It's H.O.T.

That's right, a new acronym just for you and it was coined by yours truly. It's H.O.T. Horrible Out There. H.O.T. I can't bring myself to go find a geocache. And the new mystery cache published by S&R is still making me pull my hair out. They added a clue that says, "Lbh pna "pbhag" ba hf; jr jba'g yrg lbh "ebg" njnl nybar." Oops, let me decrypt that for you, the clue says, "You can count on us; we won't let you rot away alone." Then, about a week later, they posted a note saying they updated the clue to make it easier. They put quotes on the words "count" and "rot". This might have helped me if I had not already been focused on those two words. It makes me think of ROT 13, or ROT 5, I even tried ROT 47. Nothing.

RoxieMama hid a new cache that I wanted to find on the way home from work but The thermometer in my car said 113 and I was not about to exit my extremely cold vehicle.

You may have figured by reading some of my past posts that I am not a fan of bumping into rattlesnakes out in nature. This is the time of year that I like to stick to the more urban caches and avoid venom in my leg. Below is a log entry on one of my caches posted by Holeva6.

June 8 by holeva6 (496 found)
Made the grab with the six year old, can't do that kind again with him. All was fine getting up there and getting the cache. getting down was a different story. come down a grade with a six year old on your hip because the rattling sounds are to many and you your stick and child on board are working your way down by going around the sounds. Get day for caching not so good a spot to put your self in. These will have to wait till winter or a day I don't give a dang.

When I read that, I imagine thousands of snakes lining the trail just rattling away and waiting for me to make a wrong move. I was planning on hiking up to that cache to rescue a travel bug that's been stuck up there for a while, but that poor bug might just have to wait until fall. I know some of you are thinking, "Just be careful and if you don't bother the snakes, they wont bother you." Well, thank you very much, and I'll make sure to not bother them by staying off of that hill.

So, It's one of those "trapped indoors" kind of weekends. It was already over 100 degrees when I left my gym this morning at 11:00. I do need to make a new M&M tube geocache to replace the one by the gym. As I was pulling up the other day I noticed the tree had been trimmed. I went over to see if the cache survived and sure enough, it was gone. That's my first cache gone missing. It hurts my heart to think of it being tossed into the wood chipper with all the rest of the trimmings.

Hopefully this heat wave will end soon and life can go back to normal. Until then, I'll keep trying to find indoor activities. I actually painted The Girls toenails. Ha ha, I'm not very good at that, but it was fun.

Wild Weather In Southern California

For the past few days the weather here in SoCal has been relentless. Last weekend the temperature was in the triple digits and now we have thunderstorms, hail and even tornadoes! Here is a YouTube video of the hail coming down in Moreno Valley. You can hear the thunder booming in the background. I like this video because in his very first sentence he mentions that it's like we are living in Minnesota. Ha ha, Minnesota.





This next video is of a double funnel tornado that touched down in Moreno Valley as well. There are a bunch other videos of the tornado from different areas at the YouTube page. All this video was taken by people that live only 30 miles or so from me.





I took a couple of pictures of the rain as it was coming down. It was raining as hard as I've ever seen it rain. Can you believe that the second I turned the video camera on, the rain stopped. I mean stopped. Like someone closed the valve and there was nothing. Not a drizzle. That's how my video skills go. Thank god for YouTube and these fine people for posting their video.

Our big trip up Mount San Jacinto is next weekend. The weather is supposed to be warmer. It only got up to 30 degrees at the upper tram station today. There is fresh snow up there. The Wife and I are staying at a resort in Cathedral City. It's a place that rents out its vacant time shares. We will be in a one bedroom condo. It's a very nice four star place for $104 a night from Hotels.com. (No, there is no time share sales pitch to worry about. It's just a hotel.)

I have a few Palm Springs power trails all mapped out too. I hope to return after having found over 60 geocaches. The weather needs to be warm enough for us to go summit the mountain and cool enough for us to hike on the desert floor. I should have some great photos when we get home.

Here's the pictures of the rain from two days ago. I took these from the safety of my front porch. There was some serious lightning and thunder going on at this time. Thankfully I'm bullet proof! By the way, I hope all you hardcore cachers attending GeoWoodstock are enjoying yourselves right now. Have fun, tell everyone Hick@Heart says hi!