A Hike and a Flash Mob

I took a lovely hike with f0t0m0m on Friday, in the hills near Whittier. We found these caches:
Rue Bourbon
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Heart Attack Hill Bypass
Shaken not Stirred
Dirt Track Date
Buddha’s Feast
WestwardHo’s Booty Cache find #15,700!
Godzilla vs Creosote
Hansel & Gretel This was my favorite of the day, as we had to follow a trail of small white stones to the gingerbread ammo can!
Pixie Stix
Marzipan Alligator Krewe
South Specific

Legless Muggle (NO rattles):

The Buddha greets us:

The weeds are THIS tall!

Purple thistle, golden sticky monkey flower, and - yikes! - a big bush of poison oak with berries:

On Saturday, I hosted one of 167 concurrent World Wide Flash Mob Events:
Worldwide Flash Mob with a view! (WWFM)
I’ll let the photos tell the tale…

The View:

The Mob:

There are many more photos on the event page.

My next report will be of Ottawa (Ontario), Charlottesville (VA), and Washington (DC).

Scattered Geocaching

My week was occupied by other pressing matters, so this might be one of my lightest caching weeks since is started! I found 4, count ‘em, 4.

#1 was a cache right outside my hotel window in Medford, OR, where I met my parents for a visit.

CLOCKOVER

Here’s the cache site, as viewed from my room:

It’s right next to the fabulous Harry and David store, too.

I then went back to Yreka with my folks and time to find one that I’d missed before:
Phoenix 52

Of course, it was an AMMO CAN in a BUSH. Duh.
I got a couple of nifty photos on the way back, and enjoyed the short ride up the river with my dad.

Poppies

Old Rock Wall

Mount Shasta

Upon my return, I had a performance out in Rancho Cucamonga, and found the cache conveniently located in the parking lot of their beautiful, new performing arts center:
Tour De Gardens
This was a tricky one, and nicely camo’d.

Finally, yesterday, I had time to pick up one kinda close to my house:
Just For You, OLdweeb
This was also a tricky one, but fun to finally grab it.

Until next week, happy caching!

Geocaching Among the Fauna

Sycamore Canyon

OLdweeb and I headed out there on Friday for an 8-mile RT hike that yielded 11 finds for me.
A cache for Mrs Richmond’s Class
Sibling Rivalry
Crack Up
Time Out Log
She was Wrong!
“Bent”
Two Foxes Burnout
Mugu Zoo
Hideout
Got H2O?

There were lots of animals out there with us:

Lizard

Squirrel

Tadpoles

Here’s a closer look at the tadpoles:

Snake

(NO, it’s not a rattlesnake.)

The next day, we went to see animals of a different kind. We attended the SoCal Spring Fling Event!
SoCal Spring Fling

There were a few caches in the area to find, but the best hide was this one:
Don’t Throw That Away - I really don’t want to give it away….

I’m spending the next few days in/around Medford, OR and Yreka, CA, but it’s raining and snowing up there, so I hope to at least find one or two. Until my next blog entry…. happy caching!

An Ultimate Geocaching Weekend

On Saturday, I hiked 7 miles through spectacular scenery in the Santa Monica mountains through creekbeds, hip-high grasslands, and over a 1600-foot summit with views of the ocean. Our merry band of 10 found over 20 caches, including 2 earthcaches.

On Sunday, I rode around with the Ventura Kids and f0t0m0m to over 100 caches, including two events. One was on the Huntington Beach Pier, a flash mob with everyone wearing tie-dye.

It doesn’t get much better than all that.

I did take one photo on the hike before my camera stopped working:

The plants in the foreground have a very “Dr. Seuss” look to them, with thickish tall stalks and puffy foliage under bunches of tall flowers. In the background, you see some rock outcroppings, many of which have visible layers of fossils, and on in to La Jolla Canyon.

GeoCraig was along, and he really takes much better photos than I do. CLICK HERE to see them all, but here are a few of them:

Friends

Fossil

Field

Flowers

Again, CLICK HERE to see them all!

EagleRockRob also took a whole bunch of nice photos - CLICK HERE to view them.

Also on the hike were OLdweeb, RobbDogg, Capdude, Capsbug, DonJag (our fearless leader), Deeznutz, and his wife.

The day with the VKs was not one for photographing really, as it was mostly in urbans settings and most of the caches were pretty standard, except for two. Both of these involved some skilled construction techniques, and we are now all fans of Mesquer!

Got a Dime, Make a Call
It Is What It Is

Then the VKs showed their amazing teamwork skill here:
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
As we approached a long, chest-high, dense hedge along the edge of a park, f0t0m0m and I hung back, anticipating several minutes at least of due diligence. Steve and Sandy strolled along the edge with Steve counting down the feet: “15, 10, 5, 3… zero!” at which point Sandy reached in the bushes and drew out the cache!! I wish it happened like that more often….

Yes, it does take a long time to long over 90 finds, and when I’m out with them, it takes longer… Steve has tendency to make, um, smart remarks in his logs, so I have to check what he writes to make sure I don’t have to defend myself. LOL.
Case in point (check out his log):
CJ’s

My week was rounded out with a few caches in Santa Monica, after some singing work down there:
Cumberland
LOT B “KINDA”
YAHOO A PARK
S.B. RIGHT OF SM
The Gnome Liberation Front Safe House - on the owner’s front porch!

In closing, I present a photo of too many people wearing really colorful clothing:

Until next week… happy caching!

Four-wheeling through festive flora

Yesterday I grabbed two caches in the Manhattan Beach area,
Hb park cache
HFB

on Sunday went to an event with an unusual theme,
Tie Dye Party !!!

and as well as finding assorted caches around the event, did a dozen in an hour at the Puente Hills Mall (I’m just linking to the first one),
The Great Puente Hills Mall run #1

but the highlight of the week was a 4×4 run with f0t0m0m out in Yucca Valley and Desert Hot Springs. We attended and event and found a few fun ones nearby,
No Frills Non-Event Event
Photo Finish - commemorating the Wheeler Dealers 2000th find, we all signed the hood of an abandoned car!
H2O Required - yep, one of those bring-your-big-water-bottles grab-it-quick caches

then headed for the desert for over 60 more caches. The finds themselves were standard, but we were there for the scenery!

View of Yucca Valley

Desert Flora

A hawk in her nest!

Caching by moonlight?

We were being watched!

May the flowers be with you! Happy caching!