February 26, 2005, 9:10 pm This afternoon I went back to verify the info I had gotten for stage 1 of Dog Years. I had made a mistake in one digit. Off to stage 2, which I found this time. Not sure the hint helped though. Stage three was pretty easy to find, too. I didn’t find stage 4 because it was right in the middle of playground equipment and a lot of kids and parents were out today.
On the way to one of the stages, I stopped and grabbed A Matter of “Defence”. This is a walkup. It’s a birdhouse hung on a fence in a building parking lot. The birdhouse is painted with the geocaching logo. The whole front pulls down to reveal the contents.
Later in the afternoon I hooked up with Dan at Annealed Ovum. All three of us looked for quite a while. Janet finally found it. Actually, she didn’t see it. She drug her hand over the rocks and one of them made a funny, hollow sound. I was specifically looking for something like that, but completely overlooked it.
From there we went to Growl, but even though I knew the fairly precise location, we got a little frustrated because we couldn’t find it. Dan finally pulled on something and it turned out to be the cache. It’s a nano cache magnetically attached to a screw in a redwood tree, and the nano is covered with redwood bark. It fits completely. The eye never sees anything that looks out of order. Just as Dan found it, the neighbor across the street came out to see what we were doing (we were right in front of the living room window). We explained geocaching and he was cool with it.
Since Dan had asked David Y to run a program on his PC to crack The Big Picture, he had the coordinates, and a clue. Dan did the research to know about a steganography program called F5. He asked David to run it (which he did, although he claimed he had to correct a bug in it first). Dan also gave him the password–labyrinth. It was a quick find, accomplished even with several muggles around. Magnetic, under a garbage can, off of Mines Road north of First Street.
Finally, we all went out to Frick N’ End, where this time I walked right up and saw it. I’m sure it was more visible than it had been in the past.
February 25, 2005, 9:36 pm Karen had an eye doctor appointment this morniing at Park Shadelands in Walnut Creek, so while she was doing that I grabbed a cache. Sacramento Northern Railroad #4 —Spreckels was nearby, and after I found a place to park it was a quick find. The cache is a glass jar on the creek side of a concrete wall. The creek splits the two lanes of traffic here.
On the way home, we stopped in Pleasanton to pick up Just Your Average (Puzzle) Cache, which I solved last night. It was an easy find. The puzzle had me buffaloed for a while. I couldn’t figure out the self-referential hint. Last night it clicked, and I was able to derive a reasonable looking set of coordinates, which turned out to be right.
 Old Finley schoolhouse At lunch-time I debated about going up Pleasanton Ridge, but instead opted for the Tassajara Valley route to Danville and Alamo. The first cache on the way was One-Room School on Finley Road. The school is fixed up better than I last saw it. Don’t know if it was the building and trees or low battery, but I had to search a bit because the GPSr was bouncing around. Found it at 12:48 PM. It’s under the rear steps.
Continuing down Camino Tassajara, I stopped at the nice park and bushwhacked up the hill through the grass and weeds to Ho Ho Huh?. I found this one in the first place I looked at 1:26 PM. Because I approached off trail, I spotted this one immediately—under a piece of wood perched on top of a black culvert pipe. Approach from the trail on top of the culvert, and it might be a bit harder.
I found the right turn off from Diablo Road to get into a subdivision back in a canyon. There are two caches there—the first one I found was The Pits at 2:09 PM. The pits are horseshoe pits. A couple of wild turkeys ran away as I descended to this one. I found this one right away too. It’s a very small micro stuck in a palm tree. It probably should have some palm bark covering it, but it no longer does, so its easy to spot. The second was Wild Turkey, which I found at 2:25 PM. This is an ammo can and it’s easy to find, if not so easy to get to. The fire road gate is locked. There aren’t any no trespassing signs, so I went through the barb wire fence.
 Finally I wound back around to Stone Valley Road and just west of Monte Vista High School found Oak Creek Park, the home of The 2 Litl Ps MISadventure Atonement. On the way to the cache I stopped to grab a picture of the bronze statue, which is sort of pointing the way to the cache. This was also a quick find at 2:52 PM. Traffic sure does get bad when school is over. Cache is stuck into a broken off branch. I heard it rattle before I saw it.
February 24, 2005, 9:24 pm I tried looking for Annealed Ovum (again—had a try yesterday), but couldn’t find it. However, I scored a Steel Wheels locationless cache that was right nearby. Very interesting to find an old tractor like this in someone’s backyard.
 Old Fordham tractor in Livermore So after this, I wandered over to another new fizzymagic hide—Growl. There were two ladies at the cache site, so I drove past a block and parked, watching in the rear view mirror. I finally decided they must be geocaching, so I approached and asked. After 30 seconds of awkwardness while they attempted to disguise their intent from a possible muggle, they revealed they were hunting the cache (well, at least one of them was). Turns out it was SARCRZY. As we were talking, she called a help-line, walked over and made the find. She had kind of figured the hide out, but even so, it is very well hidden. After she signed the log, she handed it to me. I signed it, but I’m still thinking about it. I guess I’ll log it. It’s not much different than caching with Dan and logging a find when he finds it (except, in this case, I had no time to make any effort at searching).
A little later in the day, I went back to Pleasanton for another try at Mars Cope Rift. This time I walked right up and made the find. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. Maybe because it was sprinkling before, I was in too much of a hurry.
With that success, I decided to give another shot at California Quail. Again, I found it in short order. In this case, I know the rain last time I looked discouraged me from a complete search.
Finally, I found the first leg of Dog Years. Boy, did I find it hard to read the coordinates, but I think I got them right. Computing where the second cache should be, I get a very reasonable location. I’ll finish it another time—it was getting late in the day.
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Consider this:“Keep on loving each other as brothers.” Hebrews 13:1 |
