Day 100!

Today was the big day: #100 of my caching streak! I managed to time it to be the day I found the applicable Challenge cache, too!

6/30 – Streak – California Challenge of a Century

It was a short walk along this lovely, shaded bike path:

I continued my journey northward, through Redding to Yreka, and had to stop at the new GPS Adventure Maze.
GPS Adventures Maze Exhibit-Turtle Bay Park
I started here:

… and ended up here with a completed maze card:

I’m spending the evening with my parents this evening, which is always a real treat.

Day 99… and Day 1…

It’s my final week of the 100 day caching streak. Already. Wow. Will I break the habit now? Not immediately, as I’m on a road trip to Geowoodstock 8 in Seattle, and I’ll be finding caches each day for another week at least.

Here’s the last installment of my streak list:
6/25 – Tunaman’s Memorial
6/26 – Married to a Muggle
6/27 – Cache Cache Cache
6/28 – Get a cup of Joe, and then GO…Caching!
6/29 – Main Drain This is #99!

Today I drove from Northridge to Sacramento. The Main Drain cache that I picked up on the way was right across from this unique sign:

Sequoia Park Sojourn

I took a day last week to head for the hills with f0t0m0m and my sister. The goal was two more pages for the Delorme challenge, and the bonus was the spectacular scenery and local history.

The best example I have of the latter is this “Car B Q”

… which is sitting right next to this giant “Bull B Q”

Further back in history is where we found the significance of Hospital Rock, which is a group of large boulders where the natives would grind various grains and acorns for food and medicine.

We visited the world’s largest tree, named for General Sherman:

I even got to play in the snow!

The adjacent Lake Kaweah is full this year and a brilliant color of blue:

Here’s my one-a-day list for this week:
6/18 – Reimers Cache – cache at a local fresh-made candy store!
6/19 – Jackfruit
6/20 – Chapped
6/21 – Westwood Skyline
6/22 – Zulu Nut
6/23 – Stretched Before Tennis
6/24 – The Chimney II This one required a long tool and some dexterity to get it and put it back. I like these little challenges.

Next week, I take off on a road trip to Geowoodstock 8 up near Seattle. I’m thinking that instead of one big long report, I’ll pick a photo or two and a story each day to post in the evening as I journey up and back. I’ll be finishing up my 100 day cache streak on Wednesday, and I have a special cache picked out for that occasion!

Moorpark, Muggles, and Mixed Fruit

I finally had a day to get out and do more than one cache, so f0t0m0m and I headed for the Moorpark area to pick up a couple dozen newer ones. Most of the time we were out on country roads like this:

Quiet scenic areas like this are ideal for geocaching, even if the scenery isn’t… er… spectacular:

They grow lots of stuff out there, like avocados:

….and the flowers are now in the height of spring colors, just like the playground equipment:

Someone is building a spacious (to say the least) house:

… and they will really get to enjoy this view:

f0t0m0m got to do the honors for this bit of a challenge in retrieval (I’d done it before already – ha!):

… and we found a new cache at one of my favorite odd street designs:

I got a special treat two days later as I was searching for a cache in Santa Monica. As I was struggling to interpret the cache page, three cars zoomed up and out piled a dozen people, mostly kids. I thought they were muggles, but it turns out that they thought I was the muggle, and one of the boys was celebrating his birthday by geocaching! They spread out and had the cache in hand in short order:

Here’s the happy birthday boy:

My tally for the week also included a short trek to a challenge cache called One Busy Day. To qualify to find this one, you must have found 6 different caches types in one day. I had managed to do that recently and finally had a chance to get to the Arroyo in Pasadena to get the final cache.
Here are my qualifying caches for that:
the Homemade Geocoin Museum
Park it in Guadalupe
Paso Robles Sulfur Hot Springs at City Hall
Old Bridge New Bridge
Historic Homes II
Summer Beach Stamp

and here’s my tally of daily caches for the week!

6/11 – Vee Grimey
6/12 – One Busy Day Icon Challenge
6/13 – "So I Married A Muggle"
6/14 – Lychee
6/15 – Star Fruit
6/16 – Chayote
6/17 – Grey Alert #2

Geocaching Minimalism

In my quest for finding at least one a day for 100 days, I’m now finding myself just doing the minimum of one a day! While I’m enjoying the break from mega caching to a certain degree, I do also find myself hankering for a good day of finding bunches of them. I’m set to do that tomorrow, then it’s back to grabbing one, one, one, one for the rest of the week in between appointments. It’s nice to be that busy with the various other things in my life, but the lure of the hunt lingers.

I’m planning a road trip up to Geowoodstock 8 in Seattle over the July 4 holiday, and that should feed the caching beast for a while. My 100-day streak will be done, so i wonder what pace I should choose after that? Continue the streak for 6 months or a year? Go back to random caching blasts? Could I step it up to include both?

I’m always thinking that my life will settle down a bit and I’ll get more writing done or more gardening or more reading or more… caching… but I’m not so sure that will ever happen. I continue to seek that balance between busy and quiet, between all of the things I want to accomplish and all of the things I must do just to maintain my health and household.

Meanwhile, my to do lists haunt me.

My camera collected dust this week as far as caching goes, but here’s my real list of accomplishments for the week!

6/3 – Doc
6/4 – Rhubarb
6/5 – Velvet Apple
6/6 – Durian Fruit
6/7- Random SFV Cache 03</a

6/8 – Boogie Nights – Dollars and Donuts – while the above five were easy urbans, this was not, and I didn’t find it. It might be in there in that spidery icky news stand, but I didn’t see it. Perhaps I’ll return another day to see if I can spot this one.

6/8 – Boogie Nights – Hot Traxx – I didn’t see this movie, and doubt I ever will, but it’s fun to know that so much of it was shot locally.

6/9 – SFV Meet & Greet #5– I’d only missed one of these, but it seemed like a lot longer since I’d seen the local caching gang.

6/10 – Rodenberry – my quick, fruity finish