You can see the general area that this cache is going to be hidden from a long way off. The name of the cache doesn’t lie, there is a giant there. I got lucky with this one, the geocache was in the first spot that I looked and the GPS coords were right on.
I had heard about this cache before I saw it so I knew what was in store for us. Back in the mid eighties when I first moved to the bay area along the shores In Emeryville there was all this really neat art that was out in the water. One of these was an airplane. Most of the art work is now gone but the airplane remains.
This cache is located out onto a deck like pier. At the end of this pier is the airplane in question. Now this airplane is probably about 5 feet from the end of the pier, you can reach out and touch it if you stretch. In order to actually retrieve the cache you need to crawl over the railing and then make a leap of faith over to the pilings that the airplane is resting on.
My buddy and I were looking at it, trying to figure out the best plan of attack. When were were there the tide was low so falling meant landing on the ground and not in the water. My friend volunteered to make the leap and I let him. Heights aren’t my favorite thing in the world, if I was there by myself chances are I would have done it myself but since my friend volunteered I wasn’t going to complain.
Even once my friend made the leap it isn’t easy to find the Geocache. The cache itself is hidden way out on the back of the pilings so you have to step completely out there and then maneuver yourself to the back. My friend did it and made it back safe and sound. This cache was definitely the biggest adventure of the evening.
My friend who I first went caching with way back in 2003 was heading over to my place to hangout and he wanted to do something a bit different than we normally do so I asked him if he wanted to go caching, surprisingly he said yes. I picked out a spot, which happens to be right where my friend works, that had a nice cluster of caches that we could hopefully grab in one trip. When we were leaving my house the sun was about to go down, because I am retarded I didn’t bring my flashlight thinking that it wouldn’t be needed. Boy was I wrong.
We drove out to this cache, which offers some incredible views of the bay, and arrived right as the sun was going down. The lack of a flashlight immediately reared its ugly head. This cache is a serious pain in the butt. It is hidden along a walkway that is bordered by big rocks. Of course the cache is hidden in the rocks which means that there are roughly 137,916 different hiding places. The fading light only made things worse. We spent a long time looking for this one, eventually using the screens on our cell phones as type of flashlight. We were just about to give up when my friend finally made the grab.
My brother and I had time for one last cache before we had to get back to our day so we decided to go for this one. This is one that I had driven under many times. There is a tunnel near my house and this cache is up on top of the tunnel area. We walked on over and found the pathway that the cache was hidden on. I got lucky and found the cache quite quickly. After that my brother and I decided to head over to Gordo’s and get a burrito.
My brother had come out to Berkeley to help me get Cerritos Creek Cache but since we still had time we decided to go and grab a few more as well. This one was the next closest cache that I hadn’t found. This is pretty much a drive up cache. While I was looking in the area that cache name would make you think it is my brother was looking in the correct spot and quickly found the cache.
This cache was hidden in a rather unspectacular area. It was near some really nice areas but the area of the cache itself is like a storage area for the parks and rec guys. Oh well. When I arrived at the cache spot I actually found the cache very quickly. The camo that was used to hide the cache had fallen away so the cache itself was totally exposed. The exposure seemed to have had a negative effect on the cache as well, the cache container was melted and had a huge dent in the side of it. The top no longer fit on well and it was just generally speaking in bad shape. After I signed the log I tried to hide it a bit better than I found it since it was totally exposed.
Caching has brought me to a few of these rock parks and I really like them. It’s fun climbing all over them and exploring. This one had a particularly nice view of the San Francisco bay as well. There was one thing I really didn’t like about this cache though. The area that the actual cache was hidden in was covered in thorny blackberry vines. I was just wearing shorts and a T-shirt but I decided to brave it and dive into the thick of it. My GPSr was having a hard time in the area so it was jumping around quite a bit which wasn’t making me very happy. I ended up trying to navigate my way through the blackberry vines for a good 15-20 minutes. Thankfully, I was able to do it all without drawing any blood. My GPSr started pointing me to a place I hadn’t explored very thoroughly so I went and investigated. It was then that I noticed a likely hiding and spot and as luck would have it there it was.
I carefully made my way out of the blackberry jungle and was happy to be back up on top of the rock.
