Having driven down this morning to Wasco in order to go to a niece’s wedding tomorrow, I took the afternoon to hunt for some caches in Bakersfield. I had a list of about a dozen.
Simulate This! is just south of Shafter. The most difficult part is finding the access point to the cache location. The dirt road I used was to the west of the cache. The cache itself was a buried can, with just the lid showing.
Then I had designs on a few caches in the Rosedale area. I DNF’d on Liberty Park Cache: it was pretty busy. I’m pretty sure I found the right location, but was feeling too conspicuous to do a thorough search. Then I spent far too long looking for Pin Oak Park Cache. I couldn’t find it and neither could most searchers before me. It may or may not still be there. Kern River Bed was another one I DNF’d. Couldn’t find an access point to the river. Drove within 400 feet, but came up against a No Trespassing fence. Probably have to walk in a ways from the east. Finally, I looked for A Cache for Travelin’ Sam, but traffic was so heavy that I missed the appropriate parking spot and didn’t want to try to come back for it. I was pretty discouraged, so I decided to go get a couple of virtuals in downtown Bakersfield.
Outlaw Jim’s Last Stand is a virtual cache at the site of the Joss House (destroyed by the Bakersfield earthquake) where bad guy Jim McKinney had a shootout with the law in 1903.
Bakersfield Station is a virtual cache at the Bakersfield Train Depot. The cache is pretty eye catching. It is one of the best kinetic sculptures I’ve seen. It’s a sphere of granite (about 4 ft diameter) resting on (apparently) a water bearing and slowly turning.
Follow the Arrow is a regular size cache in a non-descript part of Bakersfield (unless Buck Owens Drive is significant). It’s a mess kit hanging from a Juniper Tree branch.
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