Ghost of Tomlin at 1:03 PM, where the coords are really off (by over 400 ft). I measured the coords as N 35° 40.155 W 120° 21.228.

We checked on one in a Paso Robles park, but it was so busy we didn’t even get out of the car. So we drove on to Atascadero, where we stopped at Atascadero Lake (in all the years, I don’t think I’ve ever stopped there) and found Fisherman’s Cache at 2:56 PM. We briefly looked for another one here, but it was hard to find.

Driving on toward Morro Bay, we stopped and grabbed San Gabriel bridge at eye level at 3:25 PM, followed by 3 bridge cache at 3:39 PM.

We decided we wanted to go to the San Luis Obispo farmer’s market for dinner, so I dropped Karen downtown to do some shopping while I went to grab a couple more caches. The first was Space Open Hill Terrace at 4:44 PM followed by Battlefield Park at 5:03 PM.