The Magic Bridge...and more

I decided to give the Sweetwater Trail off of Salmon Falls Road another try today, this time without a dog after last weeks tick problem. I still had some caches to find along this trail since we quit early last week. The trail was still a little muddy and slippery today, but not as bad as last week.

I knew the first cache I missed last weekend was called "Sweetwater". We were so busy enjoying the trail and talking, I passed it up last week and figured I would get it on the way out, but we ended up just hiking out because of the dogs. This morning when I started heading down the trail, the coordinates weren't in my GPS! Rats, how did that happen? I must have messed up when I reloaded my GPS with coordinates this weekend. I had looked at the cache description on the website and vaguely remembered the hint, something about it being near a man-made object. I still can't believe it, but I actually managed to find the cache - without any coordinates or a GPS, using just the hint and knowing the general area where it was hidden (off the trail between two of the caches I found last week)! I dropped a geocoin I picked up in Fremont a few weeks ago here. I ended up finding three more caches along the trail and dropped the last geocoin I had to trade in one of them. One of the caches I found today was supposed to have a coin in it, but when I opened the cache it wasn't there.  Bummer, I hate it when that happens!


The picture above was something I ran into when I got off the Sweetwater Trail to find one of the caches. Guess that driftwood is good for something!

Off in the distance is what I came to the area for, the Magic Bridge. This is the view from the Sweetwater Trail...


Last weekend we turned around not knowing how close we actually were to "The Magic Bridge" cache which is what originally brought me to this area. Had we walked another .25 mile or so, we would have seen it. Bummer!  I got a good view of the bridge from one of the caches along the trail.  Believe it or not, this bridge is normally underwater during a portion of the year.  But the water is so low that its totally exposed right now.  The geocache hidden at the bridge was just a regular container right by the bridge, so I assume the cache owner probably disables the cache when the water starts rising because it would never stay in place otherwise. See those two little black specks on the bridge, those are people walking across it! This is another angle of the bridge after I had crossed it...

I remember somebody at work telling me about this bridge. During the summer when the lake is filled, you still have to know where the bridge is in case it is not totally submerged if you are waterskiing, you wouldn't want to run a boat over it or hit it skiing! It was amazing to see how big the bridge was when I was actually crossing it, its weird to think that normally the thing is totally underwater!  It's hard to tell in the picture, but I actually had to jump up to get onto the bridge. Amazing...

After crossing the bridge, I found one more cache.  This one was an ammo box.  Here's a picture of where the cache was hidden, I spotted it from several feet away. Easy peasy. Can you tell where it is? Holy cow, where does the time go? After finding this last cache, I noticed it was almost 11am, and I still needed to hike back across the lake, back to the Sweetwater Trail, and back to the car.  If I didn't have Zuleika stuck at home in the crate I would have stayed out there longer as there were more geocaches to find.  Oh well...there's always another day I guess...

After I got home and took the dogs for a walk and over to the schoolyard to play, I had to run to the Folsom Outlets and decided to take Zuleika with me to go to the store since she hasn't been in public for a while since she got sick. Oh, and what's this? There were a few more caches nearby that had just been hidden.  So we found two more!

Our tally for the day was 6 caches hiking, 2 urban caches, another 8 caches added to my total.  I hiked about 5 miles and found the Magic Bridge! Another fun day of caching!


The picture above is part of the Sweetwater Trail, I can't imagine riding this trail on a mountain bike, but it was sure a nice hike!