Geocaching

Official Geocache Page

I made this cache much, much harder than it could have been. The way that I approached the cache I seriously could have used a machete. If you happen to read this before you go to try and find this cache take my advice and stay above the cache for as long as you possibly can, if you do that you will only have to do a tiny bit of bushwhacking. At the time of writing this log this is the oldest cache that I have found, this cache was hidden on 1/20/2001 making it quite old.

Official Geocache Page

This was a very challenging puzzle for me but one that I enjoyed a lot. I had to resort to some help from some of my fellow geocachers to get pointed in the right direction. This geocache brings with it a bit of sadness, the hider of this cache, Motogrll, was killed in a motorcycle accident a while back and it always makes me think of my own mortality a bit when I find one of her caches. This is an offset cache, solving the puzzle brought you to something that gave you the final coords which were nearby. At some point the offset went missing and people had to resort to asking previous finders the final location. To help people out I created a page where you can enter the coordinates that you get when you solve the puzzle and it will give you the final location. You can find this page right here

Official Geocache Page

After doing a couple other caches I decided to grab a few more on my way home. This cache brings you to a stunning house in Berkeley, one that I have driven by countless times in the past. Now, thanks to this cache I know a little something about the place. There are tons of amazing houses in the area so if you like architecture you will love this cache. After figuring out the simple puzzle at stage one of this multi-cache I headed over to the final. I was a bit saddened when I noticed what kind of hide it was, they aren’t my favorite. It was dark outside by this time as well which made searching a bit more difficult. Thankfully I found the cache fairly quickly.

Official Geocache Page

I made this cache much more difficult than I had to by parking at the wrong spot. Due to my parking choice I had a decent hike up to the geocache. It wasn’t bad though and I could use the exercise. Once I made it to the cache area it was a nice quick and easy find.

Official Geocache Page

I had tried for this cache before in the past but was unable to find it. This cache is located on a small walking trail between some houses and one of the houses was doing some construction and their fence was taken down. Because of this it makes you feel like you are searching in someones back yard as you look for the cache. I felt a bit uncomfortable the first time I was there so I didn’t spend much time looking. After my unsuccessful attempt I went home and read some of the past logs and I found out that the posted coordinates were about 100 feet off. Anyway, to make a long story short, I went back today and focused my search area a bit further west than the posted coords and found the geocache quickly.

Official Geocache Page

This cache annoyed me. There is only reason for this, the cache is marked as a traditional cache but it is in fact a multistage puzzle cache. My brother and I must have wasted about 10-15 minutes looking around for a cache that wasn’t there. We finally broke down and looked at the hint and it was then that we noticed that the cache was a puzzle. We solved the puzzle and then much later in the day came back and grabbed it as we were headed out of the park. It was quite an adventure getting to the cache and it could easily be rated higher than two stars for terrain in my opinion. I dropped of the Jeep travel bug that I had found in this cache and now I am afraid that may have been a bad idea because this cache doesn’t seem to get visited very often.

Official Geocache Page

The hardest part of finding this cache was finding the right trail to take to get to it. My brother finally did spot the correct one and we made our way to the cache. Fairly easy find once we got there. Unfortunately we didn’t see any newts while we were there.

Official Geocache Page

This puzzle was pretty easy to solve as it’s pretty straightforward as to what you need to do. Finding the cache was whole different story. I really did not like this hide. The cache container is tiny, hidden in an area that is covered with trees so you have poor GPS reception and there is no hint. My brother finally did track down the container and the hide itself was pretty uninspired and from the looks of it an animal or something had moved it. Oh well, we found it and we logged it.

Official Geocache Page

The last geocache of the day for me. I had driven past the trailhead that leads to this cache countless times but never explored it. I was surprised at how many trails were actually down here. I made my way down to the cache site, avoiding the massive amounts of horse poop on the trail and was able to find the cache pretty easily.

