Take a Hike!

It was such a beautiful day on Saturday that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a hike nearby at Folsom Lake. After I got home from puppy class, I loaded up Hope and Zuleika in the car and we headed over to Brown's Ravine in El Dorado Hills. I found a nice hiking trail that somewhat paralleled the lake and we ended up hiking 2 miles before I realized we should probably turn around as it was getting late and I knew I would be hiking tomorrow as well, so we ended up hiking a total of about 4 miles. There was a cache called "Dot's Watching" that I found, it was suppposed to have a geocoin in it, but it wasn't there, bummer. Hope and Zuleika weren't so thrilled about the bushwhacking we did off the trail to find this cache, they were much happier once we got back to the main trail. It was kind of hard hiking with two dogs as the trail was so narrow, so I finally let Hope off leash and that was much easier as she just followed behind me. That's Zuleika on the left, Hope on the right in case you are wondering...

On Sunday, I went hiking with my cousin Sharon who I will be travelling to Peru with next month. We walked on the American River Bike Trail starting near Sutter Street in Folsom to Beal's Point in Granite Bay, a total of 7.25 miles, so it was a good workout to help prepare us for our trip. The funny part was that I was planning on showing her some geocaches, but we got into such heavy conversation about our trip that I forgot to stop and look to see where some geocaches were hidden along the trail that we were hiking. Oops.

This morning I got up early and drove out to Beal's Point as I had looked at the map yesterday to see what was out there. I hiked out towards Granite Bay and ended up hiking another 4 miles today and found 6 caches. It's amazing to see how low the lake is right now, I don't think I've ever seen it this low. This is the view from one of the caches I found this morning. I decided not to take the dogs today as in reading some of the previous finders' logs, there were rattlesnake sightings near a few of the caches I was planning on looking for.

Since the weather is starting to warm up, I'm afraid my days of going geocaching with the dogs will be ending soon..it will soon be rattlesnake season, plus the ticks out there will be even worse. I made it up to them when I got back and took them for a short walk to the schoolyard and let them play in the kindergarten yard with Lucky, a friend's dog who I was dog-sitting this weekend. They didn't seem to mind being left behind one bit!

It was a good weekend, almost 15 miles of hiking and 7 more geocaches found. That puts me at a total of 874 caches found so far...

Blame it on the bull

Today was more about Adventure than Geocaching.


My muggle friend Kirstin and her dog Carlo joined Hope, Zuleika, and I today for a hike in the Salmon Falls area again. I knew I wouldn't be doing much geocaching as I had mostly cleared out the area a few weeks ago. We went out to the "Magic Bridge" as I wanted to check out some of the trails across the way (and where there happened to be a few geocaches, of course!). The last time I was out here with Zucchini it was starting to rain so we turned around.

We enjoyed a nice stroll to the bridge, stopped to take a few pictures of the dogs on the bridge, and then proceeded across it to the hiking trail. There were a few cows grazing nearby which I thought was weird as we were in a recreation area, but whatever. As we continued up the trail, we noticed the cows intently staring at us, a few started walking towards us, we stopped to see what they would do. They went back to grazing so we continued on. All of a sudden one of the big black ones started heading directly towards us. It was then that we realized the cow was actually a bull! The thing was huge and kept walking straight towards us and there was no love in his eyes. We stopped but he kept coming towards us so we turned back and took another side trail leading away from them not wanting to get charged by the thing. As we got to the top of the hill to see what they were doing, a mountain biker coming towards us from that direction says something like, "Did you see how big that bull was?"

Well, that trashed our plan for the day, as we needed to hit a trail close to where the bull was. We ended up heading out towards some other trails that paralleled the river instead, that dang bull was not about to ruin our day. This picture was taken on our way back with the cows/bulls in the background, just to prove they were there if nobody believed us. ;-)



I guess I do have something to write about geocaching, I dropped off a Travel Bug in a cache that I had already found. My muggle friend got to see what an ammo can looks like.

The tally for the day, just under 3 hours of hiking, 6.67 miles, 0 geocaches, 0 ticks, and no bull...


In case you are wondering, the yellow dog is Carlo, Zucchini is the taller black dog, and Hope is the shrimpy little black dog who looks so unhappy in every single picture. ;-)

Taterland

The sun was out, the weather was warm, I just couldn't pass up this day to go geocaching. I only gave myself a few hours after finishing up puppy class with Zuleika as I really needed to get home to get some household chores done.

I headed out to an area called "Taterland" named by geocachers for its famous "taters", as in "potatoes", as in the piles and piles of cobble rocks (which kinda look like potatoes) left over from the gold mining days. I found six geocaches and hiked 3.7 miles. This area is full of geocaches, this was my 3rd visit here and I still have probably 10-15 more geocaches to find.

Zucchini and I took a little diversion and climbed up what I called the "Mother of all Taters", a HUGE hill of taters. This is her at the bottom of the hill that we climbed up.

I remember seeing this huge mound while kayaking at Lake Natoma, so it was cool to actually be on the hill looking down on the bike trail and the lake below from a different perspective. After finding a cache nearby, I saw a trail leading up the hill, so Zucchini and I climbed to the top to enjoy the view.

Little did I know the trip down would be a little more tricky. Had we taken the same route down that we took up, it would have been fine. But I saw a shorter trail down and it didn't look THAT steep. Well, it wasn't steep, but it was unstable. Who would have thought that I could practice my CCI command "wait" with Zucchini. I went first and had to be very careful as rocks were so unstable and in some areas just crumbled underneath my feet. I ended up taking Zucchini off leash, told her "wait", then I went down the hill a little further, once I got my footing, I called her to me...it was funny to watch her come down as she mostly slid down rather than taking steps. As she got close to me, I gave her another "wait" command, then I went (ie, slid) down a little further, and called her to me again. What a great geo-dog she is! It probably took us 5-10 minutes or so to get down but I just wanted to be extra careful as I didn't want to fall or break my ankle and if I was holding her leash, I didn't want to drag her down with me if I ended up slipping and sliding all the way down. What a pair we were!

Here's a picture of Zucchini after we made it down the hill of taters safe and sound! The trail we came down is visible behind her, not the one to the left, but the vertical trail a little left of center...



This area is certainly tough on the ankles!