Rattlesnake season arrives

Well, I guess its that time of the year, it's RATTLESNAKE season.  There was a nice little article in this morning's Sacramento Bee this morning that serves as a nice little reminder for me (http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/823340.html).

I must have run into 2-3 rattlesnakes while out geocaching last year, that was 2-3 too many in my eyes.  There was a veteran geocacher last year who got bit (on the hand, I think) by a rattler out by Folsom Lake last year and it was pretty serious, he spent several days in the ICU.  In reading the logs of the geocache where he got bit, the snake came out of nowhere and got him, the snake didn't rattle or anything. Yikes...

I think, in general, geocachers are aware of their surroundings and are careful out there.  BUT, we are also playing this game in snake territory and geocaches are hidden in the very places where snakes live (ie., off the trail, often hidden in spaces beneath rocks, in holes of trees, etc.) so while most geocachers aren't stupid, our chances of being bitten are probably a lot higher than a jogger/biker who stays on the bike trail.  

There are a few things that we can do to avoid encountering snakes: make lots of noise so the snakes aren't surprised or startled, I always take my walking stick (if I'm gonna poke around some rocks, I'm poking w/a stick and not my hand), carry a cell phone, and leave the dogs at home!  With that said, I guess its time for me to give up on all those geocaches out by the river that I've been itching to get and I'll start leaving the dogs at home (they hate walking through those dry stickers anyway!).  I really learned to appreciate geocaching in the winter this past year, even though I often had to put up with a wet trail, its much easier to geocache when you don't have to trudge through dry grass and stickers and have to worry about rattlesnakes.  

This is the time of the year when I guess those "urban" geocaches start being a little more appealing.  Less risk of injury lifting up a lampost skirt, or reaching for a magnetic keyholder or altoid tin under a bench/table! :-)

Be careful out there!

Caching restriction

I decided to put myself on "caching restriction" for a while...well, that's the deal until I get my tax return done. For various reasons, this is the first year I haven't gotten my taxes filed right away after receiving all my W-2, 1099's, etc. The closer it gets to April, the less motivated I am to just get it out of the way, ugh.

Since I've gotten back from Peru, I've been itching to go out hiking because I want to keep it up while I still have the energy. The Sunday after I got back (last week), I took the dogs out to Folsom Lake and hiked a few miles, it felt like it was nothing! I know I will lose all this good conditioning if I don't continue to exercise, but the household chores are sure hanging over my head. So, this afternoon I worked on taxes...yuck! I still need to finish, but at least I've started it...

Machu Picchu

Yay! My first geocache found in a foreign country - Peru! In March 2008, I took the trip of a lifetime (for me, anyways!) to Peru with my cousin. We completed an amazing 4-day hike along the Inca Trail which ended at Machu Picchu. It was a breathtaking place, made all the more special because of the hike.

I took my GPS on the hike mostly to keep track of how far we hiked and thought it would be fun to track our altitude gains. Of course, before leaving, I did my research and found that there was a geocache hidden in Machu Picchu. Actually, there was another geocache in Machu Picchu somewhere, but it had gotten muggled, so I didn't bother looking for that one.

I didn't want to pressure myself to find the cache as I wasn't sure if we would have time to look for it depending on what our schedule was like. The last day of our hike started in the dark at 5am, and we arrived in Machu Picchu at around 8am. Our guide gave us a tour of Machu Picchu for a couple of hours after we arrived and then we had the rest of the day free to explore it on our own before catching the bus to Aguas Calientes where we would be staying for the night. Woohoo, I had time to look for it!

Without any maps loaded on my GPS (Garmin doesn't make maps for South America), I had no idea where it was, but was able to tell how far away it was, in feet. I figured it wouldn't actually be INSIDE of Machu Picchu, but somewhere close. We headed to the entrance and my GPS told me I was closer (~300 feet). As we got to the main entrance, the arrow on my GPS pointed towards a trail of steps going downhill. As I followed the trail, I was definitely getting closer to the cache, although I had to keep climbing down trail quite a bit. Finally, I reached a little hut (see picture) that I remember seeing on the cache description, so I knew I was close. I also remembered seeing a "spoiler" picture on the cache page so I kinda knew what I was looking for. It still took me several minutes to find and was a bit off the trail. But finally I found the "tube" (like a drainage tube) in the spoiler picture and found the cache shortly after that. It was then that I realized I didn't have a pen to sign the log, RATS! I also heard some hikers coming up the trail, so I put the container back in its place rather quickly since I couldn't sign the log anyways.

After I got home, I saw that someone had actually dropped a geocoin in the cache. Darn, I would have taken it if I wasn't so rushed. Bummer...

I was totally stoked that I had found the cache, my first one outside the US. My adrenaline was going when I was climbing down the trail to find it. The climb back up the stairs was hard as my legs were hurting a bit from the past four days of hiking, but I didn't care, it was worth it to find the cache. By the time I reached the top of the trail, the others in our group were there as this was where we would catch the bus to Aguas Calientes, where a hotel and a hot shower were awaiting us. I was sweating like a pig on the bus ride into town, but excited that I had found the geocache!