Official Geocache Page

I was able to find a parking place pretty close to the geocache so the hike wasn’t too bad. I did still have to go up a pretty steep hill but it wasn’t too bad. I was quite happy when I opened up the cache and found a Red Jeep Travel Bug, my very first. I didn’t have anything to leave for the Jeep but I took it anyway, I just couldn’t resist. It was kinda funny, someone had gone out of their way to take the Jeep over 100 miles away from the Bay Area and then someone, who never logged it, brought the Jeep back and put it into this cache.

Official Geocache Page

My brother called me up and asked if I wanted to head over to Briones to grab a cache or two. I said sure and we decided to meet over. We thought we had found parking near a trail head but that didn’t end up panning out so we had to go to the main parking lot, my brother has a parking permit though so no biggie. This cache is quite a hike, about 1 1/4 miles each way and the last 600 feet or so are up a pretty steep hill. The hill would have been a lot easier if my 2 year old niece wasn’t in a stroller still that we had to push up the hill… ugh. We did finally make it to the top though and my 4 year old nephew made it most of the way all by himself. When we followed our GPS to ground zero we were saddened to find that the cache’s camo was off so the cache was fully exposed. We did have a nice little surprise when we opened the cache though, it makes sound effects!

After signing the log we decided to head off to another cache in the area. We ended up having to abandon that hunt though, we were on the wrong side of a rather large hill and with the little ones in tow it would have been too much.

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

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.

Official Geocache Page

It was getting a bit late and I knew it would be getting dark before long but I figured I could squeeze this one in real quick before I headed home. This is a multi stage cache. I found the first stage of the cache super quickly, it was in one of the very first places that I looked. I got the coordinates to the second stage from the first and then headed on over. The batteries in my GPS were just about dead and with all the tree cover I was having a hell of time getting a good lock on ground zero. No matter what I did my GPSr kept on wanting to point me into the poison oak. Although the cache description said that no bushwhacking was required to find the cache my GPS kept telling me that I was going to have to. This cache made me extremely happy that I am not affected by poison oak because I am sure I walked through tons of it.

After looking for about 20 minutes and not having any luck I decided to just start looking all over the area since my GPSr didn’t seem to be helping much. By now it was starting to get dark, I had a few muggles pass by me and they seemed a bit suspicious of me as I looked around.

To make a long story short, my GPSr finally gave me a decent bearing and then I found the cache. It was dark out by the time I was signing the log and of course a muggle came by with his dogs just as I cracked open the ammo box. So I am sitting there with my flashlight, signing the log, ammo box sitting next to me when this muggle comes by with his two dogs. The dogs are barking at me like crazy and their owner is looking at me funny. I tried to be as friendly as I could but boy did I feel exposed.

Official Geocache Page

I love these rock parks that are scattered throughout Berkeley. I love climbing up and around on the rocks, it makes me feel like a kid again. I got lucky with this cache. My sixth sense kicked into over gear and I walked right up to this one. I really enjoyed this park and it was nice to relax up on the rock and take in the amazing view.

Official Geocache Page

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.

Official Geocache Page

There is a very nice story behind this cache. I won’t repeat the whole thing, if you want to read about it just click the official cache link above. To sum it up though a geocacher proposed to his wife at the spot that the cache is hid at. This guy is a very active cacher and is famous for getting first to finds. So he hid this cache, with the ring inside and then dragged his then girlfriend along with her. They find the cache, she sees the ring, he proposes and a happy ending for all.

This was a nice little hike from my last find and again I was walking over lots of rocks and stuff which was fun. I passed right by the “Castle” that is out on the Albany bulb and I of course had to check it out. I tried taking some pictures but the crappy camera on my Treo took pictures that aren’t even worth posting. The castle is quite neat though and I suggest you take a peek at it while you are out there.

After checking out the Castle I headed over to find the cache. I got lucky with this one, my GPS was spot on and took me within feet of the cache and then the cache was exactly where I thought it was going to be. I was hoping to find another diamond ring inside but I had no such luck I did sign the log though and enjoyed the view of the San Francisco bay.