I went caching over the holiday weekend in VISALIA, then met up with a team from Denmark named VELS!

VISALIA:
Here’s a list of the best caches we encountered, but no hints or spoilers. Just know if you go, that these are some of the VERY good ones:
Cow Pie Corner
"Rockin’ In The Tree Tops…."
Goosin’ Mama
Zane’s Cache
Chewin’ yer cud at ECP’s 100th hide
Jackpot
its elementary
Local Motel

One of the caches was at this historic building, designed to replicate a VARIETY of Italian architecture ca. 500 B.C.:

I like seeing nature at its most interesting and all these spider webs make a beautiful kind of art VERITE:

This lonely guy was all by himself in his area of minimal VEGETATION:

VOILA! I asked f0t0m0m to demonstrate for you his unique method of log extraction:

OK, I do have to give one away, but this is too good a VARIATION not to share. This is why we geocache – to celebrate!

Team VELS:
When I went to Europe last winter, I made a special VOYAGE into Denmark to find this cache:
Statcache 33 Worldtop10 – 3 EMC of Northridge, CA
placed by Team VELS. They are now over here on a 7-week car tour of the western U.S. Their blog is in Danish, but they have taken some stunning photos, so I encourage you to take a look at their VISUALS!
VELS blog

Hey – I mean GREAT photos! Click on that link! VIEW them!

While they were here, I did the VICE VERSA and hid a cache for them!
Guardian Toad: Jakob & Stina Vels

Here they are enjoying the VICTUALS at the local Outback:

Until next week, I wish you VISCERAL, VORACIOUS caching!

Last Sunday, I decided to chronicle my day of power caching with a few short videos taken throughout. Riding along with the Ventura Kids was full of laughs and logbooks, as usual. We ended up with 96 finds. Whew!

I begin my day of caching with the Ventura Kids.

Our first find in Redlands is a light pole.
Honoring IE Cachers Cache Bash V-10

The Ventura Kids discuss their “rules” for geocaching.

I get to see the expert technique for finding a cache in the ivy.

“Hiking” with the Ventura Kids
The Angle

The long walk back across the park…

We meet up with The Devious Max Power and TerraGirl, who join us for the rest of the day. Sandy shows just how FAST the VKs are at finding – truly.

We encounter literod at a cache, but he opts not to try to keep up.

Some nice views from a cache in Highland

We’ve found way more than 10 caches per hour, so Sandy “lets” us have lunch.

Here we are at Rubio’s – this is a photo, not a video, I know. Judging by his smile, I think this is Steve’s favorite part of the day!

We encounter MissAmerica1 and Pacholik at a cache.

At the end of this clip, Sandy finds a cache with a bug on it – check out her reaction!

We search for a cache near a large fountain and pond.

We DNF the fountain cache.

Urban off-roading!

The Inland Empire Cache Bash
IE Cache Bash V

At the last cache of the day, I run out of room on my camera’s memory card!
END OF THE ROAD

Until next week, happy power caching and Happy 4th of July!

I spent two mornings this week out geocaching, one with f0t0m0m, one with him and Capdude. The first of the days we were in Simi Valley, the second in Santa Clarita. Both days were fun and relaxing, overcast and cool. The finds were mostly standard with a couple of really good camo jobs thrown in. We did not do any hiking per se, but did climb a couple of hills in open space or parks. We had lunch at decent restaurants, but nothing gourmet. We saw lizards, birds, and squirrels, but no unusual wildlife. We were unnoticed by muggles. We were not in a hurry, and our lists had only around a couple dozen for each day. I took a few pictures. We enjoyed the fresh air, the anticipation of each hunt, and the satisfying ritual of the log book. We got outside, and saw something new around every corner.

I’d call it generic geocaching. This does not diminish the experience in any way, however. This is what we really enjoy: just finding geocaches and finding more and more of them.

I know is says “no parking”, but we really only paused here while we found the cache in the corner:
Corner Cache

Olive trees are great places to hide caches, with all the crevasses they have:
Mulligan’s Micro Madness

This cache afforded a really lovely panoramic view from a bridge connecting a big shopping complex with the residential neighborhood to the west:
Paseo Ranch

I’ve found 3 or 4 caches under this little bridge. It’s in a small valley amongst the homes that’s lace with walking paths.
Bridge to the Summit

Capdude hid a new one by the nature preserve in Lake Balboa Park:
Guardian Toad – Ellen

On another day, I did some cache maintenance, replacing damp, moldy log sheets. Some of my readers might see their names here:
Vector Sees Stars!