Tough dog

Well, two days after our long hike, Zuleika is showing no signs of a limp, phew!  I kept her quiet all day, well most of the day, she got to play with Skipper and Hope in the morning when Skipper's puppy raiser came to pick up her pet dog Maddy who I was watching for the week while she was on vacation.  She's a tough dog, no signs of any permanent damage from all that hiking.  The bad part is that I'm going to have to hike that hill again to get that other cache I wanted. The cache is part of the Snookered series where you have to find something like 60 caches in order to get the coordinates for finding the final cache.  I was thinking it would be fun to get that one for my 1,000th find.  It may have to wait til next year...there's no way I'm going to do that hike when the weather starts getting warmer.

Don't tell Zucchini, but I took Hope to Folsom Lake in the afternoon after finishing up some chores.  I had actually scoped out a place to hide a cache, but drats, it was too close to another cache that is already hidden.  One of the rules of geocaching.com is that a cache can't hidden closer than .10 miles of another cache.  Rats!  We only hiked a couple of miles yesterday, because actually my ankles were still sore from walking on that rocky trail on Saturday.

Benchmark

I forgot to add in my last post that we also passed up a "benchmark" today. These are geological survey markers that are everywhere. I'm not exactly sure what they are used for, but some of them you can log on the geocaching website. I've run into a few of these while out geocaching, but never expected to see one out here! Unfortunately, I was unable to find this on the geocaching website so I couldn't log it.

10 miles for a cache?

Well, I only found one geocache today, but boy did we (as in me and Zuleika) ever work for this one! This one was called "The Outing of Patrick Star" (GC189K3), it is what is called a Mystery Cache. You have to solve a puzzle in order to get the coordinates to where the cache is located. This one involved answering some questions about Patrick Star from the Spongebob cartoon series in order to get the coordinates. The frustrating thing about these types of caches are that you solve the puzzle and figure out the wrong coordinates and you never find the cache...I would have been disappointed if I couldn't find this one! This cache was rated 3.5/4.5; meaning 3.5 out of 5 for difficulty and 4.5 out of 5 for terrain. I certainly agree with the terrain rating, it was a long, uphill hike to the top of a hill, Flagstaff Hill, according to the topo map on my GPS. This was in the Salmon Falls area; this week there were no cows/bulls blocking our way. This was up the trail where we wanted to go a few weeks ago.

Here's a pic of Z near the start of the trail:

About halfway there! This was before the trail got really rocky and steep. I let Zucchini off leash for most of the hike up/down the hill as nobody was around. She actually managed to stay right next to me or behind me; I thought for sure the little wigglebutt would go running off, but she behaved herself the whole time and didn't run off even once. I was very proud of her.
Here's a pic of Z with the cache itself....as you can see, it had Patrick Star themed stuff in it. Zucchini thought we found a container of dog toys!

There was one other cache I wanted to look for today which was only(!) 1/2 mile further at the top of the hill from the one we found; well that 1/2 mile was steep and rocky. This was a multi-cache, meaning it had a few stages that gave you coordinates to the next stage, before you could find the final cache. I found the first stage, but Zucchini kept holding her front paw up in the air when we stopped. I looked at it and didn't see any cuts or anything and pressed it all over and she didn't seem bothered, but she was definitely limping the more we walked. Since we were already 5 miles out on top of the hill, I figured it was best to get us back down the hill before she got any worse. Heck, even my feet are killing me, most of the trail was really broken up rock so you really had to walk carefully or else you could easily twist an ankle or something. This was what the view was like from the top of the hill, you could actually see Folsom Lake on one side, the river on the other.

According to my GPS, we hiked a total of 10.1 miles in 4 hours 29 minutes, climbed a total of 1,860 feet to a maximum elevation of 1,398. Whew, its no wonder I'm tired and Zucchini was limping! That terrain rating of 4.5 was certainly earned. Here's a picture of Zucchini with the hill we climbed behind her with still another mile to go before we got to the car. She's holding up her right paw, but still managing to smile anyway!
Her paw seems to be ok tonight...I put her in the crate to nap when we got home (because Hope was trying to play with her, poor girl didn't get a walk today!) and she's no longer holding it up like she was doing out there today. I left the crate door open for her (she likes to nap in it) and she hasn't moved, so hopefully she will be ok tomorrow. Heck, the way my feet feel tonight, I can't blame her for limping...walking on that rough trail was tough on my feet and I had hiking boots on!

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!

Molly on the move again

I received a nice little surprise when I got home from work tonight and checked my email. Someone finally made it up to the geocache where Molly's Travel Bug was dropped and picked her up today. She is currently in the hands of another cacher who will place the TB in another geocache.

