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What does Stephen King, The Superbowl, The College Bowl & The Academy Awards have in common?


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If your a Geocacher, then it’s a Power Trail!!  East of Sacramento are more than 3 Power Trails that have 160 caches combined.  Easy? hmmm no…. these are Mystery Caches, all 160 of them.  You have to solve the puzzle, or answer the questions to be able to get the coordinates to these caches.  It usually involves hours of research online to get the answers to solve the puzzle.  The Cache Owners did an incredible job of research to put these series together.  All of them are quality caches and it’s very rewarding to say that you have 160 Mystery Caches solved and logged!!  So sit back and pull up a Puzzle cache or two, after you have solved it enjoy the journey to the cache, log it and look for the next one, or in this case the next Series.

We started out at 3:00 am from Redding, CA heading toward the first Mystery cache on the SKH Series. Arrived at 6:30, Uh-Oh…. whats this?  No road?  No problem we have a Jeep!!!  Headed through the construction zone towards the first cache, got it!!!  All was ok until we me up with a Cement Barrier…. again, so glad we have the Jeep!!  We squeezed through the barrier and a telephone pole and now we find the road!!  Wouldn’t recommend driving on the first part, a bike or a walk might be a better way, well unless you have a small vehicle that you can take off roading!

First cache on the SKH Series: GC3B3DA SKH – Desperation by Voodoo Crew

When we started the College Bowl run there was another barrier, it seems there is a lot of dumping going on in the area, very sad to see.  Saw some Bald Eagles in the area and a couple of Hawks too! It was really a pretty area if you can look past the trash dump.  This place needs a CITO, and I would love to join in on cleaning it up.

First cache on the College Bowl: GC39HC3 The Rose Bowl by Voodoo Crew

We moved along at a fairly good pace, about 2  a minute average, then moved along to the Superbowl series. I grabbed my 6000th caches on the Superbowl Series, pretty cool.  It was great weather and wasn’t too hot, we started early enough that we didn’t hit the heat until about 3 pm when we were on the last part of the Academy Awards Series.

First Cache in the Superbowl Series: GC3A1WB Super Bowl XI (Raiders vs. Vikings) Voodoo Crew

First Cache in the Academy Award Series: GC3C770 The 1st Annual Academy Awards (1929) by Voodoo Crew

A big thank you to the Cache Owners!!  All the caches were in good shape, and there was parking available if you came in from the right direction, nothing to dangerous.  Your on a road, and traffic goes fast so you need to be careful, but hey we are used to that since Power Caches became popular. We found all but about 2 of the Geocaches on all of the combined Series.

After finishing the Mystery Cache Power Trails we headed over and did the Family Guy letterboxes and a Virtual.

Letterbox cache: GC3ABC2 Cleveland Brown – Family Guy (Letterbox Hybrid) by Voodoo Crew

Not a bad day – My accomplishments for the day:  178 caches total for the  day, 4 cache types: Virtual, Traditional, Mystery and Letterbox, and I  found my 6000th cache!!  Calling it a day and turning off the GPS‘r … oh wait… isn’t that a cache close by…. maybe one more???

Let’s Cache to the Coast for Lunch!


BIG BEAR and I were having Pizza with OldMrZ and his lovely bride on a Friday night when the conversation turns to Geo-caching and we are all in town on a Saturday!! Well that means a Geo-trip to somewhere. BIG BEAR and OldMrZ open up the laptop and start searching for somewhere that we can do a Geo-run. After a few minutes of searching at Geocaching.com their attentions turn to the Coast and the route on the way over. Looks like we get to have fresh seafood for lunch!! Now to run the queries and get some sleep and we will meet back at 0700.

The forecast calls for rain and it was right, no worries thought, we cache in the rain, snow, and wind it may slow us down a bit but we still get the cache! We have fresh batteries in the Garmin‘s, Butch the Geo-dog in the van and we are heading west for a fun day with Geo-friends. We will have lunch on the coast and we will be back to join up with Shampoodles and Ponytails for a Ride for Life Benefit Auction and Chili Feed.

Our route takes us on 299 from Redding to Arcata and all Geo-caches in between. As we get towards the summit the rain turns to snow, we keep going, stopping on the way of course. OldMrZ is driving and BIG BEAR is navigating…. 500 feet, 400 feet, 300 feet… looks like you can park at that turn off right over there.

