Geocaching

Official Geocache Page

This was a short little multi fairly close to µ $ 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.

Official Geocache Page

This was a puzzle that I had just briefly looked at about week before we went out caching. There is a caching family who goes by candcfamily over at Geocaching.com who make some of the most creative puzzles around, they also make some of the most difficult ones. Anyway, I saw this one briefly as I was checking out some of their puzzles but never sat down and tried to figure it out.

My brother had figured this one out though, he noticed something a bit odd about this cache when he went to look at in GSAK and that was enough to get him started on solving it. I have since gone back and looked at the puzzle and it’s actually not too hard once you know what to look for.

So, my brother and I believe Charley had figured this one out so we headed on over to pick it up. I found out something weird about my GPSr (a Garmin Legend C) on this cache. They were giving me the corrected coordinates and I was trying to enter them into my GPS. No matter what I would do the GPS would reject them. Because this cache uses an unusual character (mu) in the name my GPS was showing it as having no name. Once I gave the cache a name in my GPSr it was able to save the corrected coords.

So we got to the final location and commenced the hunt. Man, this one was tough, we looked and looked and we just couldn’t find it. I was about ready to give up when Charley finally made the find. It was a quite the spot and I don’t know if I would have ever found it on my own.

Official Geocache Page

As I have stated earlier I had never been to this part of town so I was very pleasantly surprised at what was waiting for us when we got to this cache, a genuine aircraft carrier! The GPSr brought us very close to the actual hiding location and then we commenced the hunt. The posted hint narrowed down where to look.

I saw my brother check a likely spot while I was looking somewhere else and when I worked my way over to where he had looked I decided a second look may be worth it. Sure enough, there it was! We signed the log, checked out the boat a bit from the shore and then moved on. I’d love to go back and go check out the boat in more detail.

Official Geocache Page

I hadn’t seen too many different cache containers before we got to this one. I had seen my fair share of film canisters, tupperware and other generic containers but the only real clever container prior to this one was Resurrection of Pokey which I had found four years ago. So I was very pleasantly surprised when we found this cache. Well, I can’t take credit, my brother is the one who actually found it.

It’s ideas like this one that really get me excited about Geocaching. Sure, the hunt for a film canister can be fun but I love seeing the creativity that people put into their hides as well.

We were coming back from Trivial Math and headed over to Alameda and I noticed on my GPS that we were driving right past this one. Charley had already done it but he told us to go for it. We couldn’t find legal parking again but Charley said he would stay with car while we went and did this multi-stage virtual cache. This was to be my very first virtual cache, in a virtual you don’t actually have to find a log book or sign anything, it’s usually just seeing something neat or interesting. To verify that you actually saw the owners of the cache usually ask you to email them some information from the area to prove that you saw it.

The first stage of this brought you to “the house that Jack built” Jack being, Jack London who is quite important to Oakland’s history. I had actually never been over to this area of Oakland (I am learning that I haven’t seen a lot of the area that I live in), there was a nice farmers market going on as well. We didn’t really have too much time to stop and smell the roses as Charley was waiting for us though. So my brother and I quickly got the needed information from the first stage and then headed over to stage two. Stage to brings you to a statue of Jack himself, from there we grabbed the info we needed off the plaque at his feet and then headed off to Alameda.

When we got home I emailed the owner of the cache and he verified my info. Virtual caches are a bit odd and I miss not having the hunt of looking for the actual caches. Virtual caches are no longer allowed to be made but the old ones are still available to you on Geocaching.com

Official Geocache Page

My brother and I were mostly tagging along on this one. This is a puzzle cache and from the looks of it, a quite difficult one. Charley had figured out the puzzle (with some help of the owner) so he had the coordinates already. We got the coords from Charley and put them into our GPS’ and commenced the hunt.

This one was giving us some serious trouble. The area that it is hidden has lots of rocks and we were looking all over the place, in between the rocks, under them, around them and just could not find it. We finally took a break and then someone read the hint which reads “With enough leverage, you could make a big splash”. That was enough for me, after hearing the hint I found the cache in just a matter of seconds.

Official Geocache Page

This cache was reactivated just the night before, my brother nor I were even aware that it existed but Charley did. We headed on over, there was very little parking so we parked the car in a manner that may not have been completely legal but we were in visual contact with it the whole time. We followed our GPS’s to the coordinates and before I really even had a chance to start looking for it my brother had it in hand.