Yay! I had a feeling she was going to be sitting for awhile in this latest cache in New Mexico as it was a Terrain 4 (ie, 4 out of 5 difficulty) cache so this geocache is not visited very frequently. As long as she stayed safe that's fine with me, I just hate the idea of TBs disappearing from caches or getting "muggled".

When she was in a geocache in Central Park in New York, she was almost a goner. The geocache had gotten muggled, so all the contents of the cache were lost. Luckily, the TB was picked up right before that happened, the cachers who grabbed her just never logged her out of the cache.

I'm anxious to see where she'll go next. I sure hope the real "Molly" is looking down and watching where she will travel to next...

Peek-a-boo

I was looking on the geocaching website tonight and ran across this picture that somebody posted at the "DSTOYE's Discovery" (GCZNTF) cache that I had found on Monday....just ask Zuleika, she will remember the hike to the cache as a painful one, a STEEP climb up a hill of stickers. Sorry Zuke, what a trooper you were! This is a picture of the cool view we had on Monday, except this picture shows a nice shot of the bridge barely visible! With all this rain we're having, I wonder what it will look like this summer when all that snow starts melting?

The Magic Kingdom

The news this morning said there was about a 40% chance of rain today and I couldn't decide whether I should go hiking or not. When I looked out the window I saw nothing but blue sky and some clouds looking east, but nothing too nasty. I packed up my backpack, put my rain gear in the pack, and Zuleika and I set off to find some caches this morning about 8:30am. Why waste a day off from work?

I ended up going to the same area I hiked yesterday, but parked at the trailhead that I had found a few weeks before with Hope. I figured this would be a less tick-prone area as it was more of an open meadow. It was probably a little over a mile hike out to the bridge I was at yesterday from where I parked. Here are a few pictures of Zucchini at the bridge, this will give a better perspective as to how big that bridge really is. Granted, she is not a very big dog at only about 48 lbs, but she couldn't even reach the top of the bridge wall when I asked her to do an "up".


The first cache we found was called Camp Nowhere (GC4615), it was a small container hidden up in a tree. It was easy to spot, not so easy to get as I had to actually climb the tree to reach it. It wasn't that big of a climb, but I sure had a hard time hoisting myself up the tree to get it, boy do I feel old!

Next we headed off on a really nice trail to find a few more caches. This area is getting to be known as the Magic Kingdom to the geocaching world as there are a bunch of caches with Disney related names (Fast Pass, Magic Kingdom, Mickey Mouse's Wild Ride, etc). The first cache we found was called "Fast Pass" (GC184ZK) that was at the trailhead, mother nature's version of a ticket booth I guess. Next, we hiked up and down the trail to find "The Magic Kingdom" (GC180GD) cache. This was a cache that is called a Letterbox Hybrid. Usually, the coordinates will get you to the starting point to find the geocache, the cache description gives instructions for actually finding the cache container.

For example, here were the directions for finding this cache: "You start by standing at a trail sign with you BACK to it. Follow the trail down the hill and cross the creek (about 100 or so feet). Then continue following the high trail. Continue along this trail for a little ways. You will come upon a very large tree that has fallen across your path. Don’t worry the seven dwarves chopped out the part that would have hindered your way so you have an easy path through it. Stop here… Why, because you are going to need to count your steps from here. Ok. Once at this spot continue up the trail for another 21 paces (my paces are 3.5 feet or so each). STOP. Look to your left. You should see a couple of snags about 30 or so feet away. Now go and look around. You will find the treasure amongst the snags."

It is a normal cache, but inside the cache is a rubber stamp and inkpad. In order to log the cache, you must sign the logbook with your own rubber stamp (lots of people leave a thumb-print if they don't have a stamp) and you can stamp your own logbook with the stamp in the cache if you like. I love these types of hides because its fun keeping track of the different letterboxes that I have found in my own logbook. This is a picture of the logbook from the cache that shows a few signatures with stamps that people have left. On the right is my own personal logbook that contains the stamps of the letterbox caches I have found. The Disneyland Castle stamp is the stamp that was in today's geocache.



I was about .6 miles from the next cache up the trail, but the gray clouds that were moving towards us were a little concerning so I decided I better start heading back as we were probably three miles out. Here's a picture of Zucchini I took on the way back....TIMBER!!! :-) Its amazing to see how many trees look like they may have just fallen in the latest series of storms a few weeks ago. Doesn't it look like she just knocked the tree over?


It started sprinkling on us as we approached the trail to get to the bridge and there was another cache nearby that was about .5 miles from where we were, in the opposite direction. What the heck, I had my rain jacket and it wasn't raining THAT hard, why not? I hiked up and down some more hills on another trail to find the cache and then we headed back across the bridge to the meadow to the car. As we were driving down the road, I stopped at another trailhead and found 2 more caches, the 2nd of which required a short hike up a steep hill...poor Zucchini, the trail was really narrow and had lots of stickers, but she was good and just kept going. We had a great view of the whole area we hiked at the past two days, it was worth the climb just for the view.

