June 26, 2005, 10:54 pm What a day! I planned a full day of caching north on 680 in the Danville, Walnut Creek, and Pleasant Hill areas. I left home about 9:30 AM and got home at 8:30 PM and found four—count them—four caches. I don’t know how many DNFs—I lost count. Most were micros, and many (luck of the draw) were difficult. Just wasn’t my day.
My first find didn’t come until 4:46 PM at MaLarkey in Walnut Creek (west). This was a NUGUNSLINGER hide, and I’ve always found his difficult (or missing). I had to hunt for a while, but finally found it. Many searchers note the clue didn’t make any sense, but I think it did, and helped confirm for me where the GPSr was indicating. This was a film cannister with a magnet and placed up very high. I could just barely touch it with finger tips, but enough to dislodge it.
Close by, in the same park complex, I hunted First Crossing, a 2 stage multi-cache. The coords seemed to me quite a ways off for the first stage, but the hint gave me a clue. Hope I didn’t disturb the tennis players too much. I couldn’t find the second stage the first time I looked, but when I returned from finding MaLarkey I followed a different approach, and the GPSr took me right to it. Got it at 5:02 PM.
There are three caches at Diablo Valley College. DVC 123 #1 is probably in bushes, and I couldn’t find it despite crawling around on my knees. DVC 123 #2 was a pretty easy find at 6:16 PM. DVC 123 #3 was right in front of the campus police building, and while there was no one obvious around, I decided to pass.
On the way home, I stopped in Danville to hunt Que La Paz Prevaleca. I was stumped by this one some months ago. The hint is different now, but perhaps the hide is the same. In any event, I found it after a bit of contemplation at 7:16 PM. A magnetic micro under some sprinkler timer boxes. Of note, today I noticed for the first time that there is another marker like the one referred to in the cache name by the Danville train station/museum.
June 24, 2005, 9:49 pm This morning I headed up to Danville for a leisurely look for just a few caches. My first stop was at Diablo Vista Park. Unfortunately, this multi is placed in the playground equipment area. I was the only adult male around with a crowd of moms and kids. Didn’t seem like a good idea to hang around and poke at the playground equipment.
Red Willow Crossing, which I had looked for a few days ago, was just a short walk along a pleasant trail. Along the way I got a couple of ideas for hiding a cache. This time I had a good description and the right coordinates and found it at 11:00 AM. It’s just a little to the south of the bridge nestled behind a tree and covered with leaves.
Then I went to check out It took long enough, and wandered around trying to find access to the park for far too long. When I did, it seemed to busy to me, so I just moved on.
I found the Iron Horse Trail crossing closest to Nuts to all these Iron Horse Caches. As I walked down the trail, I could see that the cache was going to be in the vegetation on the west side. Just as I started to leave the trail and head over, I saw a dog peering out at me. Rather than challenge the dog and/or the dog owner, I continued on down the trail for another 100 yards. An obvious geocacher emerged, but I didn’t know him (although it seemed like I had seen him at an event). As he drove away, I made the quick find at 11:52 AM. The log indicated it was SnoWake and thus the dog was Dingo.
I was curious about Eagle Pride, a cache placed with permission at a school. Even with no one in the office (since school’s out), I felt far too conspicuous searching around the front of a school. The neighbors don’t know the school has given permission, so what would happen if one of the neighbors called the police?
To hunt for Iron This One, I parked at the Park and Ride at Sycamore Valley and 680 and walked a little ways up the Iron Horse Trail. As I neared the cache, I noticed an SUV parked nearby that looked like the one I had seen SnoWake drive away previously. Sure enough, he emerged carrying a bag of trash. After introductions, he went back with me to search for it, since he hadn’t found it. I checked all sorts of likely looking stuff, which SnoWake had already checked. After another lengthy search, he called Team Alamo for a hint. We got one that narrowed the area substantially, and he started looking at one side and I on the other. He got to the cache first at 12:53 PM. A very difficult, misleading cache of a type I’ve never seen before. There is no cache container. The cache log is on the back of a flat piece of iron laying on the ground and mostly covered with leaves.
June 23, 2005, 9:45 pm Karen and I had some time to walk and cache today, so we went to Garin Dry Creek Regional Park in Hayward. We parked at the Tamarack trail head and immediately found Tamarack Gate at 10:19 AM. It wasn’t attached correctly and had more or less fallen into plain sight.
After a false start up a wrong trail, we got going on the way to Nerfertiti’s Pyramid: Shrine. While some have found this one difficult, I made a quick find of it at 10:38 AM. Rather than try to write down the info for the final cache in the series, I just took a picture of it.
Nefertiti’s Pyramid: Underworld wasn’t very far away on the same trail, and I spotted its hiding place easily at 10:53 AM.
I had mixed feelings about going on to hunt for Igor, but we decided to do it. The last 100 feet are pretty steep with nasty thistles and then some brush including PO. I thought I was looking for a 3 gallon tupperware container, but finally spotted some tell tale signs of a cache and found a 1 gallon jar container. Turns out this very old cache (from 2000) had just recently been replaced by Walruz. Got this one at 11:21 AM.
The rest of the hike was a loop up and around the hill with no caching. We covered about 3.5 miles.
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Consider this:God wants you to be a wise steward |