Leakage from a Cluttered Mind

Before driving home from Paradise, we went to this little preserve in Magalia. We found an access to the preserve trails, but not the main one, so we ended up not doing the cache series in the order the hider planned. It didn’t make much difference.

Our first one was Upper Ridge Nature Preserve #4 (8:44 AM). The whole series was under tree cover and the 60csx didn’t give as good an error figure as I expected. This made these caches hard and often I had to use the hint. There did seem to be a lot of small poison oak in the area, and I wasn’t dressed appropriately.

Next, we found Upper Ridge Nature Preserve #3 (8:54 AM) near a bridge (which meant water which meant mosquitos). We knew it was near the bridge, but didn’t zero in on it until reading the hint.

Paradise Pine 1 (9:08 AM) was in a more open area which had a horseshoe pit. It was also in amongst a lot of small poison oak. Used the hint to zero in.

Pines Golden Gate (9:14 AM) was pretty easy since it was right at a vehicle gate.

We had a bit of trouble finding the correct trail to get to the next cache, and backtracked a couple of times. We should have just walked through the vehicle gate and down the road. Upper Ridge Nature Preserve #2 (9:39 PM) was near another bridge (and more mosquitos).

Upper Ridge Nature Preserve #1 (9:53 PM) should have been easy. The description seemed to make it clear where it was, but I overlooked it due to poor searching and started wandering around. Karen finally found it.

Today we started a much needed couple of day vacation in the Chico, Paradise, and Feather River Canyon area. After driving up, we looked around in Chico for a while, and then drove up to Paradise and checked in to our motel. After getting settled in, I walked across the parking lot to the bowling alley (closed on Sunday) and picked up STRIKE! (4:35 PM)

We went to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant (pretty good Carnitas). Afterwards, I fired up the GPSr in the parking lot and saw a cache less than 200 ft away. Luckily, there was a hole in the back fence and we took advantage of it to get onto the Paradise Memorial Trail (paved along an old railroad bed). I think I used the hint to make quicker work of PMT I “The Big Berry Patch” (7:11 PM).

We walked along the trail to the next closest cache, Rail In, but I’m pretty sure we needed to get to a historical maker which was inside a tight construction fence. This was the first time I’ve seen a cache that in addition to signing the log you needed to send some information (like a virtual) to the owner.

On the drive back to the motel we stopped to hunt for It’s a Small Mall After All #6 (7:53 PM). It took a little while, but I finally found it.