Another good day, 6+ miles of hiking, 6 caches, and about 800+ feet of vertical climbing. I gave Zuleika a bath after we got home and didn't see any ticks, yay!

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!

It's NOT about the Numbers!

Yah, right...the funny thing about geocaching is sometimes it IS about the numbers! The few times I've met other geocachers in person one of the questions that usually comes up is, "how many finds do you have?" I guess the more finds you have, the more credible you are...or in reality, maybe it means the more addicted you are.

There are several websites that allow you to track all your geocaching statistics -- one of my favorites are the stats that are listed in my profile on the geocaching website. Basically you upload a file of your finds and it does all these fancy statistics and spins your finds data into different categories.

I found a website (www.cacherstats.com) a long time ago when I had found 200 caches as it ranks geocachers with 200+ finds. I haven't looked at it in a while, so I looked tonight...I'm currently at 846 finds, and my ranking is #733 out of #2700 in the state of California and #6007 out of #15500 in the World. Kinda fun to see where I rank...not that it's about the numbers or anything.

I'm trying to figure out what I want to do for #1000 as to me that's a huge milestone. We'll see what happens...

Ticked off

After checking out a portion of the area yesterday, I was stoked to check out the Sweetwater Trail in the Salmon Falls State Recreation Area today that had a bunch of geocaches hidden along what I figured was going to be a 5-6 mile hike. Woohoo, my State Parks parking pass was good for this parking area...an added bonus!

Today I was even accompanied by a "muggle". For those of you who are familiar with the Harry Potter books, you have heard this term before. In the geocaching world, a muggle is a non-geocacher. I don't know how many times I've been thwarted from finding a cache because I would look suspicious to a nearby muggle. The reason you don't want to be seen is because you don't want to draw attention to a hidden cache, as it can be "muggled", taken or destroyed by a non-geocacher. Part of the fun of the game is to find a cache without being seen.

My friend Kirstin has been interested in going hiking with me since I've told her about all the neat areas I've found through geocaching. She doesn't have any desire to geocache, but she is interested in hiking and photography. So she and her puppy Carlo (also a CCI pup) joined Zuleika and I on the trail today. I had scoped out the trail on a map and we stopped at Safeway and picked up sandwiches so that we could eat lunch on the trail.

The Sweetwater Trail was just that, sweet, to a hiker anyway. Single track, with a series of switchbacks up and down through the woods. It was muddy from all the rain and we had to cross a little stream and a fallen tree at one point, but with everything so green, who cares about a little mud?

Here's a picture of the "muggle-dog" and the "geo-dog" doing an "up" on the tree that had fallen across the trail. We think the tree must have just recently fallen from the storms last week from the way the trunk looked. Our dogs got to practice their commands the geocaching way, "up" on the tree, and "under" the tree, always a training opportunity, even when you're geocaching.

Things were going great, I had found three caches...then I saw it, a HUGE tick on Zucchini's head. As I looked closer, they were all over her. Kirstin took a look at Carlo and there were a ton of ticks all over him too, much easier to see because he's yellow. We walked down the trail a little more and it was then that we decided to turn around, the ticks were attaching themselves to the dogs in droves. That's all I need is another huge vet bill for lyme disease or something. I couldn't believe how bad the ticks were considering the dogs never left the trail, Kirstin held both dogs when I went off trail to find the caches.

When we got back to my house, we both used a flea comb to remove whatever ticks we could find and they both got a bath. Hopefully between the flea comb, the bath, and using my blower (used to dry them off), we found them all. I also vacuumed my car and washed my seat covers. I'll be checking Zuleika for the next couple of days to make sure I don't see any more. Good thing half her belly is shaved, easier to see any ticks if they are there. Yuck, yuck, yuck...

Even though we cut our day short, we still had a really nice 2 mile hike in a beautiful area. The plan is to come back another day, but the dogs will be staying home next time, bummer.

Back in the saddle again...

After what seems like days of rainy, windy weather and a sick puppy, I finally got a chance to get out and find some geocaches today. The great thing about caching is no matter where you are, there are usually caches hidden nearby. Today was no exception. I hit three areas and found a total of 7 caches.

I took Hope with me in the morning while Zucchini stayed home in her crate. I was planning on finding two caches in Folsom, but only got to one as I couldn't figure out what street to take for the other one. The one we found in Folsom was called "County Line" (GCNPVJ). I had been intentionally saving this for the winter as there was a report of a large rattlesnake near this one that I read about in the cache description. Hope and I bushwhacked up a steep grassy hill as I didn't see any other approach to get to the cache. About halfway up, we hit a paved bike trail...oops, if I had parked one street over I would have seen it. The area was beautiful now that things are green, but there's no way I would have come up here in the summertime as there were huge granite rocks, perfect places for snakes to be hiding! It took me a long time to find this one, it was a small micro container (35mm film cannister) with just a log to sign. I finally spotted it after expanding my search area from where my GPS was telling me it was. Maybe it was the tree cover or the clouds, but that's what is tricky about this game, the cache isn't always where your GPS tells you it is. This is a picture of Hope in the area where the cache was hidden. Can you imagine finding a container the size of a 35mm film cannister here? Not so easy, eh? We decided to take the easier way down the hill on the way back, Hope was probably happy about that. Yay, our first cache find in over a week....

