San Jose afternoon

Dan, Janet, and I took the afternoon to return to Milpitas and San Jose, and wonderfully, Karen felt up to coming along.

On the way south on 680, we pulled off at Milpitas to hunt a view caches. First up was Discover Water (1:06 PM), cleverly disguised, but sharp-eyed Janet got it.

Just a short walk away was Big Gate ( 1:15 PM), which we easily spotted.

Heading east, we got to Road to Adobe Closed (1:36 PM) which took a bit of searching, but I finally spotted it.

Horse Tail (1:44 PM) is a 3 difficulty, but we nailed it right away. Next up was A Cow’s Eye View (1:56 PM). Dan got this one before I got across the street.

Once a Road (2:02 PM) was an easy find, as was Once a Fence (2:13 PM).

Ben there, done that (2:39 PM)

Milpitas or San Jose? (2:59 PM) Took us a while. It’s hard to see.

Then we moved on to San Jose to find The Money Pit (aka The $100 Splinter Cache) (3:58 PM). Janet found it.

Nice Park (4:15 PM)

Semi-Secret Trailhead: STASCT (4:44 PM)

It’s Finally Open (4:50 PM)

My First “Multicache” (4:59 PM)

Murdock Park (5:05 PM)

Aaahchoo (5:41 PM). Boy, this was so much easier in daylight.

Laughlin Ranch, again

Cache on the Rocks popped up in Brushy Peak on the Laughlin Ranch trail. I was just out there 4 days ago. This was an easy find. There’s an interesting story DavidT21 told Dan about finding two caches with 5 feet of each other at Laughlin Ranch 1. Obviously one of them was unactivated. I wonder if this was the one and it got moved?

Laughlin Ranch

On this President’s day holiday, Karen and I found time to take a short hike at Brushy Peak and look for the latest two of Dan’s caches. Both were on the Laughlin Ranch trail.

We found Laughlin Ranch 1 at 4:12 PM in a grove of eucalyptus trees and Laughlin Ranch 2 at 4:24 PM in a rocky area. There are some nice views of the Livermore valley from this trail. The area is so open that it was easy to take a more or less straight-line cross country hike back to the car.