January 6, 2005, 8:27 pm Today I was able to clean up three nagging caches that I haven’t been able to find. I started solving the Petroglyphs puzzle cache during Christmas and finished the puzzle as soon as I got back to an internet connection. The petroglyph symbols obviously represent numbers. Assuming the cache has to be in our area, we know some of the digits. I deduced the following: N 37° 41.xxx W121° 55.xx5
I figured the symbols were probably a standard type face, so I looked up Red Rock on Google. It is a type face. Assuming the samples on the web portray the digits in sequential order, the final coords are: N 37° 41.980 W121° 55.895
This one is clearly near the Outback Steakhouse—the garbage container and sign pole in fact. I looked on December 31, but ran into thick bushes and lots of trash. Then, I was surprised by a worker(?) who drove up, but I didn’t hear. I walked around the corner, and we both were surprised.
I went back on January 4 and found a promising sign (the rock with the red petroglyph referred to in the clues) but did not find the cache. First of all, I was really disconcerted about the amount of trash I was digging through. Second, for some reason, I had in mind that I was looking for a micro and I wasn’t finding it in the obvious places. I emailed Blue iis, who had just recently logged it, and asked if I was close. His answer was that I was about a foot away. So, today at 0930 I made a quick grab.
During lunch, I decided to give No Hints Cache another try (I think I’d already been there three times). Today I thought a lot more about what I was seeing than just poking around. That paid off and I found the cache at 1258. The log only cache is inside a black plastic pop-up sprinkler head. After thinking about it, it was inappropriate for the park and there were no others like it in the lawn. So I grabbed it and twisted and it came right out of the ground. It’s a very clever hide and pretty difficult.
Since I was feeling pretty good about finding caches, I decided to have another look for Water, Water Everywhere. This is a multi-cache, but the first leg was very hard for me. Even using the clues, I couldn’t find it. Again, as I thought more than poked, an idea just clicked, and I went and looked and there was the first stage. The laminated clue sheet I was looking for was at a downspout, actually in plain sight. Perhaps the storms had washed it loose from its hiding place. When done with it, I replaced it behind the downspout.
Using the clues I tracked down the final cache, but not until I had first gone in entirely the wrong direction. Luckily, the area was closed today so no people around. The cache is right at the front entrance of the Pleasanton Acquatic Center. It’s a magnetic one on a post next to the building and under the sculpture.
January 4, 2005, 8:49 pm The excuse for the day to go cache hunting was ordering a new bathroom countertop in San Ramon. But first I had some unfinished business in Pleasanton.
I had all but given up on SuperGenius #17 — Lil Camo, which is in a nifty park in Pleasanton. I had looked at least two times earlier. Today, after a bit of searching, I found it at 0931. Perhaps the vegetation is just a bit thinner this time of year. By the way, this park has some cool play structures, especially a very long slide like a toboggan run down a hill.
Iron Horse This is on the Iron Horse Trail, obviously. I found it at 1136, but not without quite some effort. I thought I knew where, generally, it would be hidden, but I couldn’t find it. Finally, with a lot of manuevering I caught a glimpse of it, but it still took me a while to get it. It’s on a bridge that is high enough that you can’t reach anything from below. The cross braces are box beams, and I figured it was in one of them, but I couldn’t figure out which one, and in several I tried, I couldn’t feel anything. By walking down the creek bank, I could get views into many of the box beams, and in one of them I could just barely make out an object sitting on the bottom of the beam. Trying to reach into the bottom of that beam I couldn’t feel anything. Finally I felt a wire at the top of that box beam, and it was connected to the cache container.
Danville Trolls showed up as close by, and I gave it a shot even though it’s a multicache and logs indicated trouble at stage 2. As the title suggests, each location is associated with a pedestrian bridge over a small creek that was nicely flowing this time of year. The first cache at the given coordinates was an easy find—in fact, I’m surprised it hasn’t been muggled. It’s that obvious. It’s the largest magnetic cache I’ve seen and it’s in plain sight for anyone who looks under the bridge.