After running an errand in El Dorado Hills, I drove down Salmon Falls Road to see what the area was like. My GPS showed there was a couple of caches near a trailhead sign I was passing, so I stopped and Hope and I made a few finds along this trail. It was fairly muddy from all the recent rains and we had to wade through a little creek that crossed the trail, but it was nice and near an area I want to check out tomorrow when I have more time. In all, we hiked maybe a mile or so. We didn't see anybody the whole time we were out there, so I let Hope off leash, she was happy about that.

I went home and switched dogs since I was planning on taking Zucchini with me to Roseville for a doctor's appointment. We hit a bike trail off of Roseville Parkway and found four more caches on the way home. We probably hiked another mile or so. This is a picture of Zucchini near one of the caches we found in Roseville. Can you see it? See the HINT below if you don't...try not to cheat, its not that hard.


So the final tally of the day was 7 geocaches, 2 tired dogs, and no ticks (that I can find anyway). Zucchini was much easier to check since her belly is shaved from the ultrasound she had while she was hospitalized! :-)

(HINT: see it yet? it's the same color as she is..under the rock)

GPS envy

Due to some unforseen expenses (a-hem...thanks a lot Zucchini...), I won't be getting a new GPS anytime soon (not that I need one anyway), but I heard about this GPS on a geocaching podcast tonight. Its made by Garmin and its called the Colorado. It has great maps, a big screen, and the ability to download the description, hints, and other pertinent information about a geocache directly to the unit itself. And it can wirelessly send the cache information to another Colorado GPS. Today, I use a Palm Pilot to download some of this information, but to have it built into the GPS itself, that's so cool. It will be interesting to see what kind of reviews this one gets.

Maybe someday if I ever win the lottery...

Don't follow me, I'm geocaching!

I saw this on a license plate frame that I was following tonight on my way home from work. Since it was dark, I couldn't see who it was, not that I would know the person anyway. It's kind of funny, but since your geocaching name is a name you make up rather than your real name, you basically remain anonymous, even to other geocachers.

Case in point...It turns out that the wife of a husband & wife geocaching team is a dental assistant who works for my cousin who is a dentist. A few months ago, I put the pieces of the puzzle together as I was looking at this couple's profile on the geocaching website. When I was looking at one of the pictures in this couple's picture gallery on their profile, I recognized the woman in picture but couldn't place her; their profile said one person was a dental assistant, the other worked for the State. It was then that I realized who the woman in the picture was -- and that she's probably had her hands in my mouth! I called my cousin and she confirmed it...she didn't know their geocaching name, but she did say this couple were geocachers and their lives revolve around geocaching. They have over 9k finds! I haven't been back to the dentist since I found out this information, but the next time I go, I guess I should introduce myself as pk-a-boo.

I even found out there are three people in my building who are geocachers. I have only met one of them in person so far. The funny thing is I could be passing the other two in the hall and not even know it!

A lesson to be learned...

The weather is nasty outside, lots of wind, rain, and there will be no geocaching this weekend, bummer! I saw this article and found it funny (only because nobody got hurt)...

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GPS Leads Driver Into Train's Path
Man Escaped Without Injury Before Collison

BEDFORD HILLS, N.Y. -- It was a close call for one driver using a GPS satellite navigation system. Officials in upstate New York reported a driver was following the gizmo's directions a little too closely, and drove right in front of a train. Metro-North railroad spokesman Dan Brucker said the man got out of his car just in time. It had gotten stuck on the tracks, when the passenger train slammed into it going 60 miles per hour. The GPS device had told the man to take a right turn, which he did, right into the path of the speeding train. Officials said no one was hurt. The driver was given a minor summons for obstructing a railroad crossing. The railroad said the man and the car rental company would be liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.

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This is actually a good lesson for geocaching, sometimes relying too much on my GPS to find a cache. The general rule is when you get near GZ (Ground Zero - or where your GPS tells you the geocache is located), you should ignore the GPS and just start looking around for the hiding spot. A GPS will get you close to a cache (usually within 5-20 feet), but very rarely will a GPS zero out at the exact cache location. I've found caches as far as 40 feet away from GZ. There are various reasons why this happens: cloudy conditions or tree cover affect the accuracy of the GPS, the hider's coordinates may not be accurate, and GPS units are all different. I have gone back a 2nd time to look for a geocache that I haven't been able to find and my GPS was putting me in a totally different area the second time around.

