Leakage from a Cluttered Mind

It rained a lot during the night, but the morning was better. We packed up, cleaned the house, and headed out towards Cambria for some cache hunting on the way home.

We stopped In Harmony. Looked for a while, used the hint, and looked some more. I think we looked in every place that met the conditions of the hint, but we didn’t find it.

In Cambria, we drove out to look for A Lamp unto my feet. I guess the title should have been enough for us, but we used the hint and found it right off at 10:48 AM. Lamp refers to Lampton Street—the access road. Unto my feet means down by your feet. The hint narrowed to the left side of the steps. Dan scrambled under the steps and found the magnetic container in short order. The container is a small piece of pipe with threaded caps. Probably a bad idea—they’ll rust so fast.

Green Pastures is at a pull out along Highway 1 right in Cambria. It’s down off the road a bit. It was really soggy, with lots of ankle deep water around. I finally found it 11:19 AM. It was also a magnetic pipe like the previous one.

Captain Who? aka Tinkerpaws Place is just up the hill from main street in Cambria. You can’t help but find the cache from the description, as long as you don’t get too engrossed in marveling at the peculiar house up here on Nitt Witt Ridge. I found it at 11:47 AM.

There are other Cambria caches, but we were running out of time, so after a stop at the French Bakery, we headed east on Highway 46. The first cache along this road that we stopped for was Jewel of the Coast. An easy find at 12:15 PM with a great view of Morro Bay and the sea shore.

Just a short ways away was EM – Too. Janet just walked up and found this one at 12:23 PM.

After another short drive, Dan quickly found John’s Enigma at 12:32 PM.

Turned off on the narrow road to Cayucos (Old Creek Road) to look for EM – Four. We had to park in a wide spot a little ways away. At the cache location, the road is narrow with no shoulders. Tree cover gave the GPSr fits. We looked for quite a while until Janet found it at 12:50 PM in plain sight on the ground about 2 feet inside the fence. We replaced it elsewhere.

Then we took York Mountain Road and found (New) York Mountain Ride at 1:04 PM. This was a drive up cache.

Our final cache along Highway 46 (and the last for the day) was Coyote Cliff. It was beginning to sprinkle, and this one was up an embankment. Dan ran up and his GPSr led him past the cache. I came up behind and walked right to it at 1:15 PM.

It’s been a rainy day, especially this morning. We started the day with Mud Pie—the only multi-cache in the Cayucos area. The first stage is out on the end of the pier, where we had to find a sign (the only sign, in fact) and convert the first two letters to numbers. Applying the given formulas we derived the coordinates for the second stage. The sign said NO OVERHEAD CASTING. This converts to the numbers 14 and 15–just the sequence number of the letters. So we go to N35° 26.771 W120° 53.942. The second stage took us to a building, where we had to get a 4 digit number from the sign. It took us to the Sea Shanty restaurant. The number on the sign was … The final stage took us on a short, muddy hike to a very easy find at 10:25 AM. 35 27.599 120 57.817

Since we were in the general area, we next went looking for Hole Hunt. Following the cache directions for parking, we ended up on the wrong side of a raging little stream and had to backtrack, move the car a little bit, and hike again. This was an interesting location among some rocks that had native American grinding holes in the rocks. We found this one at 10:54 AM. Poppys and Lupines were appearing, and in spots the grass was knee high. And it was sprinkling.

Coming back into Cayucos, we stopped for What’s Big, Old, and Yellow? The answer is the gift shop out where Dad and I used to go out fishing (Ruth’s Landing—gone long ago and built up with houses). I found this one at 11:13 AM by touch.

We came back to the house in Cayucos for lunch (and to dry out a bit). At a break in the rain we called Mark to make sure he could get to the web cam site so we could log Cayucos Cam. By the time we’d done that, and got boots on, it started to rain again. Finally, we got a break in the rain and walked down to the Shore Line Inn, called Mark, and he captured our pictures. We got this one accomplished at 12:47 PM.

We drove to one of the beach access trails and walked a ways on the beach to Now and Zen. This is on a big rock that can be reached during low tide. Luckily, we were at low tide. Dan scrambled up on the rock to make the find at 1:03 PM.

We drove up a dead end road (I’ve always wondered what was up there) to find Sea View. We walked the last part because the road was pretty messed up from the heavy rains. Easy find at 1:23 PM.

Drove up the road towards Whale Rock Resevoir. First we got High Windy Highway at 1:46 PM. Then, driving on a little farther, we got Whales Rock!, which I found at 2:23 PM. On the way back we had a little confusion about how to find the access road to Top O’ The World, but finally got it figured out. Drove up a steep, 1-lane dirt road. Karen found this one at 2:24 PM.

After we got back on Highway 1 and headed toward Morro Bay we made a short detour and found Old Hwy. 1 at 2:40 PM. Dan made the find in a bunch of old concrete blocks.

Karen wanted to get Cowboy Cookies (yummy chocolate chip) in San Luis Obispo. The bakery is just half a block from the old mission, and Moon Tree is in the park area around the mission. The moon tree (a redwood) is called this because the seed it germinated from traveled to the moon and back on an Apollo mission. I found the cache at 3:35 PM. It’s a magnetic key holder under the sign describing the moon tree. I’m very surprised it isn’t muggled.

We walked to the movie theater (and Starbucks and Barnes and Noble) and looked for A Reel Good Time. We had a good idea of where it would be hidden (under a trash container) but the GPSr was thrown off by the high buildings. After I let it settle I finally found the right place and made the find at 4:00 PM. Actually, I could see it, so I rehid it a little better.

We walked a couple more blocks and I found Seven Sisters at 4:14 PM. A magnetic key holder inside a bridge railing. Again, visible, so we tucked it up inside a little more.

As we drove out to Madonna Road to go to Los Osos, we detoured just a bit to a cemetery and found Big Bill, which is a large cannon commemorating civil war veterans buried in San Luis Obispo cemeteries. Dan made the find at 4:36 PM. It’s magnetic, under the cannon. Then we detoured into a large shopping center and grabbed U GOTTS 2B SNEAKY at 4:50 PM. Large high voltage tower is right in the middle of the parking lot. Cache is hidden in some of the landscaping bushes around it.

Before going for dinner at The Hofbrau in Morro Bay, we hiked out to Treasure in the Oaks. Tree cover made this one a little harder to find, but I grabbed it at 5:23 PM.

So, we totaled 16 finds today, some of the time dripping wet.