Spring Trip Part 3
Last time I mentioned the long climb we had in an Open Space area. Here is a picture of one of the deer we saw at the summit. I believe they are mule deer. They are much smaller than the deer in NB
Here is another deer picture
Here is a picture Ma took of me on the same day. At this point we were were maybe 1500 meters from our final destination at the summit and there was still about 200 meters of elevation left to go up. At this point, there were no more switchbacks so the climbing was tough on the legs. Notice part of the Bay Area down below.
During this trip we again wanted to visit one of the redwood parks. The biggest in the area is Big Basin where there are hundreds of geocaches but the roads are narrow and windy so we decided to go instead to Henry Cowell Redwood State Park which is a little closer and is more accessible. The redwood parks are incredible with the towering trees every where you go. The trails often hug the side of valleys and you look way down and see the redwoods which are growing way down below and they tower over your head.
Our plan was to go on Monday morning but when we got up, Ma noticed three new caches in Pogonip Redwood Park which is adjacent to Henry Cowell Park. So we decided to start there. Well Pogonip was so nice that we spent about 8 hours hiking amongst the redwoods and the surrounding aarea and didn’t make it to the other Park. And as a bonus we got 2 FTF’s. We missed a FTF on the first one we went to, because we couldnt find it. At the end of the day, we went back to see if we could get it, and we still couldnt find it. As we started to leave, a caching lady showed up. She checked everywhere that we had looked and eventually put her hands on it. Someone had got the FTF less than an hour before.
Our caching in Pogonip brought us to a surprise. One of the mountains streams flows into a cement basin, and spill over the top and continues down the hill. There are goldfish in the cement basin. Here is a photo. The fish nearly compensated for the fact that we couldnt find the cache at that location
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goldfish (koy)
The next day we decided again to head to Henry Cowell Redwood Park. I decided to get there by taking the road through Scotts Valley. It so happens that there is a thriving community along that road and there are many many caches in the area. So temptation got to us and we cached there from 9:30 till 3:00. At that point we found ourselves on a road that borders the back of the park and we found a trail head. So we spent 3 hours wandering through the park, picking up caches as we went. The bonus in this park is that there is a one lane paved road that meanders through the park. It is closed to traffic, which allows joggers and bikers to use it. To our delight, giant redwoods lined the road and many of the caches were hidden in some of the redwood groves along the road..
Last Sunday we again went to the Farmers market in Campbell. We did a lot of urban caching in the area, and dropped in on Justin and his girlfriend Tammy, who owns a spice shop and sells at the market. We all went to late lunch together and of course, Ma and I did some caching on the way home. A nice bonus here was to grab a cache that is right in the middle of the market. Actually the cache is in a grate on a sidewalk where farmers are selling produce. A bit of stealth and luck got it for us
Here are Justin and Tammy at the market.
Here is another horse picture. We found this carving at the entrance to a park for show horses.
We have done quite a bit of urban caching the last two days and I will write about that soon
Most of our caching days here in California involved hiking, but we also did some urban caching. Some of the urban caches were in high muggle territory and were very imaginative. We were hoping to get the chance to do some more of them. Wednesday morning’s weather forecast was for rain so we thought it would be a good day to go to the Great America Mall and finish the day with some caches.
Most of the caches we found were in business parks occupied by high-tech companies. Among the caches we found were some in a micro series that had CA$HES in all the cache names. The cache owner explained the series as follows
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I always swore I would never hide a micro cache. But a few years ago I was in Austin and they had this series of 10 caches that were all located under lamp skirts in a huge shopping mall. Not the way I would want to cache all the time, but it was a very fun quick numbers run. I have wanted to do a similar series here in the bay area, but the density has always been to great. Then I called on a customer out in this area as was amazed that it wall all but cache free.
Stuff you need to know about this series:
– The caches are all easy, many skirt lifters (but not all), many micros (but not all). If this is not your thing skip this series.
– If you are knocking around this area and see a really cool cache location but this cache (or one in this series is keeping from hiding it just let me know and I will down that cache so you can do something more creative.
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Due to our late start, we only got 16 caches that day but decided to go out on Thursday to get the rest of the caches in the series and many others nearby, including another micro series across the freeway by another cacher who used the word CENT$ in all his cache names. It was a very tiring day but we got 45 caches. If there were a number of caches in one area, we would park and walk to all of them.
