Leakage from a Cluttered Mind

This afternoon I went with Dan (geodanimal) and Janet on a nice, clear day for some cache hunting in Del Valle Regional Park.

We started with Dragon Head Cache, about a half mile up the trail from the parking lot. I’ve never been in this area of Del Valle before. This cache is actually very close to the Wente Golf Course. We spotted the most obvious hiding place from 20 yards away.

Another 0.4 miles up the trail was Chile Today, Hot Tamale. This was an uphill trek, but the reward (besides finding the cache) was the view back down the canyon toward Livermore. This was also a straightforward find. It was a Tupperware container and it had been stored upside down. During the heavy rain a week ago, the lip of the lid must have funneled water into the container. Things were pretty wet. For our return to the car we chose not the wide path we had come up on, but a narrow use trail. This turned out to get seriously steep, so I’m glad we were going down and not up.

Leaving Del Valle, we talked about walking into Sycamore Grove from Veteran’s Park, but since I’ve done most of those already, Dan and Janet will go there another time. We decided to try for Mine the Gap, a few mile drive up Mines Road. A few years ago, I used to take a weekly bike ride up Mines Road past the cache location. It’s a challenging ride—the climb is serious. We had some difficulty finding this one—it was just an Altoids tin. I was searching the right type of location, but just didn’t expand the search far enough. After quite a while, Janet found it just outside the area I had searched.

Kid’s Cache 2 has a reputation of being hard to find (certainly not easy for kids). I had gone looking once before, but didn’t spend a lot of time. Indications were it was going to take hands and knees searching. So, with all of us there, that’s what we did. I guess it might have helped us some if we’d been thinking more like a kid, but eventually Dan found it.

For our final hunt, we went to Altamont Creek Path. I think I’d been here looking three times before. All of us were still puzzled and not finding it. Dan found a place where something obviously had been, so we began to wonder if the cache had disappeared. Some time later, Janet searched the same area and found the camoflaged cache, not 6 inches away from where Dan and I were looking at the suspected hiding place. I guess we need to learn to be more thorough in our searching.

All in all, it was a good hunt. We were five for five–the best outing we’ve had.

Centennial Curse is a virtual cache at a rather (in)famous Livermore monument. When the city didn’t treat the totem pole with the respect the artist thought it deserved, he supposedly placed a curse on one of the city’s public works. I drive by it all the time, but this is the first time I actually went to read the plaque.

There were two caches I wanted to find at Veteran’s Park (east end of Sycamore Grove): Star Spangled Cache and the second leg of Fisherwoman’s Reprise. The first was actually a quick find. Had to push some poison oak out of the way to get to it.

The second leg of Fisherwoman’s Reprise took a little more time. I hiked a bit to get to these coordinates, and then struck out. There’s been a lot of searching activity, judging from the beat down grass, but I could not find the cache.

Tonight, Karen went to a Community Theater event, so I decided to try some night cache hunting. There was a full moon, but several of the caches were virtual ones where I had to read something at the cache site, so the flashlight in my cache kit came in handy.

First, I swung by stAirway to Heaven out by the airport. The sculpture I needed to find to satisfy the virtual find was of an early flying vehicle. Now I’ve seen the sculpture before while at the airport, but never stopped to read what it was all about. Interesting… an expensive project that never got off the ground.

Next, just a little ways away, I hit Got Gas. This is always a busy location so how do you inconspicuously search for a micro-cache? I parked out of the way, and used the GPSr to triangulate the probable spot, then moved the pickup to shield my grab. (Actually, I used the hint because I’ve had such poor luck finding caches, but the described method would work).

Then it was head west on the freeway into Pleasanton for Comp I/O, a puzzle cache. Solving the puzzle and getting the coordinates was pretty simple, given my background with programming. But that didn’t help me actually find the cache. The area was very busy, given it was a Friday night. I may know where the cache is hidden, but just couldn’t check without being seen. Probably some early morning would be good for this one. (DNF)

For the Good of the Game, a virtual cache was my next stop. Found the plaque and needed information in a dark part of the Sports Park. Didn’t see a soul on this jaunt.

Nearby was Home Run, a camouflaged match stick holder. The softball game had just ended, so no people, but still light. Didn’t help–couldn’t find it. New log entries, however, indicate I may have been making a bad assumption. I think I have to learn to consider all possible meanings of clues. (DNF)

Next up was Silver Gyrations, another virtual cache. It’s a kinetic sculpture. I’ve been there before, but always just looked at the nice fountain. Never realized there was a sculpture there. Since there was no breeze it wasn’t doing its thing.

From here, I drove by It’s Modern, but in the dark, on a still busy street, I couldn’t quickly find a safe place to park. I’ll save it for daylight.

Finally, made a stop for Quarter Pounder. Didn’t feel like wandering around in a McDonald’s parking lot at 9:45PM with all the people likely thinking I was casing out their cars. Looked some, but I’m not getting this finding micro-caches business yet.