Sundial Bridge

On the way back south from visiting my parents for our annual fabulous Thanksgiving feast, my sister and I made a stop in Redding, California, to take a walk around their new landmark, the Sundial Bridge. I’ve been here several times, finding caches, and even participating in the geocaching traveling exhibit that was here for a while.
GPS Adventures Maze Exhibit-Turtle Bay Park (now archived)

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:

Oh, Hai! Geocaching: Weer doin it rite

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.

A Devious Hide?

Snow! We did get out and play in it… sort of…

A little video view:

I look forward to more fun days with these guys!

Supplemental: The Green River Odyssey Tour

My adventure down the Green River with 25 strangers was also an historic look at the original exploration of the area by John Wesley Powell. The tour was led by Clay Jenkinson, a humanities scholar and author, who gave programs each evening on Powell’s life and work, among other things. I heard about this tour, because I’ve been listening to his weekly radio show for several years.

(Note: if you crave intelligent, civil discourse on politics, government, history, and a variety of other topics, I encourage you to check out his radio show in which he portrays Thomas Jefferson, and answers 21st-century questions from the 3rd president’s perspective. For more information, go to The Thomas Jefferson Hour.)

The scenery on the river was spectacular, so although there were no geocaches along our 5-day route floating through the wilderness, I wanted to post some of the photos I took.

Enjoy!

my tent

our first campsite

our second campsite

the big paddle boat

a typical day on the river

Ahh…..
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Hello world!

Welcome to my new blog! I’ll post each week about my recent adventures in geocaching. Please feel free to ask questions and/or make requests for topics, however, this is NOT a forum, so please comment accordingly.

🙂

I’m also in the process about writing an E-Book (available in PDF format) about my experieces thus far, so this blog will primarily focus on my contemporary experiences, at least to begin with.

OK, so what have I found since 1/1/08? Er… not a heck of a lot, surprisingly enough, although I am managing to hold my #3 spot with 14,547 finds. I’ve mostly been recovering from a long road trip through 6 states (and I’m talking BIG states!): NV, AZ, UT, ID, OR, and CA to visit relatives. Along the way, I found enough Earthcaches to qualify as a platinum master. Yee haw.

Yesterday, I took a hike up Rocky Peak with one of my usual suspects, OLdweeb, and found 5 caches total:

Gimme A Break
ROCKY PEAK VIEWS
Cruise-N-Shoes
More Rocks & Hard Places
No Escorpion – but be careful anyway

We got some pretty good visibility, and it’s a great place to hike in the winter, as there is NO shade. The wind kicked up at the top, and I was actually really cold.

Today, it was time for cache maintenance, and I ended up archiving two caches, because they were one-of-a-kind:
Let’s Go to Palm Springs!
One Degree of Separation: Kujo
(sigh) It’s always sad to let one of your babies go…..

Until next week – cache on!