Geocaching

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Another nice quick park and grab. The plaque near ground zero has some pretty interesting history on it as well.

Official Geocache Page

A nice simple park and grab in Oakland. This area has some nice views and a bit of history about Oakland.

Official Geocache Page

This is a pretty simple park and grab. When I found the cache my heart sank a bit. It appeared to be filled with really gross brown water. when I actually opened it up though, ready to pour out the water and hoping I could salvage anything that may be inside I found that the container actually had an inner compartment and the brown water was just a trick.

Official Geocache Page

I almost stopped and picked this one up on my way to meet up with my brother but he wanted to get going so I had to backtrack and get this one later. There is a plaque at this spot which tells you a bit about the history of Lafayette which was quite interesting. The cache itself was a pretty clever hide but the camo didn’t fool me. Unfortunately, the logbook in this cache was lacking a plastic bag and the container is far from waterproof so I fear what the rains are going to do to the geocache. If I had a plastic bag on me I would have put it in one but I didn’t.

Official Geocache Page

I made it to the end of the Bailey Walk series! I went from just about ready to go home to walking a full mile to do this series of caches. It was worth it though, this is a very fun and challenging series. This was a pretty good hide, the hint states that it is magnetic and there was a quite bit of metal to hide a magnetic cache too. The hider picked a very clever spot to hide it but I did eventually find it.

If you are ever in the area I would highly suggest doing this series of caches, they are quite fun and provide a nice challenge without being overly hard.

Official Geocache Page

This was easily the most difficult geocache in the Bailey Walk series. I had called my brother earlier in the day about Lucky You! and he called me back as I was making my way to this cache. Turns out that he had DNF’d on this one a few times in the past. That of course made me really want to find it! My Garmin GPS brought me to a tree in the general area. I scoured over the tree and kept on coming up empty. I decided to widen my search and found a likely area. I almost found this geocache by accident. The container is a nano sized “blinky” and when I went to pull on it I wasn’t really expecting it come off in my hand, I thought it was part of the thing it was attached to. A very clever hide!

Official Geocache Page

Continuing down the Bailey Walk I came up to the is geocache, the fifth in the series. I got pretty lucky with this one, it was in one of the very first places that I looked! The hides in this series continue to be unique and fun. They are a good balance of challenging while still not being really hard.

Official Geocache Page

Another clever geocache on the Bailey Walk. This cache probably would have been a lot harder for me to find if I hadn’t had an identical container sitting on my computer desk at the time of finding this one. They sure make good containers. Since I recognized the container for what it really was I spotted this one super quickly.

Official Geocache Page

This was probably my least favorite hide in the Bailey Walk series. I just don’t like having to look in trees for something hanging, I find it annoying. Thankfully this one didn’t take too long to find. I do like that each of the hides in this series have been different and unique though.

Official Geocache Page

The second geocache in the Bailey walk series. I found this cleverly hidden cache pretty quickly. The Bailey walk series was off to a good start in my mind. The first two caches were cleverly hidden and were a challenge without being overly hard.

Official Geocache Page

I was about to call it a day when I noticed a nice string of caches all in a nice little cluster. I love being able to go to an area and walk to a bunch of caches so I just couldn’t resist. There are seven different caches in the Bailey Walk series and this was the first one. This one gave me some trouble. The hint states that the cache is magnetic so I looked around at all the metallic objects in the area and kept coming up empty. I continued my search and then finally spotted the cache. The cache is indeed magnetic but I had no idea that the thing it was sticking to was metallic!

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This one was super easy for me. I walked up to the area, which was in a parking lot, and I spotted the cache when I was still a good 10 feet away. Sometimes it’s nice when that happens, especially when you are in a parking lot.

Official Geocache Page

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.

Official Geocache Page

This wasn’t an easy find. I spent a good five minutes looking around before I finally located it. The cache container was a new type for me and pretty cool. The only hard part was trying to get the logbook out of it, it gave me some serious trouble.

Official Geocache Page

This was another easy grab, unfortunately there was a muggle that was hanging around and not going anywhere. I tried to be sly as I could but he seemed to be watching me. Oh well, hopefully if he saw what I was doing and investigates he will be cool about it.

Official Geocache Page

After going to the movies I decided to pick up some of the park caches on my way home. There are tons of these geocaches in the Berkeley parks and I had barely gotten any of them. This one I almost had the chance to get a FTF on but Berkeley parks close at 10 and I got the notification at around 10:15 and I decided not to push my luck. This one was very easy for me, I spotted the cache from about 50 feet away. The location of it makes it easy for a stealth grab too.

Official Geocache Page

This cache is quite a challenge and a bit annoying. The part that I liked about this cache is that it takes you all over the Berkeley campus. I convinced my mom to go for a walk with me and we had a nice time exploring the campus together. My moms stellar math skills also came in very handy on this cache. There are four initial stages to this cache and they are fairly far apart. It is all easily walkable but you are often crisscrossing the campus. We were able to get all of the initial stages completed and then we looked at the end….. ummmmm ok?!?

We were very confused, my mom and I decided to put it on hold until we got home and it’s a good thing that we did.

Flash forward a few hours and we are home again and we sit down to try and figure this one out. Now this is what I didn’t like about this cache; You need to use the internet to solve this cache. Now I don’t have a problem with having to use the internet or other means to solve puzzles but I didn’t appreciate the fact that I had just spent over an hour doing the first four stages of this only to find out that I would need to go home to finish the cache. Oh well, it isn’t a big deal.

So my mom and I were stuck on the puzzle and not making any progress. As the name of this geocache implies this series brings you to an assortment of the many bear statues on the Cal campus. In one of the logs someone posted the following picture:

Now from that picture alone I was able to figure out where I believed the final location was using my internet skills. Yes, I am a google god

So I went to go test out my theory and viola, there was the cache!

After going through all that work I wanted to actually solve the puzzle the appropriate way. After a few emails to the cache owner I was finally able to crack it.

Official Geocache Page

This is a bit of a strange cache. It is listed as a traditional cache but the cache isn’t located at the listed coordinates so it really is a Mystery cache. The puzzle involves the movement of the sun and Azimuth stuff that I couldn’t make rhyme or reason out of.
I was able to find out where this one was because I knew that the listed coords were close and in the logs there were pictures of the the bear statues that are at the final location. I used my internet detective skills and was able to find out where those bears are on the campus. I figured I was right and when I arrived on the scene I knew instantly that I was right. The cache itself was easy to find if you read the hint.

Official Geocache Page

This was one of those caches that when we were about 200 feet away I said to myself I bet the cache is right there and when we got up to the spot I was right. I have driven by this area many times in my life but I had never noticed the art work that is here. If you can find this one after dark I would suggest it, the art work here makes some very cool shadows.