This week’s adventure in to nature was a short hike in the Dos Vientos area of Newbury Park, followed by a choice selection of really high class camo jobs. One was an infuriatingly perfect reproduction of a sprinkler system, one was a beautifully crafted Cryptex (I’ll let you search for that one – you will be intrigued!), and one was an appropriately themed can in a local gym!
The trail featured some rather obvious (I thought) directional signage:
… some unusual drainage area features:
…. the ubiquitous giant fennel:
… and a lovely view of my car from the top of the hill:
Oh, yes – and a dream house!
Wow. That’s near where I paused to get our relaxation video of the week:
I didn’t get photos of the ingenious hides above, but both f0t0m0m and I were stunned to pull in to a parking lot to see this one, just as you see it here:
Amazingly, it’s been there since May. Go figure.
We capped off the day with an event, our regular monthly local gathering, and it was great, as usual, to catch up with the good friends I’ve made from geocaching! SFV Geocachers Meet & Greet #20
Gene, Debbie, and Donald barely scratched the surface of the fun you can have when it’s wet outside.
When the Primm Valley Resort sent several of us offers for free nights, no strings, we booked our nights. Just because it turned out to be raining cats and dogs was no reason not to go. As it turned out, the big day of caching in the desert was sprinkly, but it never got too bad, so we stuck with plan A, and found over 140 caches along a couple of power trails.
Early in the day, OLdweeb found his 8,000th cache. That’s a big number!
f0t0m0m, OLdweeb, Ventura Kid
Most of the scenery was similar to this:
… and no one was around, even though the dirt road was under some kind of construction, and we skirted big ditches, equipment, and supplies to get to some of the caches:
The caches were named mostly for places, both familiar: Sacramento, CA
First of all I want to thank all of you who read my blog! I’ve been posting my geocaching adventures each Thursday for two years now, and have watched my subscription numbers gradually get bigger. Writing about my experiences makes it even more fun to go out and find caches. I really appreciate all of the comments, too – please keep ‘em coming, and feel free to make suggestions.
I wrapped up my year of geocaching with two runs in the Pasadena area. On Christmas day, I headed out with OLdweeb, tozainamboku, and BenH57 for 40 urbans and a gourmet Chinese dinner. OLdweeb covers it very nicely in his blog, and got much better pictures than I did that day. Do click the link and check out his post!
A couple of days ago, I headed back out to the same area to do a hike through the adjacent arroyo with f0t0m0m and the Ventura Kids.
A splash of color:
An archery range:
Um, NO, Steve, the cache is NOT in there!! Fail!
By the way, I got a heads up that our record of 413 caches in 24 hours has already been broken – in Denmark and Sweden no less! Here’s the comment posted on my blog about it -
Author : Team Mojito
Comment:
Yesterday (28. december 2009) the danish geocachers Picht and Elmbaek found a record breaking 480 caches in 20 hours. 251 in Denmark and the rest in Sweden. 2 hours transport between the found places included in the 20 hours.
… and here is one of the logs from that day:
Fundet sammen med Picht. Vi tog til Nordsjællands Powertrail for at tage en bid af denne. Men da vi efter 7 timer havde fundet samtlige 250 cacher besluttede vi at fortsætte dagen i Halmstad.
Fundet som nummer 384 af dagens 480 cacher!
Tak MercedesBenz for cachen. Elmbaek. #8035
These are the same guys, Team DK08, that set the record in Sacramento a couple of years ago, back when that was a mere 315! I’ve asked them to write a little about their crazy day, and will post that when I get it!
Meanwhile, you can check out the two power trails they did. This is one of the caches in Denmark – PT#250 – Nordsjællands powertrail and this is one of them in Sweden – Halmstad PowerTrail “HPT B75″
Of course the city of Pasadena is all about New Year’s Day and the parade. It takes a couple of weeks for all the setting up:
This is the famous corner of Orange Grove and Colorado Boulevards that all floats and bands must negotiate:
This is normally a lovely tree-lined, wide-lawned scenic thoroughfare, now transformed into a jungle of chain link and bleachers:
I’ve been to the parade in person a few times, but this year I’ll enjoy it from the comfort of my living room as most Americans do… then I’ll head out for a short hike to start the year off in the wonderful local scenery. I took this photo in the hills on the north end of the San Fernando Valley this week as I hiked up to A Day At The Speedyway
:
Lots of caches, empty dirt roads, spectacular views, fun friends.