The other lesson is looking too closely at the GPS and not watching where you are walking. The GPS will point to the location of the cache, but that doesn't necessarily mean that is the best approach to the cache. There could be an obstacle in the way (water, stream, rocks, cliff, building, you name it), it could require you to go off trail (ie, bushwhacking) following the arrow on the GPS, rather than just taking an easier path or trail, etc. Finally, I've had a few close calls where I was looking down at my GPS that I almost got stabbed in the head by a tree branch that was right in front of me or tripped over a rock or something, oops...

Armchair Geocaching

First, some background. A virtual cache is a cache that doesn't contain a physical container with log, the purpose of a virtual cache is to bring you to an interesting location and may not necessarily be a conducive location for placing a physical cache. Usually there is a requirement to go to the location and answer some questions to prove that you were there before you can log it as a find; you email the cache owner the answers to the questions they ask. Virtual caches are no longer allowed on geocaching.com, I guess there was some big controversy awhile back and they are now banned. The existing ones were "grandfathered" in (ie, remain active) so you are still allowed to log them if you "find" them.

So that's the background and here's a new one I would never imagined - armchair geocaching! I guess it was appropriate for the day since it was raining cats and dogs out today and I had to work.

My good friend, Laurie (aka waterlassie), emailed me about "finding" a virtual cache in Maine. This one had a different twist, you didn't actually have to go to the physical location to log the cache, if you could figure out what was at the coordinates and emailed the cache owner, you could log it as a "find". It took me about 10 minutes of searching on the Internet, but I figured it out, emailed the cache owner, and logged the find. It was called "What the in World Cache" (GC6D43). I won't give it away, but it would be cool to see what is here in person someday.

I now have two East Coast cache finds. The other one I got earlier this year was actually a physical cache and yes, my name is actually logged in a Rhode Island cache even though I wasn't physically there. One cache was hidden here called "Rhode Island Exchange" (GC10AKW), this cache contained coordinates for the "California Exchange" cache (GC10ARB) hidden in Rhode Island. After I found the "Rhode Island Exchange" cache, I had to find a geocacher in Rhode Island who had found the "California Exchange" cache in Rhode Island. We then exchanged the coordinates we found in our respective geocaches. The coordinates I received from the Rhode Island geocacher was for a physical cache located here that I logged. I logged not only my name, but the Rhode Island geocacher as well. They did the same on their end. So that was two for one. It was fun to meet another cacher from out East.

And, who says geocachers aren't creative?

Happy New Year!

What a difference a year makes...a year ago I was working on a project called OASIS (believe me the project was no Oasis, its some stupid acronym for Oracle Architecture System something) and rung in the New Year stuck in a conference room in Santa Clara with about 5 other people as the project was being implemented on Jan 1st. We worked until about 2 am on New Year's Eve and 1 am on New Year's Day. Zuleika was only about 4 months old and it was her first time away from home in a hotel and learning how to be calm and mellow for several hours at a time. Hope was still at CCI in Santa Rosa in Advanced Training. Molly rung in the New Year in Fremont keeping my mom company. Fast forward a year, Zucchini is now 16 months old, Hope was released from CCI in February and is now my well-loved pet and loving being a pet therapy dog, and Molly is no longer with us...

Today was a cold morning, but since I had to run an errand in El Dorado Hills, it gave me an excuse to grab a few geocaches. Since Zucchini got to go hiking with me over the weekend, I took Hope with me today. We parked at a library and huffed up a hill on a trail called Serrano Trail to the cache. The cache was called "Where the Air is Free" (GCZVCB); the cache container was lying out in the open so it was an easy find, I rehid the cache a little better. I saw that another cache was about .3 miles away called "Faux Forest" (GCY0TP). For a second, I wondered what the title meant until I looked in the direction we were heading. Here's a picture of Hope with the Faux Forest in the background, can you see it? (Hint: look at the water tanks) You can also sort of see how dry Folsom Lake is...

According to my GPS, we hiked about 2 miles in about 50 minutes, and climbed about 426 vertical feet to an elevation of 1074 feet. The Faux Forest cache was about halfway down another hill, so my calves certainly got a workout today. Here's a picture of Hope at the first geocache, that green area at the bottom of the hill is parking lot where our car was parked. The views from the cache were great!

Hmmm...I guess I ought to come up with a New Year's Resolution...how about find more geocaches in 2008 than I found in 2007?

Travel Bugs

A Travel Bug (or, TB for short) is similar to a geocoin in that a TB is trackable on the geocaching.com website and is meant to be moved from cache to cache. Each TB has a tag, which looks like a dog tag, attached to it that contains its unique tracking number.

Like geocoins, TB's may have a goal. The difference between a TB and a geocoin is that a TB may be attached to anything. Some of the TB's I've seen/moved were attached to cheap McDonald's toys, stuffed animals, figurines, keychains. Basically, anything you can attach a tag to can be made into a TB. When I was in Lake Tahoe this summer, I brought home a TB that was a bowling pin (yes a real bowling pin)! The only reason I took it was because there was a geocache in Folsom that I knew would be big enough to hold it; it has since moved on to another large cache in the area.

