GeoCraig's Caching Adventures

Moved Location

2007-07-19T15:40:00.000-07:00

GeoCraig's Caching Adventures is now located at geocraig.wordpress.com

#3000

2007-06-12T15:14:00.000-07:00

After some time off, I'm back with an update.

On May 31, 2007, I logged my 3000th cache, Reed All About It.

When Elin (EMC of Northridge, CA) found her 3000th cache, I joined the celebration. So I figured there would be a little symmetry if I found one of Elin's caches for my #3000. And I didn't want to find a lame lamp post cache for the milestone. Elin had recently placed a cache on a trail, so I stopped by on the way home from work and picked it up. The cache is in my right hand. At least the bottom of the cache is pictured. I didn't what to show the entire cache because that would give it away.

The trip to 3000 has taken about 6 years. However, after finding my first few caches, I took about a year off. So it has really been about 5 years. It has taken me to some very interesting places across the country (14 states--see the map below, ignoring KY and IL and adding NV), some strange parking lots, a few pairs of torn pants and wrecked shirts, and too many cases of poison oak.

I really don't want to know how many miles (or gallons of gas) I've traveled. I have enjoyed to journey, proving that "not all who wander are lost."

A Great Caching Trip

2006-03-02T10:37:00.000-08:00

Wendy and I took a quick trip to Central California to view the nut and fruit blossoms in Fresno County and to view Yosemite. Of course, we did some caching along the way. It was a lot of driving, but we had a great trip.

#2000

2006-02-04T12:03:00.000-08:00

On a very enjoyable trip with my wife along the Central Coast to visit with our daughter, son-in-law, and grandson, I hit and surpassed the 2000 cache mark. #2000 was a very nice cache northwest of Cayucos---Hole Hunt. The weather was beautiful and the views great. A perfect way to celebrate #2000.

A Fine Joke

2006-01-14T12:09:00.000-08:00

After Dana (Might Dee) did my Simi Valley Park cache series, I guess he thought that I needed a refill. He placed this cache--Endangered Kodak Moments--nearby. It is a quick find. However, the logbook is in one of the cans--and you have to find it. Of course, I only had 5 or 6 left when I found the log book. And, as an added bonus, I got to do it in the rain.

First Cache of 2006

2006-01-03T12:46:00.000-08:00

Hollywood Sign was my first cache of 2006. It is located near the Hollywood Sign and was a short 10-minute walk from the car. The air was clear from the recent rains and I wanted to go farther, but was short on time.

2005 was a good geocaching year. I found 871 caches, including several in Alaska during our 30th anniversary trip. I'll probably reach the 2000 milestone in February or March. This has been an enjoyable hobby that has taken me to some interesting places.

One of the Reasons I Like Geocaching

2005-12-09T08:17:00.000-08:00

I needed some exercise, so on the way home from work yesterday, I did Dunhnh, duhn duhn-duhn... --a quick walk of about 1.5 miles roundtrip in the hills above Glendale. This is what I got to watch on my way to the cache.

California Historic Landmarks

2005-12-08T09:15:00.000-08:00

I've started visiting California Historic Landmark plaques and logging them at www.waymarking.com. The website for the California Historic Landmark is here. The Waymarking page is here.

Here is a list of the Landmarks that I have visited so far.

ST. VINCENT'S PLACE
SITE OF THE LOS ANGELES STAR
GOVERNOR STONEMAN ADOBE, LOS ROBLES
OLD MILL
PACIFIC ASIA MUSEUM
PASADENA PLAYHOUSE
THE GAMBLE HOUSE
BELLA UNION HOTEL SITE
FIRST JEWISH SITE IN LOS ANGELES
POINT SUR LIGHT STATION
NAVAL AND MARINE CORPS RESERVE CENTER
PORTOLÁ TRAIL CAMPSITE
OLD PLAZA FIREHOUSE
LUGO ADOBE (SITE OF)
MERCED THEATRE
PICO HOUSE (HOTEL)
LOS ANGELES PLAZA
AVILA ADOBE
RÓMULO PICO ADOBE
MEMORY GARDEN MISSION
SAN FERNANDO REY DE ESPAÑA
CAMPO DE CAHUENGA

To the Pain

2005-12-03T14:29:00.000-08:00

This cache has been on my list for quite some time. It's only a couple of miles from the house. I just wanted to do it on a clear day because the views are supposed to be so good. Today was clear and breezy, so I figured I would give it a try. The ridgeline was very windy--at least 40 or 50 miles an hour, I guess. It was hard to walk without getting blown around.

