I had tried for this one in the past but was thwarted because this cache is inside of a park like area which you can only access during business hours. The location for this cache is actually pretty cool. It’s located at the Berkeley steam trains which is a fully functional small scale steam powered train. I had come here a couple years ago for my Nephew’s birthday and it’s a cool place and the little kids absolutely love it.
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.
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.
There is quite a hike up to this cache up a very steep hill. Thankfully it’s not too long but it will definitely get your calves burning. Finding the cache is simple enough especially with the clue. The best part about this cache was getting down from the big hill. I squatted down with one foot under my body and my other leg out in front of me and slid the whole way down. It was quite fun!
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.
This cache was at the trail head where my brother I parked for our caching trip in Briones. It was a nice easy find and a good start to our day of geocaching in the park.
My brother had called me asking me if I wanted to meet him to grab a few caches. Geocaching is always more fun with someone else so I of course said sure. I picked up this cache on my way to meeting him. This cache is hidden at a memorial for the Oakland fire of 1991. I remember the day of the fire very clearly and it was a quite a scary day. I actually knew someone who died in the fire and was killed in the are right near the memorial. I can’t help but think of her every time I drive by.
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.
This hide was a lot harder for me because the cache description says that it’s hidden on the right side of the trail but from the direction I came it was on the left side of the trail. Thankfully the coords were pretty good and after a little bit of bushwhacking I was able to find the cache.
This was a pretty tricky hide. Due to tree cover my GPS was having a hard time settling down. I resorted to checking out the hint and after that I found it pretty quickly. A very clever hide.
Having never walked on this trail before it was a very cool place to go. Finding the cache was pretty simple but it was worth the walk to see this beautiful area.
This was a pretty simple grab for me, it was pretty much in the first place that I looked. I did really enjoy walking along the trail though, I had no idea that it was here and it’s such a beautiful area.
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.
I had driven by this geocache countless times but for whatever reasons never had the time to go and pick it up. Today was the day though. I parked at the nearby parking area and made my way to the cache. My GPS wasn’t much help on this one, it was jumping all over the place and seemed to be settling on the wrong side of the trail. The hint for the cache is “Magnetic where you would least expect it.” and there is a lot of metal in the area so it wasn’t helping me at first. When I decided to expand my search area I noticed a bit of metal where I wouldn’t have expected it, reached down and I found the very cleverly hidden cache.
This one was made a lot harder because of an event at the Greek Theater which made my approach to the cache much, much more difficult. Thankfully I already did the hard climb when I picked up June’s Cache so from there I just made the relatively easy hike over to this one. There were some security guards and muggles hanging around within eyeshot of the geocache so I had to wait for an opening to find the cache.
Due to an event happening at the Greek Theater in Berkeley this cache was a lot harder than it could have been. I couldn’t park at the spot closer to the cache with the easier approach. I had to park down below it and then climb up a pretty steep hill up to the cache. As the first cache of the day it definitely got me sweating right off the bat. During Cal games this area becomes known as “Tightwad Hill” because you can watch the games for free up here. There was another cache close by so I headed over to it after finding this cleverly hidden geoacache.
This was a cute little place that I had no idea existed. At the location you will find some steel cow sculptures bordering a Bart track. I got lucky with the find and walked right up to it and found it. I love finding these quirky little places while geocaching. I took a few pictures of the Cows, check em out.
This is kind of a tough hide. It is right in front of a store, a burrito place actually, one that I will have to try some day because I love a good burrito. Because of this location dealing with muggles may be an issue. I was fortunate that I was here on a Sunday and the place was closed so there was no one around. I spent a while looking for this one and then when I found it the name finally made sense. A nice clever hide.
This was a cache that for some reason I kept on putting off. It was super close to my house, the Bart caches are usually pretty easy finds and can be done really quickly but for whatever reason I had never bothered to pick this one up. Well, tonight I did!
Another nice quick park and grab. The plaque near ground zero has some pretty interesting history on it as well.
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