When I arrived at this little park in the Berkeley hills that I didn’t even know existed there really wasn’t any parking. There was some parking on the street but the curb was red. Looking around though I noticed that there were at least a half dozen cars parked in the red. I figured I wouldn’t be there for very long and if everyone else is parking in the red I might as well as well. I made my way over to the cache site, there were some young muggles hanging out nearby which at first I thought was going to make my search difficult but as it turned out I was hidden from view down a hill.
This was a tough hide. I was sticking my hands in all sorts of places that I wouldn’t have stuck my hand in prior to starting caching, I had my trusty flashlight looking in all the nooks and crannies. In fact, I was so caught up in looking that I didn’t even notice the family of muggles who had snuck up on me. Here I was sticking my head in between rocks, shining my flashlight around, I figured I must have looked a bit funny so I took the time to explain to them what I was doing. They ended up being a very nice couple who had just moved to the area and we chatted for a bit.
They left and I resumed my hunt. I finally spotted it shortly after they left, this was a tough one. As I was leaving the park I saw the couple so I called out and told them I found it and the man gave me a thumbs up. I was a little surprised when I got back out of the park and I could see my car. Every other car that had been parked illegally was now gone so there was my car, parked right in the middle of a red zone. I felt kind of bad but I wasn’t there for very long and I got away without getting a ticket.
I was sitting at home today and feeling the need to get out so I decided I was going to tackle some of the caches that were in my neighborhood. I had walked up the stairs that this cache his hidden near several times in the past, in fact I have walked past the actual hiding spot many times.
I had something kinda funny happen while I was on my way to the cache site. I wasn’t able to find parking real close so I had parked down the street a bit and as I was walking up to final coords I heard a female voice say “excuse me”. I turned around and there was a very cute young woman in her car. She asked me if I knew how to get to such and such address. I told her I didn’t but that I could find out! I entered where she needed to go into my GPSr and then let the GPSr show her, turn by turn, how to get to her destination. She sure stopped and asked the right person for directions.
After doing my good deed for the day I headed up to the cache site. I was looking all around ground zero and I couldn’t find a damn thing. There didn’t even seem to be any likely places for it to be hiding. I finally decided to break out the Treo and see what was going on, it quickly became apparent. Although this cache is labeled as a “Traditional Cache” it is more like a “Multi-Cache”. The given coordinates bring you to the base of the stairs and then in the cache description you are given instructions on how to actually get to the cache itself.
I walked up the stairs, which are quite nice looking, up to the final cache location. I had to wait out a family of muggles at the final location but they didn’t linger. The cache is hidden in some bushes and some gardening had recently been done to the bush and the cache was clearly visible. I grabbed it, checked out what was inside, signed the log and then put it back, trying to hide it a bit better since the bush had received a hell of a haircut.
I was sitting at home working, I had just finished something that I had been working on for awhile when I got an email from Geocaching.com telling me that a new cache had been placed in Alameda. I was ready for a break and wanted to get out of the house for awhile and I am always up for trying to get a first to find so I packed up my stuff and headed out.
When I arrived at the posted parking spot for the cache I saw a pickup truck that had a geocaching sticker on it so I figured I was out of luck as far as getting a first to find. I hopped out of the car and headed to the cache area.
This was a nine stage multi-cache. Thankfully, it sounds much worse than it really is. All of the stages are very close together. This is actually a pretty clever cache, the location is an old campground, each of the different stages brings you to a zone of the campground and these zones are numbered. So you go to each stage of and get the number and then at the end you figure out a pretty basic puzzle using these numbers and get the final stage location.
When I first arrived on the scene I saw a man with a young boy wondering around and I made the assumption that they were fellow cachers and I figured they were the owners of the truck with the Geocaching sticker on it. I called out to them and said “What stage are you guys on?” the man looked at me like I was off my rocker and I quickly just tried to move on and forget that I made an ass out of myself.
I went to all of the different stages collecting the information that I needed and then sat down to figure out the puzzle. I ran into a bit of a problem at this point. Either GSAK or Cachemate screwed up when it exported the cache info to my Treo. The puzzle page has this line on it: Cache is located at AEIBFIC CDGHBA for whatever reason my Treo just said: Cache is located at AEIBFIC. I was pretty sure I was doing the puzzle correctly as with the fragment that I did have I was able to get the North/South coordinate but I couldn’t figure out the East/West coordinate. I tried just walking along the north/south line but that didn’t work (It would have if I had looked harder though). I ended up sitting down and puzzling over it, I didn’t know at the time that I was missing part of the puzzle, yes I had my suspicions, but I didn’t know for sure.
