Geocaching

Official Geocache Page

While I had been walking around the bulb I had noticed a bit of industrial junk and large chunks of concrete and little hints of artsy things here and there but nothing prepared me for what I found at this cache. Apparently, the Albany bulb used to be a dump and then sometime during the 80’s or 90’s artists started going out there and turning this junk into art. There are parts of the bulb that are just covered in public art and it’s really cool. This cache is located in what is known as the “The Amphitheater” which you just have to see for yourself, my crappy cell phone pictures really don’t do it justice.

I really enjoyed this cache, it was probably my favorite of the day. I had no idea that this place existed and I was really happy that I had discovered it via Geocaching. I took a few crappy pictures of the area with my cell phone (I really need to remember to bring my camera more often), take a look.

Official Geocache Page

I had solved this puzzle cache which was created by my brothers father in law, Charley, after a lot of hard work. After I had done it I talked to my brother and told him about it and encouraged him to give it a try. I also contacted Charley and he asked me to let him know when I was going to get it because he wanted to be there. My brother cracked the puzzle as well and then we tried to work out a time that we could go and get it together. Unfortunately, Charley couldn’t be there so it was just myself, my brother and his two kids.

My brother and I headed up towards where the cache was hidden. Kyle and Amanda, my nephew & niece, wanted to help of course so we all went hunting. We found the right area and we were poking around and then I spotted the cache. Being the awesome uncle that I am I held back the stuff hiding the cache and then let Kyle “find” the cache.

This puzzle isn’t as hard as it first appears to be. I know that when I first read it my head was spinning and I thought there was no way I’d be able to figure it out. Then one day I was hanging out with my friend and we took a look at the puzzle and decided to see if we could crack it. We didn’t crack it together but right before I left his house we figured out the key on how these things work.

As you read the cache page and the pages it links to you will learn everything you need to, the key here is that every word can be written in three different ways in morse code. I will provide you with an example of what I am talking about. I will be using the word moesrealm in my example.

This is how you write Moesrealm in morse code, the X’s are between the letters:

- - X - - - X . X … X .-. X . X .- X .-.. X - -

Here are the three ways that Moesrealm can be spelled in morse code using trigraphs.

That should be enough to get you going if you read the puzzle page thoroughly. I don’t want to give you too much info. If you do need help solving the puzzle feel free to let me know and I’ll try and give you a hand.

Official Geocache Page

After the ordeal I went through trying to find Purple Vs. Turtles I was really hoping I’d have better luck at this one. I made the nice short hike up to the posted coords, trying to remember to look up from my GPS and enjoy the view. I followed my GPS to a nice area right near a little bench and saw what I thought would be a great hiding place for a cache. I was right, the cache was right where I expected it to be. I retrieved the cache and walked back over to the little bench that is nearby and signed the log and took a minute to just relax and enjoy the area.

It sure was nice to get a win after the crushing defeat from the cache before.

Official Geocache Page

Before we went out caching Charley had emailed my brother and I suggesting that we use this cache as a center point to make a pocket query. When I went to make the query I noticed that it was a puzzle cache and figured I would take a look at it and see if I could figure it out. When I first saw the puzzle I thought I was going to be in for a hard time. The puzzle is baseball themed and I don’t follow baseball at all. I read the puzzle though and I quickly came up with a theory on how it worked. I started doing the research and sure enough my theory was panning out. It wasn’t long before I cracked it.

Charley and my brother had both cracked the puzzle as well. What was kind of funny is that although the posted coordinates for this cache were nice and central to Alameda island the final coordinates after you solved the puzzle weren’t so this ended up being the furthest out cache that we found of the day.

Official Geocache Page

This was probably the most challenging cache of the day! It is a four stage cache with the first three stages being virtual caches. The picture to the left is what the virtual caches are. You have to find three of these planes, from the posted puzzle page you get the location to the first plane. From there you take information off the plane itself which tells you how to get to the next plane. Once you have found all three planes there is an easy puzzle to solve (just matching up letters with numbers) which tells you how many feet you are from the final cache location, you are given the bearing.

Now all this bearing stuff was totally foreign to me but luckily Charley had a handle on it. What we didn’t know was that with our GPSr we could project a way point which would have made this cache much much easier. Anyway, Charley figured out where he thought we needed to go and we headed off to find the final cache.

We spent a very very long time looking. After probably half an hour I decided to call home and had my mother go online and read the logs hoping that we could get a hint or something from the logs, that didn’t do us any good. Charley decided to use a lifeline and called up TeamAlamo to get a hint. Unfortunately, the hint that he gave us was wrong. He had told Charley that it was down in the rocks which it is not.

After searching for about an hour we we admitted defeat and we started heading back to the car. As we were heading back to the car though my brother kept looking. We lucked out and my brother finally spotted the cache. The hint given on the cache page helped out a lot here.

I would love to go back to the final virtual and use the project way point feature of the GPS and see where it puts us. The initial area that we were looking in was off by probably about 500 feet.

Official Geocache Page

I barely even remember this cache It was a bit of a walk from the car so the three of us started following our GPS’ over to the coords. As we walked Charley and I started talking about our GPS units, I think I was asking how to do something or something about a feature or something. We were just walking and fiddling with our GPS and then all of a sudden we hear my brother go “I found it”.

Apparently there used to be a rather large barge in the area which is now gone. I think it would have been cooler if I had seen the barge before it disappeared.

Official Geocache Page

I was sitting at home working and I got the email notifying me that a new cache had popped up in the area. I wanted to go right then and there but I was in the middle of some work and wanted to get it done. A couple hours later, when I was done with my work, I decided to see if I could still get a first to find on it. I left with low hopes seeing how it had been posted for a few hours.

When I pulled up to the spot my GPS took me I noticed that there were already two other cachers there looking, one of them being Charley, my brothers father-in-law. The other cachers was a gentleman named Randy. I started to help them look and we just weren’t having any luck. It was then that I decided to do a bit of climbing, it was then that I found it! I tossed the cache out to the other guys and then heard the bad news, a different group of three cachers had beat us to the find.

The worst part about this geocache was that I tore my favorite pair of shorts getting to the cache.

Official Geocache Page

This was by far the easiest cache I found of the day. I was driving along, noticed that there was one coming up and by looking at the GPS it appeared that it was just off the side of the road. I pulled up to the spot, just parking off the road a bit as there was no traffic, and hopped out. My GPS led me to the spot and the second place I looked there was the cache. I of course had left my pen in the car so I made a quick run back to the car, signed the log, rehid the cache and was on my way.