Our First Stop: GC3CJY9 Fern Point by BRUHNRock Wall - Originally the old Hwy 299 – a very cool rock wall that used to be the Old 299 Hwy! wow… we actually took the hard way up, I saw later on the Cache page that you could have driven up to this one an easier way but we made it a 3 terrain, isnt that what you usually do when you Geocache?

Old 299 Hwy

We have more caches to get… so jumping back into the GeoVan and headed down the Hwy!

GC31ZT2 Anticipate This! by BRUHN

GC2BZ6H South Fork View by BRUHN

And of course there was a BIG BEAR cache to grab – a favorite for sure and it was published in July of 2004!! : GCK4ED BIG BEAR WHERE ARE YOU by BIG BEAR

I took some pictures here – it was a really pretty spot! Nice place for a cache.

Tru2Cntry & BIG BEAR at "BIG BEAR WHERE ARE YOU"

BIG BEAR at "BIG BEAR WHERE ARE YOU"

We did quite a few more caches – another favorite was GC32MZK The Fish Ladder by thedawdlers.
There was a Fish Ladder 100 feet below this little bridge built in 1923, it was very cool and worthy of some pictures. It was raining though so some of the pictures are blurry, still really cool little spot!

1923 Bridge

OldMrZ at the Fish Ladder

BIG BEAR, Tru2Cntry and OldMrZ at the Fish Ladder

OldMrZ looking over at the Fish Ladder

A few more caches to get by one or our good Geo friends: Humboldt Flier: GC223BH ” X ” ( X OUT ) by humboldt flier, GC223BW ” Y ” ( YEPPER – THAT BE A MIGHTY FINE VIEW ) by humboldt flier, GC223C4 ” Z ” ( ZEE, OR IS IT ZED )by humboldt flier and a few others that were great fun to get.

But now its time to put the GPS on the Seascape Restaurant for Lunch, a favorite place to get your fresh seafood fix on.

Afterwards we went for a hike around the Trinidad Trailheads and grabbed the caches on the trail, beautiful views and we worked off our lunch!!

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Caches on the Trailhead:
GCWTGP KING’S CROSS by Arse&Hemi

GCV7HT Trinidad Trove by hidegoseek

GC3A1R2 A Spurious Cache by BRUHN

GC3A1PZ Hairpin Defender II by BRUHN to name a few…

its after 3 and we have to be back for a Chili Feed put on by our GeoFriends Shampoodles and Ponytails so we head back to the Geovan and start the trek back home, what a great day!

BIG BEAR’S BIG BIRTHDAY BASH Event


HAPPY BIRTHDAY BIG BEAR!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BIG BEAR!

GC3B571 BIG BEARS BIG BIRTHDAY BASH by Tru2Cntry.

BIG BEAR’s birthday is no small event, at least it isn’t anymore! I thought it would be fun to celebrate BIG BEAR’s Birthday with all of our Geocaching Family. Neither BIG BEAR or I have family close by, and we love being with our Geocaching Family and Friends so we invited everybody to celebrate his birthday with us.

We published the Event and found out that there were 7 other birthday’s all within a month of BIG BEAR’s birthday. Well Geocaching friends are such great people, that’s one of the reason’s Geocaching is fun to do. Shampoodles and Ponytails, painted some great Geocaching rocks for the Gift Bags. We had a lot of Geocaches on the raffle table thanks to: OlCowboy, Georooks, Shampoodles, Ponytails, Dakotachix, Jeeperjones and Rat&Mushroom brought their signature Ammo Cans! Whoo Hoo… the raffle table was filling up!

I rented the Round Table Pizza Party room for 2 hours: 7-9 pm, I arrived at 6 to decorate and found out that they didn’t have my reservation for that day and time… so we just started filling up the tables and booths out in the Pizza restauraant area. And there was a birthday party already using the Party room that wasn’t scheduled to leave for another 2 hours… good thing we are flexible. The Manager at Round Table was awesome, “Penny” took over the sitution and the group with the birthday party left and hour earlier than they had planned. Thank you for that!

Geocachers were showing up left and right, no time to decorate, or so I thought. Lets just pick up our stuff and move to the Party room. Once in the room, Shampoodles, Ponytails and so many others started helping me decorate, I think Tink1914 team was putting up Party Zone banners, Shampoodles and I were putting down the table cloths. It was starting to look like a birthday party!!