As I was sitting the man with the young boy approached me, I got ready to explain the whole Geocaching thing as you find yourself doing that a lot in this sport but then he surprised me. It turned out that it was the owner of the cache. When it went live he and his son came down to see if they could witness the first to find. We talked about the puzzle and I showed him what was going on and he confirmed my suspicions that I was missing some of the information. He really helped me out here, he called his house and had his daughter go online and check the cache page and then she gave me the rest of the puzzle. With the rest in hand I was able to quickly figure out the east/west coords and shortly after that I found the cache and best of all I was the first person to find it. There is nothing quite like finding a virgin logbook.
After signing the log book I spent a while talking with gcherry talking about geocaching and some of the cool stuff we had found. It was actually kind of funny, we had found a quite a few of his caches on 8/5/2007 on our marathon caching day. In fact I had actually emailed him regarding one of his caches. We ended up talking for probably 20 minutes and had a good time doing so.
I considered going for a couple more caches but I decided to just call it a day and headed home.
By the time I was done finding The Proposal the sun was starting to go down and from what I have read about the Albany Bulb is that it can get a bit sketchy at night. I had done all the caches out on the bulb so my timing was perfect. I did notice that I had missed one on my way in though so I figured I’d have time for one more.
This one quite close to the parking area, so a nice easy walk, and it’s not far from the main trail. I was pretty beat by this time, I had been out exploring the bulb for a few hours by now so I was happy to find that this one close to the trail and there was a nice “chair” right near the cache. I found the cache quite easily and I was then able to sit down and watch the sun set. It was a very nice ending to a great day of caching.
There is still one cache out on the bulb that I haven’t found yet so I will be going back. I hope to bring my camera the next time and get some pictures of the area, it’s really a neat place.
After my second DNF over at Purple Vs. Turtles I decided I was going to do a bit more caching and get a few finds under my belt. I was looking at my GPS and I noticed a nice cluster of caches on this little peninsula area. I later found out that this peninsula is called the Albany bulb. I headed on over to the area and found some parking. Most of these caches will require a decent amount of hiking. This is a great place to bring your dog if you happen to have one though, you can let them run off leash.
I had never been out on the bulb before and it was a very cool place to go find. This cache isn’t very far out, but there are actually two that are closer to the parking. I followed my GPS to the spot and I found some large rocks that were covered in graffiti and some large industrial sized junk. I figured I was in the right spot and started looking. This one was tough for me, of course once I actually found it I slapped myself in the head but I spent a good 10-15 minutes looking for this one. Reading the hint really helps on this one.
After my first failed attempt at this cache I contacted the owner. I told him that I had found the red hand, read the hint and followed it’s instructions and had zero luck finding the cache. In the general vicinity of the cache there is a rock with a red hand painted on it so I asked the owner if he could give me a radius from the hand to check within. The owner responded and told me that I should find the cache within a 10 foot radius of the cache. Armed with this information I called up a couple friends and we made our way back to the cache site and tried again.
When you get to the cache site a ten foot radius from the red hand really doesn’t leave a whole lot of places to hide something as big as this cache is (an ammo box). The two most likely suspects are two bushes. We scoured those two areas and didn’t find a damn thing. Between the three of us we must have covered every square inch within twenty feet of the red hand. We finally gave up, convinced that the cache is no longer there.
I contacted the cache owner when I got home later that night and the cache has now been disabled. I really hope that it’s gone and we weren’t blind. I’d hate to send the owner of the cache over there and have him find it.
Trifecta Vista was the third and final cache in this general area that was all walkable from my parking place. I walked down the trail from Swing With A View following my GPS to the area. When I arrived at the area I spied a spot that I was pretty sure was going to contain the cache. I was wrong this time. I looked all around but my GPS was jumping all over the place so I was having a hard time pinpointing where to look.
I decided to walk away from the area and find a spot where my GPS had a nice clear view of the sky. Once my GPS seemed happy again I slowly started following it and this time my GPS was bringing me to a spot that I hadn’t really explored. Once I got to ground zero I quickly spotted the cache! I signed the log and then headed back to my car. I guess two out of three for the area isn’t too bad.
