Weekend Geocaching

It was supposed to rain Saturday afternoon and Sunday. I had quite the honeydo list and didn't think I'd get out geocaching this weekend. I got done with the chores and the rain was still north of LA so The Boy and I headed out.

To reach the first cache we just listened to the GPSr and went down the dirt roads. The road soon became steep and was washed out. We were in the race Escort this time and I think I was at the limit of it's off road capabilities.

We were soon on a normal road and signing our first log. The wind from the approaching storm was strong and cold. I decided against going after the caches requiring hikes in the hills. Instead, we just grabbed a few that were close to parking.

We didn't find any real spectacular caches but it was nice to sign a few logs. I made some finds on difficult micro geocaches that made me feel pretty good. These are the type that I would have missed a few short months ago.

On the way home I snapped the above picture. You can see our shadows were long and the clouds were getting dark. I like this road because I don't know where it goes. I found myself singing John Denver, "Country road, take me home......" We found 5 out of 5 geocaches and made it home safely. A little while later, I was watching the lightning flash across the sky and the rain finally hit us.

When I woke up this morning, I was surprised to see the sky peeking through the clouds. I needed to go back out. It seems like it just rains travel bugs out in PJ's neck of the woods. They have spotted 15 trackables since March 1st (two weeks) and I've only found 4 since December. I ran a pocket query of caches with trackables in them that were close to me. I found one that had a Green Jeep TB. I had still not spotted a Jeep TB and decided I needed to go after this cache.

The Boy and I hiked out and found the first of three caches hidden along a mile long bit of trail. It was beautiful out here today. The wildflowers were brilliant yellow, purple and white. In our second find was the Jeep TB and a Fozzie Bear TB. I audibly said "Yes!" when I opened the cache container. Fozzie is owned by 2Bugs. I've actually been to their website before and this was my first 2Bugs find. These folks LOVE trackables. They have spotted 1470 (yes that's one THOUSAND) and they own 1089 trackables. Check out their site. It's pretty nice.

After our hike we grabbed three more in Hemet. One of which was one of those nanos that is only abut 1/4 inch long. On the way home we stopped and hid my latest camouflaged ammo can. I'll explain that one in a separate post.

It turned into a beautiful day. The wildflowers were simply amazing. Over the whole weekend, we made 11 of 11 finds. The race Escort also made it through the weekend and is resting comfortably in the garage.

100 Finds, The Geocaching Century Mark

The day is upon us. Team Hick@Heart has found 100 geocaches. Today was a beautiful day. Perfect for geocaching. I mapped out some hides and The Boy and I were off.

We started at a cache called Accuracy. It is not really necessary to sign the log. The idea is to put your GPS on a specific spot and log info such as the weather, how many satellites you are receiving, how strong your signal is and what latitude and longitude are you seeing.

Next we hit a relatively simple mathematical mystery cache. It was nice to be out on the rural roads rather than in town. We found one cache that had a pretty fun container. I've seen these on line but this is the first time I found one. It looks just like some poop in the grass but when you turn it over there is a cylinder holding a log. A log within a log if you will! Ah, the things you pick up/reach into while geocaching.

We climbed partway up a hill to find Hillside Hotwheels. Finding an ammo can under a bush just never gets old. We found a nice geocoin in there. A guy called PennyPacker from Etiwanda, California released 18 of these while on a 3400 mile road trip. the coin shows the Western United States. this discovery added a nice new icon to my list of trackables found.

We grabbed a couple more semi urban micros. At least these were in a quiet part of small town Menifee. I also logged two more DNF's while in this area. So here we are sitting at 99 finds. It's time to get the big one.

I had solved Magical Mystery Tour earlier in the week. I had to rely on a hint from the owner. There is no way I would have gotten on the right path. This cache is actually on my front page of caches closest to my house so I had to stare at it all the time. I knew this was the one. The Boy and I headed over to the area and began climbing the rocks. I finally made the find. this cache had not been found in almost a year. Everything looked good however a spider had taken up residence inside. I signed the log and made note of the milestone find. The Boy and I took some pictures tryng to use our hands to make the number one hundred. After 6 or 7 shots I felt I had it. It was only after I got home to look at the pictures that I realized we were holding up the number 001. I guess I'll have to make that up when I reach 200!

I'm happy to have reached 100 geocaches. I'm sure the urge to hunt the parking lot skirt lifters will subside. (For a couple months until I get close to 200!) The boy and I really enjoy geocaching together. Geocaching is all up in his head too. The other day while walking into a store, he stopped to examine a pay phone for geocaches. He said, "No treasure there." and moved on. Good job, The Boy!

Here are some more pictures from today.

Geocaching on Rawson Road

When I woke up this morning I decided it was about time to go drop Fish Tank in a cache. I also needed to send Brianna's Geocoin on its way. I saw that my cache total was at 58 finds. That means all I have to do is go grab two nearby caches and I'm at 60. Well, If I'm going to grab 2 I might as well grab 12 right? Check out the string of caches right down the street on Rawson Road.

Rawson Road is the old road into Hemet. The entrance is only 2 miles from my house. This is a beautiful country road bordered on one side by Rawson Ranch and on the other by an ecological preserve. The only thing that isn't private property is the road itself. I posted my first ever DNF on this road, and since becoming a Groundspeak premium member, I've learned there are a lot more caches here than was previously visible to me.

The boy and I actually drove to the farthest (6 miles) from home and worked our way back. When we stopped at our first cache a local resident stopped by to tell us the lady that lives across the street is crabby and her husband just passed away. I could smell the rural neighbor politics. He gave us permission to go cruise around his property. We might have done that if there was a cache on his property and if I hadn't recently seen a clip from Deliverance. We grabbed the cache and headed on our way.