- I was then directed to stage 2 at N37° 47.726 W121° 58.388. I couldn’t find this cache, just like others who logged in the past month or so. I used the hint, but that just seemed to confirm that the cache was missing. The hint says it’s behind rocks on the east end of the bridge, but the rocks have been scattered. Rather than give up, I decided to walk on down the path to the next bridge and see if I could find stage 3.
- When I got to the next pedestrian bridge, I used the hint, and quickly located the stage 3 cache. I got diverted for a bit because the first bridge I came to was a vehicle bridge, but after reading the hint I knew it couldn’t be the right bridge. The pedestrian bridge did have the fence posts talked about in the hint and that led to find it under a fence post cap on the west side of the bridge.
- Stage 4 took just a little bit of hunting, and then it was on to the next. This stage was at N37° 47.937 W121° 58.570. It was a small magnetic tin hidden down along a handrail post.
- Stage 5 was also pretty easy and quick. It was at N37° 47.923 W121° 58.635 and under bridge tucked up against a vertical pipe and clearly visible.
- Stage 6 (the final cache) was harder. There was tree cover and the GPSr kept pointing a bit differently. I used the hint and finally found it.The final coordinates are N37° 47.829 W121° 58.666 and the cache isn’t under or on the bridge. It’s in a hollow part of a nearby tree and its a large container. Just after I found the cache and extracted the log a gardener started blowing leaves off the trail and coming right toward me. I had to take the log and go wait on the bridge for him to finish before I could replace it.
From here, I went to Livorna Road in Alamo and hiked up into Diable Foothills Park. The first one I found was But I Really Gotta Go. It was easy to spot the hiding place and the joke from 100 yards away. A quick find. It’s a small magnetic micro at the base of a sign that says Dumping Prohibited.
I found Sam’s Stash in Diablo Foothills Regional Park at 1429. I came from the Livorna Trailhead, but there is probably a closer parking place. The cache was an interesting plastic container wrapped in a black plastic bag, which is now starting to show wear and tear. Someone has added a jar full of pennies that they want moved from cache to cache, but it’s very heavy. Probably pulls the plastic apart even more. The cache is hidden in a hole under a large rock, and then masked with some smaller rocks in front. Even this may not last, because the rock is crumbling away.
From Sam’s Stash I headed over to get How Now Brown Cow, which I found at 1451. It’s on a very steep hillside that overlooks an Alamo subdivision. Right at the cache site, kids (I assume) are building some wooden structure, and they left a saw. There are other structures on the back side of the hill that look very interesting–like ramps and jumps. One ramp is about 15 ft long, 1 ft wide, and over my head. Looks like maybe they’d ride their bikes off it.
At 1602 I found Limit Warning on the Iron Horse Trail in Alamo. It wasn’t easy to find, and the hint wasn’t helpful. Finally, by just thinking carefully, I figured out where it must be, and found it. It’s a magnetic micro stuck up in a hidden area in the railing right behind a lable plate that gives the load limit for the bridge.
January 2, 2005, 8:44 pm Spotted a new local cache after getting home from church and no one had logged it yet. Even though it was raining, I decided to make my first First Find hunt. Tubular is in Sycamore Grove. I got my rain gear on and headed out. Stupidly, I went out on the wrong side of the creek. Rather than walking all the way back to the bridge, I just crossed the ford where the horse trail is (I was getting pretty wet anyway). Well, I looked for a long time with the GPS consistently pointing to a particular area, but I couldn’t find it. It’s the same kind of area (lots of Sycamore leaves) as Cache Cow, and I had to visit that one 3 times before finding it.
Amazingly, there were several other people out walking or running in the rain.
3 Jan 2005 update: First To Find was claimed yesterday afternoon by “kablooey” who noted that the cache was 60 feet away from where his GPSr zeroed out. Bummer! I should’a looked in the easy to get to logs.
3 Jan 2005 update 2: Took an hour to go back out and try to find it. I did. It wasn’t in the logs like I was expecting, but next to another Sycamore tree to the north. An easy find, if the coords had been better.
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