Into the Gold Country

Today I took Karen and her Mom to visit Nancy in Pine Grove. While they visited I hunted a few caches, and as it turned out, most of them were in cemeteries.

Sutter Creek Cemetery

Sutter Creek Cemetery

The first cache was Pioneer Cemetery Series #2 in the Sutter Creek cemetery. It was pretty straightforward to find, which I did at 12:23 PM. The second, Pioneer Cemetery Series #6, is in the adjoining Odd Fellows Cemetery. Had to hunt for this one a bit, and never did find the grave marker mentioned in the cache description. Found it at 12:41 PM. I fell prey to 2 dimensional hunting on this one, but finally noticed a camoed peanut butter jar in plain sight.

There were another couple of caches close by, but I didn’t care for the locations. So, I drove north to Amador City and found the virtual cache Watch where you are stepping!! at 12:58 PM.

Bryan was painting at the gallery where he displays, so I stopped and talked with him for a little bit, and got a tour of the gallery. Then I drove back to Sutter Creek to grab Earth Angels. This is a little planter garden right next to highway 49, so I was expecting the worst, but I found it easily at 1:40 PM.

Memorial

Memorial

Next I drove out to a modern day cemetery on highway 88 which was well maintained and very interesting. The cache, Sunset View, was easy to find (1:58 PM), but I spent quite a bit of time taking pictures and talking with a visitor who really seemed to want to talk.
Memorial to the prospectors

Memorial to the prospectors


St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church in Jackson, CA

St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church in Jackson, CA

It was time to start back for Pine Grove, but I made one stop in Jackson to hunt for SOSO. This was a great photo op. After I had taken a couple, I checked the GPSr to see where to go, and it was zeroed. So I just looked, and there it was. It’s a magnetic nano-cache on the fence. Since this church was marked as historic, I thought I might be able to claim the Time to find something Historic! locationless cache. After getting home and checking, it had not been claimed yet, so this was a two for one stop.

FTF! FTF! (again) and More in Morgan

I headed out to Morgan Territory first thing this morning where two new caches were still unfound. More and more I’m realizing what a narrow road Morgan Territory is and how risky it was to ride my bike down at 30 mph. I went for the two unfound ones first.

I found Rolling Meadow first at 8:20 AM and I was first to find. Had a bit of a search—there were numerous possibilities.

Another FTF was The Black Hole, found at 8:37 AM. This one was pretty straightforward. It’s in a sawed off stump.

Green Briefcase was close by, so I backtracked a bit to grab it at at 9:06 AM. My GPSr was off a bit, but there was a pretty obvious hiding area. This is a pretty old cache. Next I hiked back toward the staging area and hiked down to the pond to pick up Trails Challenge: Morgan Territory at 9:32 AM.

In finding these four caches, I hiked 3.14 miles. I then drove north down Morgan Territory to another trail head and hiked in to get Highland Ridge–Stone Corral Cache at 10:21 AM. Always Coca-Cola was fairly close, so I kept hiking to grab it at 10:34 AM. Survival Cache was only another 0.5 miles (but mostly uphill), so I hiked on and found it at 11:07. This is a really old cache—been out there for more than 4 years. And all this hiking added another 3 miles of hiking.

I realize this is the kind of cache hunting I like, far better than hunting a lamp-post hide in front of fast food drive through window. In fact, I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s OK to not hunt caches in areas I don’t enjoy. My objective is to have fun, not find every cache in an area.

Back in Livermore, I hunted up Altamont Creek Hills (found at 12:33 PM) and Forget me not (found at 12:52 PM). Then it was time for a Caramel Frappaccino and a short drive out to Airport Way where I found FIT N PEPPER at 1:18 PM and IT BEES THIS WAY at 1:55 PM. I had to wait for a guy to finish eating his lunch right at the cache site, so I went looking for Land Rover, but this turns out to be one of those types of cache hide locations I don’t like.

Therapy

Karen’s chemotherapy starts in 4 days. I took advantage of an open invitation from escooby to cache with him in Almaden Quicksilver. It was great to spend a day where the anxiety of the unpleasant unknown was not in the forefront of my thoughts.