Leakage from a Cluttered Mind

7 Nov 2004 1:30PM: Livermore, CA
Joaquin’s Watering Hole. This is a two stage cache and I had already solved the coordinates for the second stage, but I let them also figure them out for a double check. It was just a short walk to the second stage coordinates. This was a well hidden micro that I had been unable to find on two previous visits. This time I was more inquisitive, exploring locations by touch as well as sight. This paid off, and I located the film canister.

Then we drove to the ridge before getting to the Del Valle entrance kiosk, and I let Dan and Janet find Updraft, which I had found on October 30. They found it easily. There is a great view from the peak, but it was fairly hazy today.

From basically the same parking area, we embarked on a loop trip that took us to two more caches. First we headed for The Old Tree which, if you chose to drive in and pay the entrance fee, would be fairly close to the boat launch parking. We, however, took a fairly direct cross country route that included fire road, single track, cow path, and bushwhack (except there really weren’t any bushes to whack through). We dropped steeply down right on to this cache, and I wouldn’t want to try to climb back up. So, we walked out to the parking lot by the lake and then followed the lakeside trail to the next cache.

This was Blue Briefcase. This included a climb up from the lake to the Ridge Trail. These plastic briefcases sure don’t seal as well as an ammo can (like at The Old Tree). The contents were damp. By this time, a beautiful sunset was developing and we were still a couple of miles from the car. The cache had a travel bug which I took (light_my_way_2). It was a small working flash light, so we felt prepared for darkness. Actually, we made it just fine. The sunset had completely faded, but we had plenty of light.

1:00 PM: Corral Hollow Hunt (Tracy, CA)

Friday afternoon was a good time to head east into the Central Valley. Corral Hollow is a little canyon that’s now dominated by Lawrence Livermore Lab’s Site 300 on the north and Carnegie State Vehicle Recreation Area. Around 1970 I used to ride my Kawasaki 250 Scrambler on the trails. I stopped riding before the state acquired the land.

Juan Bautista de Anza was the first cache location I came to. I’ve driven by here uncounted times and never realized there was a historical marker. Unfortunately, there were a couple of SBC trucks and several workers right where I’m sure the cache is located, so I just looked at the monument and drove on.

4 X 4 Dad was inside Carnegie SVRA. Although it was a very pleasant day for riding, there weren’t any riders around this location. I like ammo can caches. This one hadn’t been logged since late April.

Home Town Cache was at the other end of the park. A motocross track was a few hundred feet away, so there were quite a few riders around, although they were busy keeping their eyes on the track. There was also a big work crew repairing a fence. I drove around a bit figuring out the most discreet approach to this one. Once that was done it was pretty straightforward. This also hadn’t been logged for 7 months.

2:00 PM: Choosing sides on the aqueducts (Tracy, CA)

From the Corral Hollow area I moved out into the valley around the Tracy Airport. There are two major canals (aqueducts) that run through this area, and the key was to figure out which side to be on.

Green Grizzly is along the Delta Mendota canal. It seems like it’s in the middle of nowhere; no rocks, no trees. It was a pretty simple find, but not so simple to sign the log. The container is not watertight, and the contents were very wet. In fact, everything inside was kind of fuzzy from the mold. Finally got the log dry enough that I could write on it.

Timber Wolf is claimed to be the same type of cache by the same cacher. But what I found was completely different. Afterwards, in checking the logs, it was evident that the original cache was destroyed in a controlled field burn, and someone substituted a new container hid in a different manner. And, as one of the previous log entries states, “Why did any one want to come to this spot for a cache?”

Chameleon is another cache along the Delta Mendota canal. I guess I could have driven along the levee bank right up to the cache area, but I chose to walk because it was such a nice day. There is a reason this one is called Chameleon, but I have seen this type of hide once before. Didn’t take to long to scout it out.

3:00 PM: Uh oh, these were hard, DNF (Tracy, CA)

Car vs Train is, rather obviously, near a railroad crossing. The coordinates of the only reasonable hiding spot were off by maybe 50 ft. I probably made some assumptions that were wrong. It appeared to me that the car had been recently pushed by a bulldozer, and I assumed after not easily finding the cache, that it had been destroyed or lost. Now, I’m not so sure, and I need to go back and check something. At least you can drive right up to it.

I couldn’t find Trust Me, but I looked for a long time. This one was along the California Aqueduct and was just a couple hundred yards from I5. I think I looked in every conceivable place, taking into account the hint that was given. I later emailed the cache owner (Bill of Green Achers) with a description of all the places I looked. Basically, he agreed that I had looked where it was hidden. Now, I suppose there is some slight possibility that I have still overlooked it (given my current record with micro-caches). Next time I go out that way, I’ll go look again, unless Bill beats me to it.

4:00 PM: Freeway bugs, (Mountain House, CA)

On the way home from the valley, I stopped for Travel Bug Inn which is conveniently located very near Highway 580. A lot of people seem to stop here for various reasons, but nobody seems to pay much attention to anyone else. Before I found the cache I found a Nissan hubcap in very good condition. It would have made a great addition to the hubcap collection I never started (thank goodness) many years ago. This cache only contains travel bugs.