Until next week, happy plain-wrap caching!

I did a performance in Bartlesville, OK, just north of Tulsa, with Beethoven’s Wig over the weekend, and got this one more state checked off. I did not think about this song the whole time, but popped in to my head as I was formulating what to write this week:

It was a quick trip, most of it spent on airplanes. Both flights took us through DEN:

I had time for only two caches. The first
Downtown Bartlesville #1

It was across the street from the courthouse, built in 1913:

The second was in a park that I did not have time to explore.

Both were about a half mile from my hotel, yet were the closest. There is no cache at the Price Tower, a significant Bartlesville landmark, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

We performed their beautiful performing arts center:

Here are Susan Boyd and I all dressed and ready to go on stage:

The stage:

No town, one would think, is complete without some extraordinarily kitschy art:

… and no trip is complete without sampling the best of the local cuisine, which here, according to our driver who bought us all some, is Braum’s ice cream!

Until next week…..
oh, and the kitten is now over 6 weeks old and eating out of a bowl – doing SO well!

I was thinking I would only be able to get out for one or two geocaches this week, but I ended up doing a bunch. I did a short hike in Griffith Park with Eagle Rock Rob and a half day in Simi Valley with f0t0m0m, but I also did grab a couple in between errands, hence the title of this week’s installment.

A new one appeared near Van Nuys airport near an industrial park.
Van Nuys Airport and Taxiway
Along the street there, you can see dozens of antique aircraft. I never knew they were there:

I also had never heard of this Funny Farm:

The cache is around behind where you can see the animals they have.
Funny Farm

The hike in Griffith Park was for a few in a new series, and I look forward to going back for more of them. They are all basic hides along the fire roads and trails, and are like breadcrumbs to show us the loops to take.

January: A walk in the park.
August: A walk in the park.
September: A walk in the park.
October: A walk in the park.
November: A walk in the park.
December: A walk in the park.

Eagle Rock Rob signs a log book:

I enjoy the views and rock formations here:

I find that around 2 dozen caches is just about right for most urban caching days before I start to get fatigued. This number easily goes up or down depending on the density and/or quality of caches in an area, though. Sometimes 10 feels like a lot of work and other times 100 feels like I’ve just gotten started! The half day in Simi Valley involved a list of 24, it took 3 hours, and it felt just right. We ended up with 23 finds and skipped one that was way back on a bike trail. I’ll have to figure out how to access that one another day.

This cache was on the other side of a dry creek:
G-hike

Several were at entrances to the bike path along the arroyo, where you can see egrets and ducks. They were not being cooperative for my camera that day, but the creek view and the cloudy day were nice combo.
Simi Arroyo bike path #9

We had lunch here, too, and yes, the cache is right there where you think it is:
Bow & Arrow

Here’s a typical local walkway:

This slug was trying to sign the log, too:

We drove by a particularly big, beautiful jacaranda tree:

Until next week, cache as cache can!

A few of us were interviewed for this article and I got quoted at the end.
link to the article

What a great photo at the top! It’s a nice article, mostly correct, but it’s still quite disappointing to read that the state park official thinks that geocaches are buried. True geocaches are hidden, but never buried with a shovel. He corrects himself later, but it still comes off as confusing. The new restrictions for geocaching in state parks is a concern, and none of us are sure who we are supposed to ask now for “permission”. An even greater concern is that the legislature wants to close a lot of the parks. Common sense says that it would cost more to keep people out of a closed park, especially homeless and criminals, than to keep them open to the public. I’m feeling a big sense of frustration here on both counts.

To soothe our souls now, here are some photos from two recent hikes. The first four are from the hike I took last week:

These are veins of chalk, and fairly large area of them was by the trail:

Here’s Bee Canyon, just north of O’Melveny Park at the north end of the San Fernando Valley.

The park offers a variety of areas to picnic, walk, hike, even ride horses. Albackore and I took a trail loop that I had never done before, partially ascending the adjacent Mission Peak, then cutting across and down in to the canyon. This is the bread crumb trail of caches we followed:
Rise of the Phoenix
Piney Pond
Upper Walnut Plateau
Wagon Trail
Meadow Of The Grazing Deer
San Fernando Hillside View
Burnt Walnuts
O’ Melveny Overlook Again
A Bridge too Far – Gone
Exposed

It was ravaged by a fire a few months ago, the evidence of which is still easily visible in the regrowth. This fire hydrant was apparently quite useless:

We saw this beauty along the trail, too! I rarely see snakes. This one is only the 4th rattler I’ve encountered while geocaching in 6 years.