The views were nice, but not as good as I had hoped. Here is the 360 degree photo that I took. The first photo starts on the left at the northeast.

Here is a self-photo, it gives you an idea of how hard the wind was blowing. Note: I normally don't wear the brim of my hat up--the wind did it.

Eli's View

2005-11-28T13:10:00.000-08:00

Nothing really special about this nice cache today, except it wasn't another lamppost cache or another newsstand cache. It was an ammo box hidden on Mt. Washington in Los Angeles. A quick walk down a path, with nice views of the city. The photo above is a panorama with downtown Los Angeles barely showing over the nearby hill to the south to Griffith Park and the Griffith Observatory to the west.

I enjoyed the clear day and the sunny lunchtime caching trip. One of these is worth a bunch of the urban parking lot caches anyday.

Griffth Park is to right, at the high point in the photo. The Observatory is about mid photo, along the ridge.

A shot of the edge of Mt. Washington--and the cache location is somewhere in the photo, too.

Matilija

2005-10-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

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

2005-10-01T10:38:00.000-07:00

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.

Hollywoodland Waymark

2005-09-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

The Hollywoodland Waymark

I did what I think is an interesting waymark today--the comparsion of the same geographic location shown in photographs taken at least 50 years apart. I found a 1925 photo of the entrance to Hollywoodland. Since I have driven through this area several times doing other caches, I figure this would be an interesting candidate for the waymark. At the waymark linked above, I have another set of comparison photos taken just a few feet north of the gate.

My New Webcam Cache

2005-09-23T07:22:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to doing a webcam cache. I've visited and logged webcam caches, but this one I own. Or own at least until they do away with webcam caches. The cache is named very creatively---Santa Monica Pier.

I was in Santa Monica for a training conference, so I stopped by the Santa Monica Pier to do a couple of caches. Before I went, I found a webcam that shows the entrance to the Pier, so I figure, "Why not do a cache with it." I called my daugter, Julie, and she took my photo. Unfortuately, the camera doesn't zoom, so you can't really see how good looking I am from the photo. By the way, Julie is very talented, smart, and a bunch of other things that she told me that I should say, but I can't remember right now.

The cache had its first visit last night, so it's up and going.

Simi Valley Parks Cache Series

2005-09-04T19:47:00.000-07:00

I've created a series of caches in many of the parks in Simi Valley. The red triangles above indicate where the caches are located. The link to the complete list of caches is at SV Overlook. The series appears to be quite popular. There were so few new caches, I decided to jumpstart the system. Hopefully, others will do the same.

Santa Barbara

2005-08-29T09:47:00.000-07:00

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...".

Latest Adventures

2005-08-18T11:17:00.000-07:00

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).

Hollywoodland

2005-07-21T11:18:00.000-07:00

I did a very nice multi-cache on Tuesday and Wednesday--Invasion of the Hollywoodland Stairs. The cache required finding 6 dogtags that were placed on the old staircases that are located in the neighborhood. Because of their locations, there was little to no GPS reception. The owner posted a map to help locate the tags. I ended up using the map instead of the GPS. After collecting the numbers on the 6 tags (I found five, and guessed on the other number), you had to use the numbers in a formula to get the coordinates to the final cache location.

It was located on a trail to the Hollywood Reservoir.

A very well-done multi.

The Alaskan Adventure

2005-07-11T12:08:00.000-07:00

Wendy and I just got back from a fantastic trip to Alaska. We began the trip with a cruise from Vancouver, British Columbia to Seward, Alaska and finished it off with a driving trip to Denali National Park and Preserve. The photo above is the Hubbard Glacier--the largest tidewater glacier in the world. It is 6-miles wide as it ends in Disappointment Bay.

I was able to pick up a cache is each stop that had one. I started by logging Sister Cities--it is an interesting cache. You have to visit a pole in downtown Los Angeles that identifies all of Los Angeles' sister cities and then visit one of the sister cities. I did Vancouver.

We spent a wet Sunday, July 3rd in Ketchikan. It is a nice city, one of the wettest in North America. I quickly found Whale Park in a nice small park across the street from the Discovery Center--a Forest Service information center and museum.

Monday was Independence Day and we visited Sitka. We visited several of the town's highlight, including St. Michael's Cathedral. The original church burnt down in 1966, but was reconstructed according to the original plans. We also watch a local dance group perform Russia dances at the town's convention center. I found Centennial Cache and dropped off a travel bug before the performance.

We stopped in Juneau on Tuesday and I found three caches. First was a cache near the Mendenhall Glacier---Frozen in Pine. I was surprised when I read the cache description--it was written by someone from Simi Valley, Dana of Team Dakiba. I almost gave up because my coordinates were off, but then I spotted a likely spot and then found the cache.

