Monday, August 29, 2005

Santa Barbara

Painted Chumash Cave


Wendy and I spent Thursday and Friday in Santa Barbara County on a mini-vacation. We enjoyed the Santa Barbara Zoo and the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History on Thursday and spent some time in Solvang and Santa Barbara on Friday.



I really enjoyed the Museum of Natural History. It is very well done. We especially enjoyed a temporary exhibit--the Butterfly House. Because the weather was warm, the butterflies were very active.

We visited the Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park on Friday. It's not much of a park, just a place to pull over on a very narrow mountain road. But the cave was impressive. The state has fenced/gated the opening to prevent the painting from being destroyed. The painting were quite vivid--much better than I was expecting.

I got in some good caching--reached 1600 caches. Here are the caches that I did:
Hole in the bricks, Lake Cachuma Rock, Stage Stop, Painted Chumash Cave, Moving Plates, No Homes Here!, Along the Rincon, Golden Years - C. I. Harbor, "BETWEEN STOPS", A Picture Says a Thousand Words, Get the habit, Peter Meter Pumpkin Eater, La Conchita Landslides, Butterfly Houses, and "Someone told me...".

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Latest Adventures


New caches have been pretty quiet this summer. I needed to get some exercise, so yesterday I went after Dudley's--reportedly a short, but very steep hike. It was steep, but not too bad on the way up. It took 12 minutes from car to cache. I didn't like the walk down the hill--too steep, too much loose sand on the trail. The views were pretty good--it was clearer than usual for a summer's afternoon. The photo above is near the beginning of the hike. I've been there a couple times for other caches. I always enjoy these oaks. However, all the green on the ground is poison oak. Just looking at is makes me a little itchy.


After Dudley's, I went on to finish the last 2 remaining caches on the Tujunga Wash Caching Trail. One I could get to because of high water and the other was MIA--probably washed away by the rains and floods. I did Tujunga Wash Caching Trail # 7 and Tujunga Wash Caching Trail # 12 to finish off the series.


There wasn't too much water--just enough to make it interesting. A few month's ago, I tried jumping across a narrow place in this stream, only to have the log I landed on collapse. I ended up in water up to my armpits.

Locationless Caches Become Waymarks

I've enjoyed doing locationless caches. To date, I have 118. They will soon be a thing of the past, being replaced with www.waymarking.com. It appears that the criteria for waymarks will be a lot looser than it was for locationless caches. I'm not sure what I think of the new program yet. I will have to wait and see how it operates.

Because locationless caches won't be counted as geocaching finds any longer, I'm trying to pick up some of them that I have had my eyes on. I did OK yesterday, logging World Mosques, Monarchs in the Americas, It's the Cheese!, and I Can't Drive....21?. Earlier in the week, I did The Noble Guardian (Sphinx Hunt) and Historic Synagogues of the World. I'm looking for a few more. Hopefully I will be able to find and log them before them turn into pumpkins (waymarks).