Matilija

Wendy and I spend an enjoyable day Saturday driving around Ventura County. We started the day driving up the coast to Carpenteria for the Avocado Festival. It's a nice, small-town gathering, which boast of the largest tub of guacamole. It's done by the high school cheerleaders and is called "World Famous." I joke that it is world famous because a few years ago it wasn't properly chilled and hundreds of people got food poisoning. Luckily, we didn't eat any of it that year. After the festival, we drove north and east, past Lake Casitas and up the Maricopa Hwy (33). Grabbed some caches and also had a few Did Not Finds. We stopped at the Earthcache Matilija Dam Removal, the location of Wendy's sixth grade class's first overnight. We decided to leave a regular cache of our own, Matilija Dam View--a quick 35-mm film can cache-and-dash. The photo above is taken at the site of the 2 caches. We had a great adventure.

A Cooked Cache

On New Year's Day, 2004, I place a cache in the Santa Susana Pass area--Historic Stagecoach Trail. On Wednesday, September 28, 2005, the area was burned in a massive wildfire. The cache is toast, along with the surrounding hillsides. The cache was baked--the seal was air-tight so the ammo box bulged as the pressure increased. Then, when it cooled, the cache became vacuum-sealed like a canning jar. I had to use my knife to poke a hole in the rubber to let out the vacuum. I plan on replacing it with a new and improved cache.

To see photos of the fire as seen from our home, go to my general blog, Random Thoughts.