RAT & MUSHROOM, Mushroom has a "Mush" stach!

RAT & MUSHROOM, Mushroom has a "Mush" stach!

While everybody ordered their pizza‘s and salads, we started things off with a Geocaching Bingo game mixer which I got here: Geocaching Online Resource Directory: Printables. For those who got a BINGO I had made custom Key Chain Lanyards with their Geocaching name on them to get as a prize, they were a hit!

After everybody had gotten their fill of Pizza I grabbed BIG BEAR and asked him to Emcee the Raffle. BIG BEAR is a natural at Emceeing! He had a great time calling out the numbers and having fun with everyone.

BIG BEAR emcees the raffle

BIG BEAR emcees the raffleCantseem helps BIG BEAR with the raflleBIG BEAR and OlCowboy

BIG BEAR & T2C with the Cake

BIG BEAR & T2C with the CakeBIG BEAR's Cake!

BIG BEAR blowing out the candles

BIG BEAR blowing out the candles

Now it’s time for the Birthday cake and Ice Cream. BIG BEAR didn’t know about the cake. Dakotachix and I were putting the candles on and lighting them while the raffle was winding down. As soon as the candles were lit we broke into the “Happy Birthday to You” song and brought the cake in. It was a Bear cake made out of Cupcakes, with a Garmin 60csx in one hand and a blue iPhone in the other hand with a T-Shirt that read: FTF on it! The cupcakes went fast, and then I forgot to bring out the ice cream. I took it home and BIG BEAR had some later, so all is good there.

Overall there were over 45 people that came, 2 hours was a little to short, I think next time I will do a 4 hour Event and I will get there 2 hours early to set up. I am not sure but it seemed like everybody got there an hour early, so if I want to decorate I need to be there way ahead of time to do it.

But what a great time we had, Thank you to all our Geocaching family for coming and honoring BIG BEAR and for contributing to the fun. We are going to make this an annual Event and have already started planning next year’s event!!

BIG BEAR at Firestone GC78


BIG BEAR A

GC78 Firestone by Scott Hinds

BIG BEAR’s birthday wish was to do this cache, it was published 10/02/2000 called Firestone.  It is located near Bodega Bay, North of San Francisco. So after biking the Golden Gate park earlier in the day, we jumped in the Jeep and headed north up Hwy 1 to the cache location.  The road into the cache was winding but it was a beautiful drive.

This was rated a 1/1 but we parked at the closest point and walked over, looked down and thought no way this is a 1 terrain.  We did see a trail though and later found out if you parked at the Trail Head (which we passed on the way up to the cache) that you could have an easy hike into this cache that was a terrain of 1.    Since we were at the closest point we through caution to the wind and started our way down to the cache, our terrain was about a 4.  It was very steep, but the views were extraordinary… it was beautiful.  There was no fog and we got there just about Sunset to witness one of the prettiest views of the ocean.

There aren’t too many of these old caches left and this one filled in a spot, or rather a date on our “Finds by Placed Month” calendar.  The caches with the older years for 2000 and 2001 are few and far between.  They were published when Geocaching was just beginning and now are very sought after caches.  On Firestone at the time there are only 260 finds for the cache.  For being published 11 years ago you would think there would be a lot more finds.  I hope this cache stays active, the owner has stated on his cache page that he has moved and it is difficult for him to maintain it, the Geocaching family is pretty good however at helping to maintain caches if they know that the owner can’t do it himself.  Trying to fill in the Jasmer Challenge Calendar: GC1GBC1 The Jasmer Challenge (Northern California Edition) by jasmerb

This cache for me will be remembered for not only the numbers it fills in for me but the memory of one of the most beautiful spots I have ever been to, and we ended the day by watching the sun go down. Perfect ending to a perfect caching day and it was a great way to honor my best friend’s birthday!

Happy Birthday BIG BEAR!

BIG BEAR’s Birthday Caching Weekend


BIG BEAR and Sean strategizing

It’s BIG BEAR’s Birthday and what does he want to do? You got it, Geocache!  We met up with our good friend Sean Stafford at San Francisco Golden Gate  Park to cache the park on our bikes.  We are off at 9:30 Sunday morning with what looked like a perfect day in front of us.  Starting cache: GC256C6 Crossroads by irwinSports and then heading East staying on the bike trails and walking our bikes in areas where bicycles were not allowed.