The next one required a 1800-foot assent of Mt. Roberts, luckily by tram, then about a mile walk farther up the mountain. The views along the hike were really something. Father Brown's Cross is a 35-mm film can hidden in the rocks.

In the afternoon, while waiting for a tour of the state capitol to begin, I found Museum Trading Post. Actually, I found some other cachers and we looked together. He did the hard work and found the cache for me.

July 6th was a stop in Haines, a very small town. No caches in the area, but I might log a locationless cache here. We took a jet boat tour of the river and saw quite a few animals.

July 7th was a cruise day. We began the day with a stop at the Hubbard Glacier. It's in the picture at the top of the page. The glacier is huge. The ice is 300 feet above the water line and at least 100 below the water. We were able to see it calf--break off chunks of ice. The sound is like loud thunder.

Friday was the end of the cruise. We took a bus to the Anchorage Airport, rented a car, and drove north to Denali. We made a quick stop in Talkeetna and I found Lama Trash Cache West. Talkeetna is where the climbers register before climbing Denali.

Saturday we did a 13-hour bus tour of Denali National Park and saw lots of animals--grizzly bears, caribou, Dall sheep, moose, a golden eagle, and some others. After dinner, I found Denali Bruin Breath quite close to our motel.

Sunday was the day to go home. On the way out, I stopped for Panorama. It is at a viewpoint for Denali. Unfortunately, we didn't get any clear views of the entire mountain while we were there, but the total experience was awesome.

I'll write more about the trip on my other blog--Random Thoughts. The entire trip was fantastic. We really had a great time.

The Tar Pits--A Geocaching Mecca

2005-06-28T14:24:00.000-07:00

My Earthcache, The La Brea Tar Pits, was approved today, but not before Team Perks got a traditional cache, That Sinking Feeling, also approved.

I guessed where their cache was located because I was thinking of placing a cache in that spot when I was doing the research for the EarthCache on Thursday. I just didn't have time to go back to the car. I found their cache this morning on the way to work.

So, Hancock Park, gets 2 new caches within a few hours.

If you go by to see the EarthCache, be sure to find That Sinking Feeling at the same time. I'm not sure if you will ever have the chance to log 2 caches within 75 feet of each other again.

Lady Lamont and Kurious Kate's Caches

2005-06-25T20:21:00.000-07:00

I decided that these six caches would made for a nice quick hike this afternoon. It didn't quite work out that way. I went to the end of Roscoe as directed and found about 6 very large No Trespassing signs, complete with security guards. I guess they were serious about not letting me go for a geo-hike.

Still wanting to do the caches, I remembered from the logs that someone did them from the north. So I drove up Woolsey Canyon Road to a likely spot and starting walking. Here are the caches that I found: Covered in Chocolate, Rocky Road, Sycamore Sanctuary, SAVORY SAGE, Super S taple and CHUMASH CAVE CACHE.

The hike's highlight was the poison oak--my favorite shrub. A lot of the poison oak leaves in the area have turned dark red. Some were even dark purple.

I found one plant that was easily over 15 feet tall.

Hopefully I stayed away from all of these, but time will tell.

2005-06-23T13:38:00.000-07:00

The La Brea Tar Pits. Hopefully the home of the next EarthCache.

The La Brea Tar Pits

2005-06-23T13:34:00.000-07:00

The La Brea Tar Pits

I decided to try to post an EarthCache. It is a new category of cache that must be approved by The Geological Society of America. The La Brea Tar Pits are close by and are a worthy candidate for an EarthCache.

I've posted the page here, even though it hasn't yet been approved by the powers that be. Hopefully that won't take too long.

Note: The EarthCache was approved on 7/28/05.

Geocacher Rankings 1-100

2005-06-23T07:45:00.000-07:00

Geocacher Rankings 1-100

I'm tied for #65 in California. How did that happen?

2005-06-23T07:12:00.000-07:00

Cache Map

2005-06-23T07:01:00.000-07:00

I've posted a map of the local caches that I have found and the caches I have yet to find. The found caches are in yellow, the caches to find are in red, and the caches that I have placed are the blue triangles.

Unfortunately, there aren't many (any?) current unfound caches within a lunch time radius from work or an easy detour on the way to work or on the way home. Not too many opportunities for casual caching right now.

Getting Started

2005-06-22T21:16:00.000-07:00

I thought I might experiment a bit with a geocaching-related blog. I've been geocaching for just over four years and have almost 1500 finds. I'll use this blog to document some of my geocaching experiences.