Geocaching

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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

This was a nice simple drive up cache. Although the container was a nano, which can often be a real challenge to find, this one wasn’t too bad. Not much to see at this spot so I signed the log and headed on to the next geocache.

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

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!

Official Geocache Page

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

This was a very well hidden Geocache! The cache description states that this one may be tough for the vertically challenged so I was looking in trees, looking up under the bridge which is at the location and I just couldn’t find it. My GPS was consistently pointing me to the same general area so I was focused my search in that area. After probably 20-30 minutes just when I was about to call it quits I decided to check the likely spots one last time. This time I finally located the very well hidden geocache! I sure was happy when I found it, it’s never any fun not finding a cache.

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 cache is located across the same park as Reed Access. This one was a tough find for me. The posted coords were off by about 20 feet and there are a ton of different possible hiding places. I finally ended up walking away a bit until I had a clear view of the sky and then followed my GPS again. This time it took me to the right spot and I quickly had the cache in hand.

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

I have driven by this park so many times but I had never actually walked through it. This was a pretty easy find, the GPS coordinates were spot on and the cache was right where I thought it would be.

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.