Back in February, 2007, I released my first Travel Bug called "Molly the Golden Retriever" Travel Bug to honor Molly. It was a dog collar that contained a laminated card with some pictures of Molly and her goal, to travel to places where she can walk, swim, or hike. I intentionally kept the tag smaller in size and the goal for her pretty general, so that she doesn't get stuck in a cache where people may not pick her up because her goal is too hard to meet or where the TB is too large in size to be placed in another cache.

I started her TB at a cache near my house, then picked her up from that cache and took her to Oceanside when I went down to visit a friend. From there she has visited geocaches in Virginia, NY City (she actually was placed in a geocache in Central Park!), Lake Tahoe, Arizona, and she is now in a cache in New Mexico.

It sounds kind of silly, but in some ways this was my way of keeping her alive. So far she has travelled over 5300 miles and its been fun to watch her travels and see pictures people have posted on her TB page of the places she's been to. Heck, other than Oceanside and Lake Tahoe, she's been to places I've never even been to, how cool is that?

Here's a link to her Travel Bug webpage: http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=794705

Geocoins

In addition to the six caches I found today, I also grabbed 3 geocoins out of geocaches I found today. Geo-coins are coins that people have "minted" and place in geocaches to move from cache to cache. The movement of the coins is tracked on the geocaching.com website via a unique tracking number that can be found on the coin. The person who picks up a coin (which is what I did today) logs the coin as taken from the cache it is in and is supposed to drop it in another cache within a few weeks. When the coin is dropped in another cache, it is logged into that cache for someone else to pick up and move to another cache. The website keeps track of who has the coin in their "inventory" or the location of the geocache it is placed in, as well as the number of miles the coin has traveled. Some of the coins have goals (like they want to visit certain locations, be placed in a certain type of geocache, etc), some just want to move from cache to cache.

This is a picture of the front sides of the 3 coins I grabbed out of geocaches today:

This is a picture of the back sides of the 3 coins:

The details on some of these coins is just amazing. The coins I picked up today were very nice. One of the problems with this is that there some dishonest people out there who take coins and keep (i.e., steal) them. So rather than moving them to another geocache, they just take them from a geocache and don't log them out. I've enjoyed seeing the creativity that goes into creating the coin, so its really fun to find them. The funny part is that there is a whole underground economy for these coins. They are very expensive to mint and unique, so many people who have them made end up trading and/or selling them to other geocachers. Kind of like coin/stamp collecting...some are worth more than others.

Coyote Hills Regional Park

Today I went geocaching at Coyote Hills Regional Park in Fremont with Zuleika. The circumstances that brought us to the area was sad, as my uncle (my mom's brother) passed away on Friday after suffering a heart attack a week ago, so I came down to Fremont to spend some time with my mom. First Molly, now my uncle, ugh...I'm ready for this holiday season to be over!

Zucchini was going a bit stir-crazy as on Saturday it was raining so we couldn't really go outside to let her get her yah-yah's out (and boy does she get the yah-yahs!) So this morning, even though it was slightly cloudy and looked like it might rain, I scoped out a hike we could take that was close to my mom's house.

In my younger days (which is long time ago!!!) and still living at home with mom & dad, I used to ride to Coyote Hills on my bike, it was about a 20-mile ride up and back. It's probably been almost 20 years since I've been out here and this was the first time I was here without a bike. The one thing I've discovered about geocaching...it brings you to places you never even knew about. I was missing out on a lot of cool places and great views as the bike trails are located on the outskirts of the park without a lot of the great views that the hiking trails have.

I wished I would have had my Rebel to take pictures today, it was great black dog lighting and the views were great! But, alas, the Rebel and geocaching do not get along (too heavy/bulky for me to carry). Note to self...check the memory card before leaving, I ran out of space on my card, so I missed a lot of great shots today of some herons in flight, nice views, a hawk perched on top of a tree, etc. Just an excuse to come back I guess.

This was my funny shot of the day, I wanted to try to get a shot of Zuleika under the rock as if the rock were going to roll right on top of her (picture her about 3-4 feet over to the right of where she is standing), but it was too wet, slick and steep and she just kept sliding, so this is the best we could do. Its too bad people have defaced the rock by spraying graffiti on it.

I found a series of caches called "Indian Montage" 1-6 today. Unfortunately, I didn't do my homework before leaving as inside each of the six caches were clues to find a seventh cache that was also hidden in the park. Oh well, it will just give me an excuse to get out here again as there are a few more caches hidden in an area that we didn't even get to today. Luckily, I took pictures of the clues and will try to piece together the solution to the final cache so we can come out again to find it.

We hiked a total of 6 miles today, and climbed up and down many hills today. Since I'm trying to break in a pair of hiking boots, I was glad that I also ended the day without a blister on either foot! It was a great place to hike with a dog too! We were able to stay on fairly wide trails for the most part. After our bushwhacking trek in Folsom the other day, Zucchini was a happy girl today, it was dog-feet heaven. Here is a shot of Zuleika that I took from the third cache we found, and yes, we huffed and puffed up and down that switchback that you can see in the background.