The dirt road was really nice in some areas and in others it was badly washed out from all the recent rain. There were a few long stretches of washboard road that tries to shake your brains out. Most of the caches here are micros and nanos. Imagine that, nanos out in the country with no less than a bizillion places to hide them. At one, I was walking and looking at my GPSr when the boy holds up the cache and asks, "Is this it?" Yep, good one, the boy.


In one spot there is this really old abandoned hose built out of rocks. You can't go up to the house but it is quite a sight from the road anyway. And, of course, there is a stinking nano-cache nearby. We spent some time on the three DNF's for today. When you walk up to ground zero, and it is a huge metal fence blocking the road and somewhere a little tiny camouflaged container is stuck to it, how much time are you really going to spend on it? I know my brother suffers from "mocrosiscannotfindus" and this would have been a therapeutic trip for him!!

The views were awesome today. The recent rains have turned the area along Rawson Road into a green wonderland. Here is a nice shot taken along the way.


We did not meet our goal of 12 finds today, we were stuck with 11. That is still my biggest day of caching so far. On the way home we climbed the hill up to one of my caches to drop off Fish Tank and to see how my ammo can was holding up to all the rain. The cache looked good and the boy took some nice picture from up there. I'll put some here. My favorite is the last one. NICE!

Brianna's Geocoin Goes Park Hopping

I've found out that the type of caching I do depends on which members of Team Hick@Heart go with me. If it's just me and the boy, we go get some really tough ones like "King of This Hill". If the girl is going along I like to cache in a style I call park hopping. The girl is only 3 and most geotrails are no fun for her. Most parks in the area we live have at least one cache in them. This makes it perfect to bounce from park to park and let the kids play while I grab a smiley. We have found lots of great play areas this way and that's the way we went caching today.

We started today's trip at a cache near home. I saw Brianna's Geocoin in the cache and thought it would be nice to take her coin along on our adventure today. Brianna's Geocoin was released by a 4 year old girl in Mississippi to celebrate her family's 50th find and Brianna's Birthday. Interesting that this coin was originally released on my birthday, 11/27/2004. I'm not sure if that is her actual birthday but we will go ahead and assume that she is a very gifted young lady to have a birthday like that! I guess that now makes her 7 and makes me old. So, here is the trip Brianna's Geocoin made with our family today.

Our first park hop was at Kent Hintergardt park in Temecula. This park is named for a fallen hero. Kent Hintergardt was a Riverside County Sheriff's Deputy, killed in the line of duty on May 9, 1993. The park has a Boy's and Girl's club and is apparently very popular. The 50 or so kids at this park left no room for the kids to play. I dashed over to the cache, noticed someone had already found it today, signed the log and we were off to the next park.

This next play area had a very small playground and was designed for toddlers. I knew the boy, age 6, would tire of this park quickly so I had to cache in a hurry. I found the second of two caches in this park and was surprised to find a full size ammo can! It was under a large rock that I had to roll over to reach. After signing the log and closing up the can, I reached to put the rock back and it was covered in ants. THOUSANDS of ants. Looks like that cache is on an anthill, Capitan Obvious! There were no ants on me so I headed back to the kiddie park and we were off again.

We stopped at another Temecula community park and this one had some shade. It got up to 85 degrees today and we were warm. That's right, 85 degrees in February in Southern California. That's why my mortgage is so high! We ate some lunch and I searched and searched but was forced to post a big old DNF on this one. There was a nice view of the snow on the nearby mountains and we made sure to snap some pictures.

Our last stop was at the Murrieta Pond Park. We stopped and got a picture of Brianna's Geocoin on a statue dedicated to Mr. Guenther, founder of Murrieta Mineral hot Springs. The hot springs are no longer accessible to the public as the property is owned by the Calvary Bible College. HOLY HOT SPRINGS! the ducks in this pond are obviously used to people bringing food because they all started swimming towards us as we reached the waters edge. We found the nearby cache, checked out the ducks, snapped a few more pictures and it was time to head home. The ducks followed us out of the park.




We had a great time taking Brianna's Geocoin to a bunch of local parks. This is a great way to geocache with young kids. If the parks near you don't have at least one geocache each, I would suggest putting one in them and make fun trips for other families. We made 5 finds one DNF and will be dropping Brianna's Geocoin off so it can go on other adventures.

We Found a Geocoin (From 12/24/07)

We got to go do some Geocaching on Christmas eve. The temperature was in the 70's today, perfect for December. We once again started the day with a DNF. We were searching for a micro in a nearby park. Julie and I looked all over while the kids played. There was some Asain lady at one the tables who must have thought we were crazy. We moved on to some normal sized caches.

We found this one pretty easily. It was one of those M&M mini container tubes. They had it taped with green tape and fake leaves stuck to it. Nice hide. that was fun!

Then we headed over to this cache. This cache was along the fence of the Anheuser Bush Clydesdale stables. What beautiful animals. This was an ammo container with lots of goodies inside. Brody grabbed a stress ball that looks like the earth, and Raegan grabbed a plastic Poo character. There was also an unactivated Geocoin inside! We grabbed that and activated it. You can look it up using the TB (TB15VCF) I'll be dropping it off soon and we can watch it move!

This one was just up the road along the same horse farm. Another cool hide in some large rocks.

The last one we grabbed today was here. It was a full size Ammo can with lots of cool stuff in it. Brody grabbed a toy and it was time to head home.

I ordered a couple of travel bug dog tags today and will be setting them free soon. I also got some stickers to put on our first cache that we will be hiding this week. I'll post the numbers when I get them.

We are also planning a caching adventure into the Cleveland national forest very soon. Hmmmmmm I'll be needing some cool places to drop my new trackables.

I have some great pictures that I'll be posting soon. I'm having trouble uploading them right now.