There is one funny thing about that sort of relates to this cache. One of the people who logged their find on Geocaching.com a few days before we found it is a caching maniac. This gentleman has over 20,000 finds. Anyway, he picked up this cache on the way to dropping off a rental car. This was the rental car that he and some of cacher friends rented to go on a caching marathon. When he got the rental car it only had 200 miles on it, when he returned it about a week later, it had over 10,000 miles

Official Geocache Page

This was the first cache on a day that we would end up finding 32 caches. My brother’s wife went out of town so my brother asked my mom if she would mind watching the kids for the day. Those kids are like crack to my mom so she readily agreed. We also invited Charley, my brothers father-in-law to join us. We decided to meet up at the Rockridge Bart station since it was a convenient location for all of us and we were going to head toward Alameda. As luck would have it, there was a cache right near the station (there is one at every Bart station). Charley had already gotten it but he told Scott and I to go for it so we hoofed on over.

When we arrived to the coordinates we were a little afraid that they were now in a construction zone but as it turned out, we were wrong. After a couple minutes of hunting, my brother found the cache. We both signed the log and head back to Charley to head off on our Geocaching super adventure.

Official Geocache Page

After the disaster that was La Loma Quarry we all felt a bit defeated as we headed over to Old No. 7. We quickly found the area that we were supposed to be looking in and I had barely gotten out of the car before Charley had this one in hand.

So it was a nice to have a quick victory after the hard fought defeat. We signed the logbook and headed out for another.

Official Geocache Page

After a morning of fruitful caching we decided it was time for some lunch. We decided to head over to Jupiter Two things happened on our way over to Jupiter. First of all, we saw Yau-man who was one of the contestants on Survivor, he walked right past us, it was kinda neat. The second thing that happened was we noticed that there was a cache right across the street from Jupiter so we decided to get it first.

This cache is located right next to an attraction I had seen hundreds of times in Berkeley but never had any idea what it was. The object is a giant tuning fork which is tuned to the frequency of the earth. The difficulty rating on this one due to all the muggles around so you have to be sly when trying to get to the cache. My brother came up with a good plan and was able to grab the cache without drawing too much attention to himself. We all quickly signed the logbook and then went and got ourselves some lunch.

Official Geocache Page

After the cool view from the last cache site we headed up to this one. I had seen this object on campus before, it’s a clock on a hillside where the numbers and stuff are made from plants. I had never known there was a cache hidden around it though. I still didn’t have my own GPS yet so I was following my brother and as soon as we saw the clock we knew we were in the right place.

This one is ranked as on a one star difficulty. In my book it was a bit harder than that. It took us awhile to find it and then it took us awhile to wait for the muggles (non cachers) to go away so we’d have an opportunity to grab the cache and sign it. I did eventually locate the cache though and we all signed the log.

Official Geocache Page

After picking up Blue Bottles we decided to head towards the UC Berkeley campus and pick up a few there. First on the list was Pomodoro. The cache is located right near a rather large sculpture on the UC Berkeley campus designed by the artist Arnaldo Pomodoro, hence the name.

The cache itself was tiny. Technically speaking it’s classified as a “micro” but people have started calling caches this small “nanos”. The cache itself was about a half inch circular and maybe a quarter inch tall, so as you can imagine it was a bit hard to find. My brother, with the help of the hint was able to locate it though. We all signed our name on the logbook and then headed off to the next cache site.

Official Geocache Page

This was the first find on a day that we found quite a few. My dad was still here and he was having a good time caching with us so we decided to make a day out of it. We invited my brothers father in-law (who is really into Geocaching) along with us as well and all met at my house in the morning.

Blue Bottles is only a few blocks away from my house so we headed over their first. Caches like this are one of the reasons I really like Geocaching, you get to see some really cool stuff that you didn’t even know was there. I have driven by this cache hundreds of times but never noticed anything special. This cache is located in front of blue house which has hundreds of blue bottles in the windows. According to the cache page her collection of bottles started modestly enough, but then people started buying them for her. Then strangers were leaving cobalt blue bottles for her on her door step.

The cache itself was fairly easy to find, my brother is the one who made the actual find. It was a nice start to the day.

Official Geocache Page

This cache is a bit more personal than the others, Kyle is my nephew. For Kyle’s fourth birthday his Grandfather, on his Mothers side, who is really into Geocaching placed this cache by my brothers house.

While my Father was still here we were all hanging out at my brothers house and decided to go for a walk. As it turns out, this cache and another were along the walk. My brother had long ago found both of them so he let me take the GPS and off we went hunting. My dad and I arrived at the cache location first and started hunting. The cache description says “A redtip cache hidden in typical fashion”. This of course didn’t help me at all as I have no idea what a redtip is nor how they are typically hidden.

My dad and I looked and looked but we weren’t having any luck. Kyle eventually caught up to us, I guess whenever they go on walks they always check the cache to see what has happened to it so Kyle knows where it is very well. Kyle couldn’t help but help us and he quickly pointed us in the right direction and we had the cache in hand.