This was the last picture of the day before I filled up my memory card. It's a little faint in the picture, but San Mateo Bridge is visible in the background. Good thing we had to stop to look for geocaches every once in a while, after climbing up and down those hills today, I needed an excuse to rest and this was one of them!

So that brings us to 833 caches...and counting!

King of the Hill (or is that Queen of the Hill??)

Today was my last day off from work for the Christmas break, so I went geocaching in the morning with Zuleika at Folsom Lake near Brown's Ravine, an area of the Lake I had never been to before.

The cache pages said to park at Brown's Ravine for the caches, but I couldn't find a good access point to get to the trails, so after finishing one cache that was close to the parking spot, I drove down towards Folsom to park in a small lot off of Green Valley Road. Thank goodness I have my California State Parks parking pass; even though I bought it primarily for kayaking, it sure comes in handy for geocaching too!

One of the caches we found first was called "Blue Man Isle" (GCRBF6). I guess when the Lake is full, the cache location is actually an island. Not today, the lake is so low right now it was probably a half-mile hike to the "island". There was nobody out there today, so I let Zucchini off leash to run free for a bit, she loved that (shhhhh....don't tell CCI!). This picture was taken close to where the cache was hidden.

We found 4 other caches on a 4-mile hike, a total of 6 caches at the lake. I tried to stay on any game trails I could find, but it was a bushwhacking kind of day. Luckily with the recent rains the stickers weren't too bad. Zucchini was a good sport walking through the grass/stickers and jumping over/around a lot of logs. Two of the caches were called "King of the Hill", we certainly did make a go of going up and down many hills today, does that make us "Queen(s) of the Hill"?

After we came back home, there were a couple of puzzle caches I had solved that were located nearby. Since Zucchini got to cache in the morning, I took Hope with me to find the two puzzle caches nearby.

All in all it was a good day, we found 8 caches all together and both Hope and Zuleika got to go on some long walks to boot...a tired dog is a good dog!

After today's finds, that puts my total number of finds at 827, but who's counting?...

Hiking and caching in Auburn

My friend Jill and I went on a 5.5 mile hike in Auburn on Sunday, Dec 23, a few days before Christmas. She had scoped out an area in the Auburn State Recreational area for us to hike and cache. Today, it was not about the numbers, but instead it was about taking the dogs for a nice hike and to find some caches along the way.

She brought two dogs along today, Omeeka who she is fostering, and Metro, a dog she raised who graduated as a Skilled Companion. She was watching Metro while his family was out of town for the holidays. I also brought along Hope and Zuleika for the day. 2 people, 4 dogs, guess we were outnumbered.

We hiked on a nice 4-mile loop and found a total of 4 caches today. A few of the caches were 3/3.5 terrain, we certainly earned those terrain ratings on a couple of those hills! We stopped for lunch at a high point that gave us a good view of the Middle Fork of the American river. The picture above is Hope resting on Omeeka, talk about dog-tired, huh?

The dogs also came home with some ticks, ugh. Jill said she counted about 13 on her two dogs. I only found one on Hope's head, hard to see them on the black dogs so I just hope I found them all.

Rubber Ducky Madness!

I have found that unless I'm geocaching with a friend, its too difficult to geocache with two dogs. Since I was planning on geocaching on Sunday and would take Zucchini, I figured I'd take Hope with me on Saturday...so Zucchini was relegated to the crate for a few hours while Hope and I went out.

Having bought a Sacramento County Parks Pass earlier in the year, we hit the American River area near Hazel and Sunrise; an area I had never been to before. Hope and I found 6 caches that day and probably hiked about 2-3 miles. There is a series of caches called the "Snookered" series in which you need to find around 60 geocaches in order to find the final cache. I knocked out a few more caches in that series today.

But the best cache of the day was called "Rubber Ducky Madness" (GCV82W). This was a multi-stage cache, the coordinates took us to a container that was full of probably 20+ rubber ducks. The cache description contained clues to eliminate rubber ducks until you were left with one duck, the bottom of which contained the coordinates to the final cache. All of the ducks had coordinates written on the bottom, so you really did have to pay attention to the clues, and couldn't really "cheat" by looking at the bottom of the ducks for the coordinates. This is a picture of all the ducks.

It was too funny, as I was pulling the ducks out of the container and setting them up on a fallen tree, a couple of them fell off the tree onto the ground. Hope, being the good service dog reject that she is, was glad to pick up the fallen ducks off the ground when I gave her the command "get", and handed them to me when I gave her the command "give". What a good girl! I actually ended up with two ducks at the end, oops, but used an educated guess as to which duck contained the correct coordinates to the final cache location.

This cache is probably one of my all-time favorites in terms of creativity. Here's a picture of Hope with the duckies....