On our way to one cache early in the morning, we disturbed a flock of turkey vultures (buzzards) feeding on road kill.
Yesterday, we spent the day in Henry Cowell Redwood Park with Justin. We did not get big numbers (only 5)but we had a great time hiking among the giant trees. We placed a few trackables again and we now only have one left of the 30 we brought here. We picked up a few more and now have 16 from here to bring back with us to NB.
Tomorrow (Saturday) we go to another Open Space area that has a number of caches and the possibility of a good hike.
Here is a map of the caches we will be going after. If you back out a little you will see all the caches and you will get a good idea why we consider this a caching paradise.
http://www.geocaching.com/map/default.aspx?lat=37.42185&lng=-122.30845
Sunday we head back to Campbell to do more urban caching and visit Justin and Tammy at the market
Awesome caching trip Pa! I love the picture of you with the Bay area down below. I know how sometimes pictures doesn’t really bring credit to the real view that there was; must have been great!
For some reason, when you were referring to Justin, I was always picturing a 10 yr old boy for some reason LOL. ( I guess I wasn’t really paying attention, like ya know, when the wife talks to you in the background kinda thing)…did I really post that last part? OOOPS. Love you my wife chérie!
When you quote this cacher about “creative” cache, I know that there is room for interpretation on what is a creative cache, but perhaps we should do a “Let’s hide creative cache contest” in our area. It would be neat to start to see caches that are very different. Maybe I should look into trying to be a bit more creative next time I put a cache out.
Anyway, continue to keep us up to date with your trip!
We spent Saturday geocaching in the hills west of Interstate 280 in the area shown on the map that I provided above. Our main goal was the Teague Hill Open Space Preserve.
I intended to write about the challenge of hiking the footpath loop there for 3.5 hours and the elevation changes that had me huffing and puffing and the 15 caches we found on the loop there.
But instead I will tell you about the drive down King Mountain Hill to the preserve.
This entire area is a real paradise for bicycle riders who love the challenge of pedalling up the steep winding roads and then riding the bikes down those same hills. This was Saturday and there were bikers everywhere on the mountain roads.
We were up on Skyline Blvd when I figured out that there was no real trailhead for the Preserve but that I could park on a street near the base of the mountain just off King Mountain Road. I figured that out around noon, but all morning MA had been telling me how to get there. In any event we were near King Mountain Road and I could simply drive down the road to get to the caches. But it turned out not to be that simple. The road was very steep and narrow and had many hairpin turns. There were no shoulders and no guardrails and getting one wheel off the pavement could get you off the mountain or in the ditch or up against the side of the mountain. I am embarrassed to say that at some points, the bicycles were passing me.
The following incredible video of a bike ride all the way down King Mountain Road should show you exactly what the road is like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDPmvn2OxDM
LOL. Optical illusion, large ears make them look smaller if your used to seeing whitetails, Mule deer are about 20% larger then whitetails. There will also be regional differences that will affect both species, food supply and population density are major factors.
Well I am the last one to argue about deer species so I assume you are correct. My assessment was based on our visit to Yosemite a few years ago. We were told they were Mule Deer and they definitely seemed smaller than whitetail.
Here is a picture of a Yosemite Mule deer.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/philmcgrew/5644050363/in/pool-canon24-105
Here is more info
Tails of Yosemite forms of deer.
Yosemite National Park is a meeting ground for three subspecies—the Rocky Mountain mule, California mule, and Columbian black-tailed deer. It is possible to find animals that display some characteristics of each or mixtures of any two. In sections lying near the normal range of black-tailed and Rocky Mountain mule deer, individuals appear clearly recognizable as to subspecies. For instance, the so-called “granite bucks” of the very high country may usually be identified as of the Rocky Mountain variety. In Yosemite, it is not always possible to rely on field identification of deer.
But of course I was not in Yosemte this time, but these deer were small.
Yup, that looks small, hard to tell exactly but it may have been a late born fawn from last year, they tend to take a couple of years to catch up size wise, or that particular area might just have small deer like mature texas whitetail bucks typically run under 150 lbs.