Until next week – watch out for snakes!
Oh, the kitten is doing marvelously well, growing and eating, now just over 4 weeks old.

I got out for a hike on Saturday with Albackore and Capdude by taking the kitten to a cat sitter! She still needs a bottle every 3 hours, and the drive and hike took us about 5. In a couple of weeks, after she’s learned to eat more regular cat food, this won’t be necessary, but meanwhile, my schedule revolves around the still tiny feline.

Capdude did the research on the hike, but none of us were aware of the gnarlyness of the trail! We did a car bridge, parking one car at the bottom, driving another to the top, then hiking down, and this turned out to be very wise. The hike started out on a nice fire road, ascending to an old lookout, but most of the descent was along a rocky ridge. There was much rock clambering and steep parts and “where’s the trail”. We all had a blast, though, finding all of the caches on the list, some of which I’d already done, but 7 were new for me. It was a great workout, and just right for my re-entry in to hiking after being away from it for a couple of months!

100,000,000 BC
Hole in the Wall
Skunk Rock
Evil Lurks at the Root
Meadow View
Cloud City
Bite the Bullet

The views ranged from foggy to spectacular, as is typical for spring hiking around here. Albackore got this nice shot of me workin’ the poles, not exactly skiing, more like creeping down the slope. Pay more attention to the view!

I gave up on this section and did a spider crawl to get down. Where’s that view?

No cache in here, Capdude! (photo by Albackore)

At the end of the hike, Capdude placed this one in honor of the kitten – La Divina Gattina Marzapana, aka Marzipan, aka Marziboo:
Marziboo (Traditional Cache)

Until next week, mew mew!

Those of us who have found lots of caches know that this obsessive hobby is about a lot more than signing logbooks. It permeates into and integrates with our lives, sometimes in the most unusual ways.

We’ve all done other things while geocaching, like shopping or errands or phone calls. The wildest thing I’ve done while out caching is refinance my house. Oh yes, and f0t0m0m can attest to this, I was on the phone with my loan officer getting the information all in order while we were driving between caches!

We’ve all found crazy things at or in geocaches, too, from oddball or stupid trade items to money to other geocachers, but what f0t0m0m and I discovered on May 8 was pretty much life-changing. We found an abandoned kitten!

Some *%#&@%!* idiot had left three of them in a shoebox, barely four days old were they, and two had already not survived the ordeal, but one had gotten out and was scrabbling around in the weeds, mewling. I got her some kitten formula from a nearby vet and fed her like clockwork every 2 hours for the next several days, and she’s pulled through! There’s no guarantee with one that young, but she’s a fighter.

Today, she is 17 days old, and just opening her eyes. While at first, I was paranoid that she would not make it and didn’t want to leave the house just in case something went wrong, I feel confident enough now to leave her at home nested in her cat carrier to run errands or find geocaches between feedings.

She’s a little miracle kitty, and I’m excited that I’ve been able to rescue her. Now if we could just educate the world NOT TO ABANDON ANIMALS!! AAAUGH!!!! HELLO?!?!?!?! CRAZY!!!

(calms down)

OK.

This is the cache where we found her. It was a nano, so it was TKLNSL (Took Kitten, Left Nothing, Signed Log):
Welcome to Farmersville
Here’s the kitty the day we found her:

And the next day:

Today!

I think the name Marzipan will stick. We were finding camo’d pouch style caches in the area, locally referred to as “marsupials”, and f0t0m0m had permuted that randomly to “marzipans”. When we found the kitty, he suggested the name. Hey, turns out that neither of us care for the almond paste, but it’s good cat name. *sigh* I won’t be doing a heck of a lot of caching for the next couple of weeks, but I’ll still get some in (DUH!), and saving this sweet thing’s life is sure worth it. This is the list of caches I got to yesterday with Albackore, between kitten feedings:

Oh! the pressure (Traditional Cache)

602L P.C. (Traditional Cache)

red zone (Traditional Cache)

3-way-stop (Traditional Cache)

Alley Oop! (Traditional Cache)