I had had enough caching for the day so I decided to go home and take a nice hot shower. It was a good day though, I found 8 in total.
This cache makes me very happy that I am not allergic to poison oak. This cache is hidden in a park in El Cerrito that seems to be crawling with poison oak. I found nice easy parking for this cache and noticed that there were three caches all within easy walking distance from the parking. This cache happened to be the closest so I went for it first. I followed trails most of the way but decided it would be quicker to do a bit of bushwhacking to get to the cache area.
I made my way to the cache area and in the hints they make mention of a red hand (It’s painted on a rock) so I knew I was definitely in the right area. This cache is a regular sized cache, in fact it’s an ammo box, so it’s fairly good sized and shouldn’t be too hard to miss. I spent a good 45 minutes scouring the area. I looked all around ground zero, extending my search 50 feet out in all directions from where it should have been. I tramped through tons of poison oak, fell on my ass a couple times and generally just got very frustrated. I finally gave up, I was pretty sure the cache was missing but you never can be sure. I will be back though! This cache will not defeat me!
This cache is hidden near an old park that was built in the 1930’s. I really enjoyed the park, it is way different from parks being built today. It features a long slide that is made out of concrete (I am not sure how that works, sounds painful), the rock also has lots of rock walls and is just generally very rocky. In today’s lawyer happy society a park like this couldn’t be made. I am actually kind of surprised that this one is still open, you’d think if a kid fell and scraped his knee some greedy parent would want millions of dollars.
Anyway, to get this to cache I took a nice little stroll through the park and then up a pretty damn steep paved hill up to the hiding place. When I arrived at the final location where my GPS was telling me the cache was hidden I had a pretty damn good idea where it was and I was right. Three for three today with the cache being in the first place that I thought it would be.
I signed the log and walked back down the hill through El Cerrito’s Huber Park and headed off to the next find.
At the end of a very long day of caching my brother and I were headed back to my place and we decided to go for just one more. This cache is very close to my house and I had tried to get it a week or so earlier but there was a scary looking homeless guy in the area so I decided to come back another time.
The cache is located in a nice little park in Berkeley that I had seen before but never really explored. The actual area that the cache is in has a few picnic tables, is well shaded with lots of trees and is generally just a nice little area.
When we arrived at the cache site this time there was absolutely no one around so we were free to look around unhindered. We commenced the hunt and I was able to quickly make the grab. We both signed the log and then headed home, I was utterly wiped out and starving!
This was a short little multi fairly close to ยต $ 
that we decided to hit up. This one was a bit tricky at first. The first stage is to find a brass plaque which you have to get information off of that will give you the final coords. My GPS was bringing me to a place that was the logical place for a plaque to be found but we couldn’t find one anywhere. We searched all around and just couldn’t find it. I followed my GPS again and it brought me to the first place we looked and I decided to have a second look, AHA! there it is.
With the plaque in hand we quickly figured out the location of the second stage and before I knew it, my brother had it in hand. We all signed the log and headed off to the next cache.
This was another puzzle cache that I hadn’t even looked at before we went out that morning. So I was pretty much tagging along on this one. I have since looked at the puzzle and it’s not too bad.
The cache is all about Willie Stargell, an ex baseball player who grew up in the area and went to the High School in which this cache is hidden by. To even further get into the spirit of the cache there was even a game going on. When we arrived to the final coords there was a bunch of weird junk around which I was inspecting and before I knew it, my brother had found the cache.
While we were out in the area we also noticed that we could see an object in the distance that was going related to the next Geocache, Fetch!
We had done quite a bit on the base and we were getting side tracked and decided that it was time to visit the final stage of In The Line of Duty so that we could figure out the puzzle. So we headed off to do that. Of course, as happens quite often when you are out Geocaching, we got distracted. We drove right past Cop Food and decided to pick it up while we were there.
This cache is well named as it is located right outside of a donut shop. We got lucky and the area was pretty much muggle free so we were able to look without any worry. I was the one who finally located the cache. We all signed the log and then decided that we needed a bit of cop food ourselves. Went inside and got a donut and a drink and then headed off to the next cache.
© 2009 Geocaching | Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS)