Yep…
North of Ojai – a jeep trail that only permits 10 vehicles per day to drive on it
Ventura Kids, the Devious Max Power, Terra Girl, f0t0m0m, me
95 finds
THIS is geocaching:
That’s pretty much what we “had” to look at all day. Those are the Channel Islands out there:
Most of the caches were really easy to find, even under these potentially daunting circumstances:
The next one is over there somewhere:
We never could figure out what this alien beacon was really for:
It might have something to do with the lovely little pond nearby:
Steve shows us how to really look for caches. He said he could see it from there, down where we were. Hm.
50 years ago (or as the card my sister gave me expressed it “A Long, Long, Long Time Ago”), on August 29, I breathed my first taste of Terran air. What better way to celebrate than with a crazy, exhausting, record-setting day of geocaching??
For those of you who have never attempted real power caching like this and wonder how on earth it can be done, here are the most essential things for achieving light speed:
1) density – there must be a LOT of caches in a concentrated area
2) ease of transition – no traffic lights or muggles, but an open country grid of roads
3) complete pre-planning – all puzzles solves and the entire route is mapped out for maximum efficiency
***I have to give Steve of the Ventura Kids great credit for handling this part!***
4) ease of finding and logging – not too many nanos, no tricky hides, no vegetation hides, no multis
5) high level of maintenance – lots of folks finding them recently, no DNFs in the history
6) excessive good humor – it’s a LONG time to be driving around… if it ain’t going to be fun, don’t bother!
7) tenacity – especially as the sun is going down again and your hourly cache count with it, you need to know you and your team will stick with it to the end
There’s your basic recipe for a wild and woolly ride through a cosmos’ worth of logbooks.
Here’s a peek into how our day went. Well, first of all, I was picked up at the airport the day before:
We found 15 caches that afternoon, then we all ate dinner and rested up for the coming marathon. At 11:15pm, we regrouped in the hotel lobby. Steve fortified himself with coffee:
We loaded up the trunk with food for the day:
and we were off! We did 5 “warmup” caches before midnight, at which time the other three sang “Happy Birthday” to me!
Here’s our first official find of the 24-hour period of August 29: ’34 Gold Wing
Steve observes the log signing ritual behind me. Why did he park so far from the cache??
(hahaha)
Somewhere along the way, we stopped for gas, and f0t0m0m presented me with cupcakes! They did not light the candles since we were at a gas station – whew!
The sunset looked similar to the sunrise, just in a different part of the big, broad sky:
We were a little worried earlier in the evening that we might not pull this off, but now we knew we were in the clear! We found the record-breaking #407 at 11:30pm and continued to midnight to nab 413! Douglas #12 Hungate
Oh, and here’s a short video that shows you basically what driving up to each and every cache was like:
Here are our per hour stats (listed from the beginning of each hour):
midnight = 15
1 am = 11
2 am = 23
3 am = 20
4 am = 24
5 am = 21
6 am = 19
7 am = 17
8 am = 17
9 am = 15
10 am = 20
11 am = 27
noon = 18
1 pm = 17
2 pm = 13
3 pm = 14
4 pm = 16
5 pm = 20
6 pm = 14
7 pm = 16
8 pm = 12
9 pm = 15
10 pm = 17
11 pm = 11
We also had 24 DNFs!
We don’t know how long we’ll hold this record, but we hope it will stand through the winter. Come the longer days next year, though… who will go for it??
YOU???
P.S. The Daily Reviewer has me on the list of top geocaching blogs! Here’s the *LINK*. I’m honored!
p.p.s. here’s a jpg of our route! (Steve lost his track, darn it…)
