I headed east to Modesto about lunch time. Stopped in Manteca to quickly grab Spreckels Sugar at 10:45 AM—easy. Looked for 2 or 3 in Ripon, but made bad choices on which ones because they were the kind I don’t like. I should have gone for the trail along the river.
Took the off ramp at Standiford, and walked the path under the power lines and on top of the Hetch Hetchy aqueduct. First up was Start or Finish 1, which I found at 12:29 PM. This one was stuffed up a gate pipe from the bottom. Quarter Mile Record was next up; found at 12:34 PM. This one was a fake stone key holder at the base of the post. Branch Office was quickly found at 12:39 PM. Film cannister in the end of a small piece of branch lying on ground next to the fence.
I bypassed a couple and then found The Road Less Traveled at 12:56 PM. An interesting cammo—clump of glued together gravel cover over a buried plastic pipe containing the cache. At 1:14 PM I found Start or Finish 2. Another cannister stuck up a gate pipe. Had problems putting this one back—it didn’t want to stay. Wedged some trash paper in to make it a tighter fit. At this point I started retracing the path, and looking for ones that I had passed up.
I found 7477 at 1:32 PM. I just hadn’t looked carefully enough before. No cannister container on this one. It was hard to put back together. Velcroed on the back of a flat fiberglass stake. Just Another Altoids Tin fooled me the first time, but I found it at 1:56 PM. The tin was in a hollowed out part of a 2×4 made to look like part of the wooden fence.
Border Line was sneaky and in plain sight of muggles who might be walking out to their car. Finally found it at 2:07 PM just seconds before a car drove up. It was in a section of fence pipe that looked like a brace, but it was out of place.
I didn’t find them all along this trail. On the way home I stopped in Manteca to find the Roman GPSr puzzle cache at 2:51 PM. I’d looked before but was blocked by a construction fence and too many muggles to ignore the fence. Found it easily today. The coords are N 37° 48.069 W 121° 14.134
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