The Glory of Geocaching in Glorious Scenery

According to Clay Jenkinson, we as geocachers are part of what makes humanity strange and fascinating, and are to be admired as such. Check out his recent column in the Bismarck Tribune where I and all of you receive this honorable mention:
The Article

We’re right in there with the miracle of heart transplants, great music, and the world’s largest collection of Elvis decanters. LOL. But he’s right: our species really IS remarkable.

Yes, yes, I know I’m #3 and not #2, as he wrote, but someday I probably will be, so it’s close enough. I have a plan for that, you know. I’m going to outlive everyone. Seriously! I have a goal to be a healthy 103. Ha HA! That oughta do it…

Meanwhile, here’s what I’ve been doing just to try to stay ahead of the fast-approaching Team Snook, who have been rising through the stats at break-neck speed.

I grabbed 50 caches with f0t0m0m and Spoondoggie all around the Solvang area amongst the myriad wineries. We drove for miles through the vineyards and agriculture.

The best caches of the day were a nicely crafted fake pine cone, a bolt in a guard rail, a sneaky magnetic in a tree, and one in a part of a guard rail that we had to rotate to access.

The best FIND of the day, though was this guy!

f0t0m0m saw this sign elsewhere, but they needed one here, as I almost drove over the beauty!

I spent the last few days up in the Eastern Sierras, as I had a performance in Bishop with Beethoven’s Wig. I was surprised to find a large group of petroglyphs at this cache:

NOAH’S ARK

I was also surprised to get the FTF at this cache:

Streamside

I hope more people get out there, as it’s idyllically lovely.

This is the view from
Owens Bridge Cache

and I found this awesome chalk cliff as I was driving to

The Fisherman’s Cache

Get out and find more caches, all you strange and fascinating examples of humanity! Let me know what marvelous things you discover!

The Road to Mt. Shasta Ascends Through the Eastern Sierras

The week before the scheduled summit trip, I spent 4 nights at Rock Creek Lake to acclimate to high altitude. I actually camped for 4 nights in a row in a tent! The altitude at the campground is 9700 feet, and to that I did a moderate hike each day. There were a few caches along the way to the lake and around Bishop, but no caches on any of the hikes!

Before I go further, I do want to thank two of the people who helped me with my preparation for summiting Mt. Shasta: Ranboze (a geocacher) and Jody (a hiking/singing buddy). Jody came up with me for these training hikes and camping, and Ranboze provided a wealth of knowledge and encouragement as I worked to accomplish this goal over the last year!

This is the path to Dorothy Lake, up around 10,000 feet:

This butterfly was showing off:

It started raining during this hike, and you can see the drops in this little lake:

Near the end of the hike, I shot my first bit of video with my new Canon SureShot!

The next day, we hiked up to Ruby Lake. There are a string of 9 lakes along the creek below it:

I couldn’t resist a good nap with Ruby Lake as my back yard for the afternoon:

On the third day, I headed over to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine forest, for a 4.5 trek through the remarkable trees. Here you can see a young one and an old one right next to each other:

This is a view from the trail, looking more or less east:

These are a few of the many ancient trees in the Methuselah grove:

A few of these trees are over 4500 years old!

I did get a couple of photos at the more noteworthy geocaches.
These hills have ears

Dazee’s Field of Dreams
They were using the adjacent area to stage helicopters to fight the huge number of forest fires in the area:

Yep, next stop = Mt. Shasta!!