April 30, 2005, 10:23 pm  Long Pleasanton Ridge hike Today, Dan and Janet, Karen and I hiked into the northern part of Pleasanton Ridge in an attempt to get all of the caches in that area. We used the Longview Trailhead where there is no parking except down at the bottom of the hill a quarter of a mile away. We left home about 9:15 AM, got back to the car at 7:15 PM, and got home after eating at Chili’s around 9 PM.
More to the point, we had 4 major climbs, 14 miles on the odometer, and 13 finds. Just a great day in all respects. The morning was sunny, but by afternoon it had clouded over, the wind picked up, and we got a couple drops of rain. The hillsides were still green, wild flowers were abundant, and we had no problems.
 Watching the “cache monkey” in the tree My first cache was Just “monkeying” around. I had found this tree climbing cache a little over a month ago, but didn’t feel comfortable retrieving it in the slippery, raining conditions. Today I got it (without Dan’s help) at 10:50 AM, although being smarter than the average monkey, I used a tool so I didn’t have to climb so high. (My walking stick worked just great!)
We found A Simple Cache–Augustin Bernal at 11:19 AM (Dan and Janet had already found this one), and then went to Fishin’ with Monkeys (It’s a 2-fer!!). Janet and I searched for the micro while Dan went for the nearby larger container. Dan found his immediately, but we did have to help him a bit with the retrieval. He got up the tree OK, but we had to use a stick to swing the cache over to him. Janet finally saw parts of the cache we were looking for. Only Dan could make the climb, and even he had difficulty. There is a fishing pole in the tree and it’s easy to get to. I’m pretty sure releasing the break on the reel is supposed to drop the cache, but it didn’t. Too much friction. So Dan had to climb up to the cache and it was tough. We got this completed at 11:56 AM.
Next, Karen and I found Star Puzzle at 12:54 PM. I asked Karen to search a log while I poked around some trees and bushes. She finally spotted it after nearly having her hand on it while talking to Dan. We solved the star puzzle fairly quickly, got a picture, and thus will get coordinates to Ailurophobia.
The rest were fairly easy to find. Here’s the list:
- Going Bannanas, 1:26 PM
- Turtle Pond, 1:46 PM. Poison oak is getting awfully close.
- Mary Pose I A, 2:18 PM
- The log cabin, 2:29 PM, although all the logs were gone
- Trail End 32, 3:10 PM
- Kilkare Canyon Overlook, 3:54 PM
- Walruz’ Pit Stop, 4:40 PM
- LeChuck’s Sinbad Treasure, 4:54 PM
- WalruZ @ 1K, 5:15 PM
April 29, 2005, 9:16 pm Haven’t done any hunting since a week ago, but the weather was good today and I had the time. I originally thought I might go to the Martinez shoreline, but I decided to stop and hunt a couple real close to the 680/24 interchange in Walnut Creek, and then just kept going to the next closest one. I found 5 in miscellaneous open spaces, and then 4 more in the east side of Briones Regional Park.
Walnut Creek Ca$h (found at 9:55 AM) and Cache on Pooh Corner (found at 10:07 AM) are in the same Walnut Creek open space. It took a bit of driving around to find the trail head. The caches weren’t hard to find. The views from up on top of the ridge were pretty good of Walnut Creek and Mount Diablo. Unfortunately, I could hear the traffic noise from the freeway, which kind of spoiled the idyllic nature of the spot.
Just a short drive away I found Money Pit at 10:31 AM adjacent to a private park, but along a public walkway.
I drove north on Taylor and pulled off on Withers to check the MacGPS Pro map. Lo and behold, Hey, there’s a park down here! so I found it at 11:00 AM.
At bit farther north on Taylor I found Mesozoic Mesa at 11:22 AM. I wonder why this park has a dinosaur name?
The next closest cache was TP#1, which turned out to be a new one in Briones Regional Park. This one was just a short hike from the trail head. I found it at 11:49 AM. After checking, I realized there was another cache farther into the park, so I decided to just hike in for it. This was Blue Oak (on the Blue Oak trail, of course) and was up on top of a ridge—found at 12:45 PM.
Then the next closest one was just .35 miles west, so I decided to press on for it. It was a substantial climb, and the trails probably covered a mile to get there. But, Table Top was easily found at 1:36 PM. Table Top is one of the higher ridges, so the views were really good. Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of bluish haze today.
Table Top seemed to be on a short-cut trail down the hill, so I took it and cut out a lot of distance. Not sure I’d want to come up that way though. On the way out, I realized, by looking at the GPSr track, that I had bypassed a cache on the way in. It was right on the trail. Bay Grove was super simple to find—it was out in the open with the lid off. Perhaps a critter dug it out of its hiding place, although the contents seemed undisturbed. I put it back where I thought it should be at 2:14 PM. Left my GPSr there, although I didn’t go far before I realized it.
April 21, 2005, 9:12 pm Karen and I wanted to do some hiking to day in the Shell Ridge open space in Walnut Creek. Temps were in the low 70’s, trails were dry—a pretty nice day. We started with a couple of caches near Livorna Road.
Foothills Trail Cache is right at the Livorna staging area. I’ve parked here before on a caching hike, but this cache is pretty new. Found it after a short hunt, but it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I thought it might be cammoed in a pine cone, but it was just a green plastic jar hidden under a bush. We then looked for Pico de Alamo in a nearby park (Livorna Park), but didn’t look very long when it wasn’t obvious.
Next we found Alamo Guy. I thought we’d have to walk up the hill, but we only had to go up a few steps. Pretty good camoflage on this one.
From here we went to the trail head at the end of South Wiget Lane (off of Ygnacio Valley Road). The trails into Shell Ridge here are kind of round about. We took several short-cuts. First we found Bug’s Life, then Birds of a Feather, and finally, LeChuck’s Forgotten Treasure. All of these were pretty straightforward to find.
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Consider this:“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.” Romans 13:8 |