BIG BEAR and Sean

The caches are varied for the most part, some were just baggies with logs in not so great shape, and then some were lock n locks that have been replaced or are showing their age.  It seems to be very hard to maintain a cache in the park because of the homeless and just the non stop visitors with children and dogs.  Caches have to be hidden well to not be a target for a muggle.

Tru2Cntry and Sean

We found all but  a couple of the caches we set our GPS‘s on, and the different locations were all fun places to visit in the part.  Some of the caches offered up some history, while others were memorials to War Heroes or Aids victims, but all were great fun to track down.  It was a great place to take the bikes and ride to cache and also get to visit one of the most beautifil places in San Francisco.

I had never been to Golden Gate Park and while we rode most of the day, quitting at 2:30 only allowed us to ride and cache half of the park, we still have another half of the park left to see for a future Caching Adventure.   It was a great way to spend the day with BIG BEAR and Sean, caching and biking in a beautiful park to celebrate BIG BEAR’s birthday.

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English: Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gat...

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Honoring a Fallen Soldier: Chad Regelin-Earned 16 medals; Anderson High grad was Sailor of Year


Shampoodles called me and asked me if I wanted to stand on horseback with the Redding Rodeo group for Chad Reglein’s funeral procession… would I? Absoulutly!!

Tru2Cntry, Shampoodles, Ponytails & Heather

We were honored to stand by on horseback with flags held high, while the funeral procession wound it’s way from Anderson to the Igo Veterans Cemetary where Chad was laid to rest. We stood by with hundreds of people who lined the streets to honor this amazing young man that gave his life for our Country. We waived to all who were taking part in the line of cars, some were very decorated Military Officers, some were family in black limosines, and some were just part of the many friends and family that knew him and grew up with him. Most waived back and gave us a thumbs up too, some waived their kleenex and even some saluted, we tried to hold back our tears but they came anyway. Such a privilege to honor this young man and the life he gave up for me so that I have the freedom to live in America. Thank you Chad Reglelin, I did not know you personally but I wish I had and thank you for all you did for our country: The United States of America, may God Bless America!

More on Chad Regelin via Redding native Chad Regelin earned 16 medals; Anderson High grad was Sailor of Year » Redding Record Searchlight.

Thank you Shampoodles for asking me to be a part of such an amazing morning and thank you for letting me ride Goldfish, what a beautiful horse! I was honored to stand with you and Ponytails to salute Chads funeral procession

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After the funeral procession Shampoodles & Ponytails loaded up the horses and we all headed out to the Jelly’s Ferry area for a great afternoon of horseback riding and geocaching. The days are still short but we managed to get 5 Geocaches before heading back to the barn… Thank you Shampoodles was a great day!

GC1PKPC Moose Rides Again by Rocky, Bullwinkle & Moose
GC2AAKZ DBMC-Water- by denihike
GC1N7DW Lava Stronghold & Pool by Biojava
GC2AAKM DBMC-Air-by denihike
GC39Q17 Ponytails & Shampoodles Go Riding by ponytails

New Year – New Caching Adventure!


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New Years day typically starts off with getting together with friends and family and watching football,  or just relaxing after a hectic Christmas season.  This year we fired up the Jeeps, called our Geocaching Friends and said the weather is perfect lets go off road and grab some 5 star terrain Geocaches!  5 Star Terrain ususally means you need a high clearance 4 wheel drive vehicle which is why we all have Jeeps!!  What a blast this was, 7 Jeeps, 12 Geocachers: BIG BEAR, Lookout4 and Anna, Teco_mac, Cantseem, Playcache 1&2, JeeperJones 1&2, Crowshoot & Floflower… oh and Tru2Cntry,  2 non Geocachers (hey they have a Jeep, they qualify!) Lets all meet at 12:00 at the OHV4 Staging Area.

OHV4 Staging Area Meeting Place
Ok, we are all here… let the fun begin!


Playcache

Teco_mac & Cantseem in my Jeep

Don & Liz

Crowshoot & Floflower

Now that we all made it up the gnarley part of the road, lets get to the Geocaches!!

GC2T00Z dakotas wreck site by cheater rick.

GCQEDE Route 4 – Most Difficult by dzdiver

GC2QADG T2C Hits 3000 by BIG BEAR.

GC396G7 WELCOME TO 5000 TRU2CNTRY by BIG BEAR.