Val and Dan, A TERRIFIC PAIR! (Traditional Cache)

Schnitzengruben (Traditional Cache)

Bridge the Gap (Traditional Cache)

*** TOOK A BREAK TO GO HOME AND FEED THE KITTEN ***

Undercover Jon (Traditional Cache)

Stop! See Sales Associate (Traditional Cache)

McNificent McG’s McAche (Traditional Cache)

The Gryffindor Floo (Traditional Cache)

dust ruffle (Traditional Cache)

Ernie Keebler (Traditional Cache)

bird’s nest (Traditional Cache)

Until next week, Happy Catting… er… Caching!
OH! What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done while caching? What’s the most significant thing you’ve found? Please comment below….

P.S. Greetings to f0t0m0m, both Jim and Karen, enjoying Geowoodstock in Tennessee this weekend! A big hello to all the cachers out there from me and Marzipan, the world’s sweetest trade item.

One of the most gorgeous areas in Southern California is the isolated stretch of highway between Santa Clarita (Magic Mountain) and Ventura. While the savvy locals use it as an alternative thoroughfare, it’s generally uncrowded and always scenic. The valley features rolling hills that remind one of Italy, a wide variety of agriculture to observe, and charming towns replete with their unique histories. Fruit stands, wineries, antiques, and a honey farm along the way are tempting even to the most determined cacher.

I’m always happy to see fresh hides go in up there, and I have another excuse to take a relaxed journey through the countryside, and revisit the towns of Piru, Fillmore, and Santa Paula. This last trip was with f0t0m0m, who did the routing homework for us, and even included a short hike (gasp!) in the itinerary.

Here’s the view from the *cache name*, a deceptive .1 from the car, but up a couple of switchback and a steep animal track through the weeds:

The fig trees were in full bloom:

We found a cache at a place where film productions can rent trained animals:

Do they train the chickens?

The alpacas at this ranch are not trained or for rent, but tolerated my approach for a photo. What oddly cute creatures:

Spring colors were abounding, indeed:

Did you know that Ozzy Osbourne has a par 3 golf course? The cache is in the sign, of course:

The valley is rich in all kinds of resources:

I especially love finding places where the sounds are like natural symphonies. Take a moment and enjoy the chirps of various birds and the gentle squeaking of the oil “bird”.

Until next week, I wish you relaxed and scenic caching!
(Oh, and Jim, don’t worry… next week’s blog will be ALL about the kitten we found abandoned at the cache in Farmersville! She’s doing so well now…. we saved a life!)

I’m sitting in the breakfast bar at the Best Western in Porterville with f0t0m0m, preparing for our third day of caching around the area. We’ve dipped in and out of the Sequoia National Forest during the last two days, and today we will cruise through the local orange groves and agriculture. Our numbers have not been quite what we’d hoped, as we only got 35 on Wednesday, bogged down by curvy mountain roads and a high DNF rate, but yesterday we managed to find 100 in 12 hours. Our mettle was tested literally in the 11th hour. With only 6 caches needed to make the magic 100, 6 out of 8 were DNFs! We were either tired or they were missing, or both, nevertheless we persisted and found the four more after that to reach our goal.

Often a day of geocaching will test one’s attitude, and it’s important to find caching teams that maintain good ones. That’s at least true for me. I always have a fun and relaxed time with f0t0m0m, as that’s his nature, and we both know that it is just supposed to be fun after all. I feel blessed to have the time and resources to be able to get out there and enjoy life through geocaching so often!

This is a quintessential California scene, a two-lane highway through rolling golden hills dotted with oak trees and scattered cattle:

One of the public back roads took us through this gate:

We herded a few cows along the way:

There was a really big lizard in a rock crevasse watching us retrieve a cache:

There’s a cache in this lovely spot:

Our list of caches took us near Lemon Cove, where f0t0m0m, Jim, grew up, so I got the literal two-minute tour of the town of about 150. Here’s the church where his dad preached for 30 years:

This is the house where he grew up, and it’s still the parsonage:

The winding mountain road with not enough caches on it at least had scenery like this, featuring creeks and sequoias, and that’s why we’re out there, right? OK, sometimes it IS about the numbers, but I’m also out there for this:

I think one word that describes so much of California and caching in the state is “bucolic”:

I haven’t logged in yet, so check my profile in a couple of days for the list of what we found this week. Until next week, happy, bucolic caching!