This appeals to me as a gastronome and as a lover of puns. As a bonus, the cache was expertly concealed as part of the installation.

The cache hide at this telephone pole near my house was standard, yet effective. I almost overlooked it. The most curious thing to me was the curve of the wood within the telephone pole.
V. J.'s Cache

The view of the adjacent alley was surprisingly beautiful. I even caught a plane in it’s approach to the Burbank airport.

Since this is a rather short blog entry, here’s a bonus photo: Marzipan, the Famous Geocaching Cat!

f0t0m0m and I took two cars, left one at the northeast end of the trail in Colton, then drove to Riverside and walked the 6 miles back to the first car.
map

Yes, beauty is where you find it, but sometimes you have to look REALLY hard.

The caches, 50 of them in this section, were mostly down off the bike trail (with the view) and in this gully area by the fences.

The river bed is mostly dry.

This is one of the actually scenic spots.

In the distance to the east, we could still see some snow on the mountains.

Well, it’s a place to sit down, at least, but not so compelling to come for a picnic.

This video shows more of the industrial scenery.

It was a great way to get out and get some exercise in any case!

The overhead maps are inconclusive, since there has been construction in the area, and things are different than they look. I could see that the cache is near the busway, but there are fences along that, and no way to walk down it. I finally decided to just go over there and walk around until I could find how to get it. I met up with Spoondoggie and Doc Sylvia (her first geocaching experience!),

… and we wandered down Balboa Boulevard from the park and ride. Sure enough, I spotted a dirt roadway I’d never noticed before, even though I’d driven and walked around the area dozens of times. We walked beside the L. A. River (cemented in) back by a sod farm and out to where the bus way curves south from Victory to Oxnard, and were led directly to the cache!

After conquering that, we headed back out and across the street to pick up a few stragglers in Balboa Park.
The Cee-ment Stream

Trolls? Ah… there’s a cache under there!
Greggy's 61st Birthday

Lake Balboa

A Swan!

Winter Trees, with Contrail

Bus in the Sunset

Hey, beauty is where you find it.

Politics and Religious Icon Cache
Peace Be With You Too 2

Library entrance

Flags in the wind

View of the library – Air Force One is behind the giant windows

Heading over to Mt. McCoy

New grass is already growing -

Ubiquitous lichen

The cross at the summit is an historic landmark -

Looking east over Simi Valley

Back at the Library, the view looking west over Moorpark and out toward Oxnard

We started with the obligatory cache at the parking lot:
Deukmejian Park Vista Cache

This mysterious building has no signage that we could find, so we thought it was part of the water management in the area. Wrong! It’s an old barn, and its history is on this website: Le Mesnager Barn
It still features a small vineyard and an outdoor amphitheater.

This starting point is already high enough to see quite a distance.

It wasn’t long before the whole LA basin was spread out before us. We headed down a lesser-used side trail for this cache:
Old horse hitching post

The deep blue sky is a dramatic backdrop for this recovering victim of the 2009 Station fire. Yes, there is a cache there.
Still Standing, By Gum!

Looking up Dunsmore Canyon: more sky and mountains

Sarah's Cooks Canyon Cache

This is the end of the trail at the top of Dunsmore Canyon, and the cache up there was placed back in 2001. Dunsmore Canyon Trail

Wishing you a happy, prosperous, cacheful 2012!

The first two times, we spent 20-30 minutes searching all around the tree/ground/trail, but this time, it was hanging in plain view. Go figure. It was still a great relief, and this trail is always gorgeous.

This is “winter” up the Las Virgenes Canyon of Ahmanson Ranch:

The sky is spectacular:

The view to the east from the cache in question, with mountains way in the background:

To the west, you can see the gas pipeline signs marching up the slope:

I even got a pretty good shot of the waning quarter moon:

I wish you all a very merry Christmas and holiday geocaching season!

Beverly Hills
First Alarm Fire

A long landscaped pathway runs beside a couple of miles of Santa Monica Boulevard through the heart of this famous town.

It’s lined with fig trees, some quite large and ancient.

The powers that be insist on trying to make the greenway even more attractive with modern art. This is not so successful.

*Fail*

At least the architecture of the police station has classic beauty.

The tower of City Hall peeks down through iconic palm trees.

The entire complex is a pleasing mix of older and newer designs.

“Y’all come back now, ya hear?”

There was only one cache within walking distance for me to find, but I was delighted to see that the hider is a good friend: OLdweeb. He has a series dedicated to the now rare, almost extinct pay phone:
Little Tokyo DoDo

I was surprised to see that this one still works!
phone

Japantown:

Entrance mural and tower:

A wall of haiku about the plaza:

One of the haiku:

Unique rock sculpture:

Paper lanterns, always festive:

The traditional Japanese Christmas tree?

Lunch, chirsashi sushi and hot tea:

Finally, a view towards downtown from the 2nd floor balcony of this city oasis:

The gift shop still has a nice geocaching corner:

I found three newer caches that were in the immediate vicinity of the bridge:
Entrance to Turtle Bay
Quality Time
Lena's Flutterfly House This one features a charming hiding place!

It was a perfect day, weather-wise, warm and clear.

One unusual feature of this bridge is that there is no room for trolls.

The spire looks to me like a giant, alien musical instrument.

The shadow is cast on an oversized sundial.

It’s only really accurate at the summer soltice, though, or so it would seem. It was over an hour off today.

This is the rewarding view from the bridge, featuring snow on the mountains and a few busy fisherman:

After lunch, f0t0m0m and I headed to Rustic Canyon, for what we thought would be a moderate hike loop along a creek trail and back on a fire road. The trail down to the bottom of the canyon turned out to be a bigger adventure than we anticipated, with gnarly wooden stairs degenerating into eroded switchbacks blocked occasionally by fallen shrubbery. The creek trail was also sometimes easy, sometimes very overgrown, and sometimes missing. Even the fire road with it’s curves got us turned around and heading in the wrong direction for a quarter of a mile. Nevertheless, the 2.5 hour plan only turned into a 4 hour reality, and we were back at the car before dark.

Rich Route #1: BOB
This is the first of the eight cache series that enticed us to the area. We ended up finding only half of them, but found four additional ones along the way.

There are numerous abandoned buildings, mostly looking like old homesteads and ranches:

…but they had electricity down here at one point:

Bougainvillea decorates this mysterious ruin:

Pack100/Den33 We Be Scouts Now
This cache is at a location purported to be an old Nazi encampment, hidden away. Here’s a link to the story:
http://thenativelatourist.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/at-the-edge-of-brentwood-hides-a-nazi-past/
This gate may have been a party to hiding the goings on:

Another reason f0t0m0m and I wanted to head over here was for this cache:
Rustic Palm
Rustic Palm is GC734, placed 4/18/2001, over 10 years ago and over 2 years before I started caching! This tree is part of caching history.

We signed log book #3!

On the fire road back along the ridge above the canyon, it was clear enough to see Catalina Island. It’s in the distance on the right, The hill to the left is Palos Verdes.

On this Thanksgiving Day, I honor our founding fathers and the many, many Americans who have laid it ALL on the line for our liberty, which I cherish each day, especially when I’m out enjoying myself geocaching surrounded by the peace and abundance of the USA.