GC396G1 HANG GLIDING by BIG BEAR.

The off roading continued up to the Hang Gliding Cache where we all broke out the food and had a picnic, the view from here was incredible and we were blessed with a beautiful day, great weather and the chance to share it with great friends!

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The road back…

Larry’s trying to find another way out…

Jeep Rubicon Rock Crawling

Image via Wikipedia

My 5000th Cache Christmas


T2C hits 5000!

After doing Truckees 1st Power Trail I was 11 caches away from getting my 5000th Cache, BIG BEAR says “lets do it!”   I love caching with him, he caches in the snow with me, at night, 5 star terrain?  That doesn’t stop BIG BEAR, getting 11 caches after an all day run? That doesn’t even come close to stopping him… yes he is a little obsessed with Geocaching, but that’s why I love to cache with him, he is the best Geocaching partner ever, and he is my best friend. BIG BEAR has been there for my 2000th, my 3000th, my 4000th and now my 5000th CACHE!  OK!  LET’S DO IT!

We are on our way back to Susanville from our Christmas Weekend in Tahoe and the Nuvi has the caches from Tahoe to Susanville on it, so we just start with the closest one and go from there!  Stopped and got one that we had missed on the way over, don’t know how we missed it, it was a hubcap and we found it really fast this time, from there each of the caches we did although roadside dash and grabs were actually all unique in the own way.  We grabbed a “Highrise Condo”  very cute, the longest guardrail, another great cache too.  But now it’s time to get serious and find a cool cache to do for my 5000th.  I checked the iPhone for nearby caches and one name stood out: “she thinks we are fishing.”   I liked it, it was an ammo can, published on my daughters birthday, only had one find so far so it was a newly published cache, the cache owner was dizfiz and he was the owner of the power trail that we had just done, so…… it sounded great for a 5000th.  We plugged it into the Nuvi and made our way,  it was a dirt road with snow but nothing to difficult.  Got to where the cache was and did the hike up the hill, it was a good hide, I think we searched for a good 20 minutes for an ammo can? Yep it was tucked in nicely, BIG BEAR yells “I found it but I’m not telling you where! You have to come find it!!  LOL!!  The coords were great and we got it from it’s tucked in spot and stamped the log!!  I had done it!! My 5000th cache!! With my best friend BIG BEAR!!  That was just plain fun!!!

GC38TC6 She thinks were just fishing by Dizfiz

GC25887 The Longest Guard! by sujojeepers

GCJTPT Doyle Graveyard Church by TeamSportScort

GC25882 Lost it on Hwy 395! sujojeepers

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

Rescuing Snow White


BIG BEAR has a series here locally that is know as his “Snow White Series.”  You have to “rescue” Snow White from the 7 Dwarfs which are 7 caches in the series that contain the pieces of the coordinates that once you put them together in the right sequence get you to the location of cache location called Snow White.  I failed to find Snow White, it seems I was about 200 feet off.  One of the Dwarf caches got muggled and so it is missing its numbers and I guessed, but I guessed wrong and I was losing daylight.

I started at 10:30 am and went until 4:30 and still had to make it back to the Jeep.  The terrain wasn’t hard but you did have to manuver through a couple of canyons and the wind was gusting up to what felt like 40 mph at times, so I didn’t want to be finding my way back in the dark.  It was a nice hike though and my finds for the day totaled 20 Caches for the day, with some really nice views of the snow capped mountains of Mt Shasta, Mt Lassen and the Trinity Alps.

The Caches in the Series (Not in order):

GC1NP3V THE EVIL BIG BEAR.
GC1NP25 CANTSEEM
GC1NKT9 GRAMPS POSSE
GC1NP4Y SNOW WHITE
GC1NKV5 NR. TEACHER
GC1NKW1 Teco Mac
GC1NP2E MR. Dice
GC1NP3F DAIRYVILLE
GC1NP2V SHASTA SAM

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Tru2Cntry doing the Snow White Series

English: Lassen Peak reflected in Manzanita Lake

Image via Wikipedia

San Francisco Virtuals, Webcams & Earthcaches


BIG BEAR & T2C at The Golden Gate Bridge

Nov 27, 2011 – We had a blast on our continued hunt for all the Virtuals in San Francisco. Starting out on Thanksgiving Day on the East Side of San Francisco and continuing our hunt today

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