Geocaching

Official Geocache Page

After splitting up with my brother and grabbing a couple other geocaches in the area it was time to head home. What I didn’t know was that there was a Cal football game going on and traffic was absolutely horrendous. Because of this I decided to get creative and find a different way home, and what do you know, there was a cache along the way.

This is one of those cool caches which shows you something that chances are you had no idea existed. Up in the Oakland hills, where this cache is located, there was once a tunnel that went through the mountain. At this spot was where the tunnel started.

Official Geocache Page

I had to run out to Concord to do a favor for my brother and sister in law. The favor was picking up my nephew from pre-school. As luck would have it, this virtual cache was visible from his school. I headed over and counted the stairs as required and was on my way. This tower is quite impressive, according to the cache owner it is in danger of being torn down.

Official Geocache Page

I had gone out with my brother and grabbed a few caches earlier in the day. That night he sent me an email telling me to check this cache out. This cache is like no other that I have seen. The “hider” gives you coordinates and then you just have to tell him, via email, what man made item is placed at this location.

The item in question looks really cool. Hell, I’ll show you what it is, it’s not like it’s a hard puzzle to figure out. At the location is Eartha, The World’s Largest Revolving and Rotating Globe. Check it out

Taken from the link above here is what this Eartha is

Eartha is a 3-dimensional scale model of our earth with mountains and landforms in full 3D, that rotates and revolves, simulating the earth’s real movements. Eartha was given the title of “World’s Largest Revolving/Rotating Globe” by the editors of the Guinness Book of World Records in 1999, and still holds that record today. It measures 41.5 ft in diameter. Unveiled July 23, 1998 Eartha took two years to build and represents earth as it is seen from space. It rotates and revolves on a specially designed and built mechanized, cantilever arm.

I’d love the chance to check it out in person some day, it sounds really cool.

Official Geocache Page

I decided to go on a bit of a drive after finding Digits of Pi it was a beautiful night and I always like going up into the Berkeley hills and enjoying the view. I drove myself up to the Lawrence Hall of Science and sat and looked out of the city for awhile and then noticed that there was a cache just a few hundred feet away.

I decided to go for it, it was a Virtual cache so it shouldn’t be too hard. I drove the short distance over to the where I needed to go. This Geocache requires you to read a plaque and get some information off of it and then go over to the object that the plaque is talking about and get some information off the object itself.

Now, I had driven by this object literally thousands of times and while I had seen it sitting there (it’s hard to miss) I really had no idea what the heck it was. Because of this cache I now know what it is, it’s things like that which really make me love this sport. It gets me out and about, I get to see lots of cool new things and I also get to learn about things that I used to just dismiss completely. The exercise doesn’t hurt either!

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