The Road Beyond GeoWoodstock VI

After the two madcap days of blitzcaching with the VKs, I continued north to spend a few days with my parents in and around Yreka, CA. The caches I picked got me off on a wonderful side road alternative to I-5: Highway 45. I exited near Woodland, grabbed some caches in Zamora and Knights Landing, then cruised up the aforementioned county road. In contrast to the busy freeway, there were hardly any other cars. There were also no stoplights, even through the few small towns along the way, so I made great time AND got to see some marvelous, peaceful scenery.

On my inevitable way back to the freeway (Highway 45 doesn’t go all the way north, darn it), I passed a nice plaque at a pullout just east of Willows. I pulled over to read it as it covered the history of the establishment of the town. As I perused the information, I wondered… hm… could there be a cache here? It was a prime place for one. I walked around to the back of the monument, and saw a small pile of rocks! Alas, there was no cache in it. I did cast my eye down the adjacent road marker pole, however, and there – YES! – was a Hide-a-Key!

The cache owners had noted the name on the log, so it was easy to find it later to log online:
The Watering Hole

I drove away feeling like the Ultimate Caching Machine. Ahh… that made up for a lot of DNFs.

I found 19 caches along my route, ending with a couple in Weed. As I drove through that town, I saw this marvelous totem pole in a grocery store parking lot, and recalled that I had seen it as a kid.

The best cache of the day, though, goes to one I found just north of Sacramento, which involved a creative retrieval mechanism, and was quite entertaining.
RubberPaws Tree

This weekend, Memorial Day Weekend 2008, also was the 5th anniversary of when I found my first geocache! What an amazing journey this has been so far! I’m looking forward to the next 5 years and beyond of fascinating, fun, and frivolous finding!