Spring Trip Part 4 – Caching in Bay Area
This morning (Monday) we were on our way to cache at the Arastradero Open Space Preserve when we stopped to pick up a cache at a Park and Ride parking lot. We noticed a car parked across from the cache location. The car’s bumper had fallen off, which was no surprise since it had been held in place with duct tape. Must belong to a geocacher, I thought. Click on picture to see it.
I often speak of Open Spaces. They are usually rolling hills covered with grasses.They are protected by the counties or cities. Arastradero Open Space Preserve is in Palo Alto and is protected by that city. They have a number of such areas in the foothills and the mountains and also down by San Francisco Bay. Here is a photo of Arastradero Open Space Preserve that we took this morning. Today we hiked about 24 kms here, picking up 19 caches there.
Well we have been here for 18 days and have averaged about 20 caches per day. We have placed all 33 TB’s and coins that we brought with us and we have nearly that number to bring back with us. One coin we picked up had not been activated. It was a TGBear geocoin. TGBear is a cacher from Georgia. We contacted her and she said that are cachers who anonymously place unactivated cins in caches. She said we were free to activate it and keep it. It is a beautiful cute coin showing a hiking bear.
http://hogwildstuff.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/05/06/tgpins.jpg
We also picked up a coin that says it is trackable but the tracking code is 000000. We figure it must be a demonstration coin, but have no idea what coin it is.
We have cached in many different places during the past 7 years and each new place requires an adjustment because of the different hiding techniques and ideas. Here in the Bay area, the coords and the hints are not enough in many cases. We find that we really have to rely on Ma’s Oregon to give us information from the cache pages. For example, in many cases, the hint will be very vague but the cache page may actually say that it is a magnetic nano, or give a detailed description of the location.
There is also a lot of good camos here, many of which we cannot use in NB because they would not be winter friendly. They carve out holes in logs, sticks and branches, etc, in which they embed the cache. You really have to look carefully at everything.
Saturday, we went into a crowded country cafe during a busy breakfast time, in order to get an ammo can that sits on a counter in the restaurant.
Ma got a scare today. She was walking ahead of me when she heard me let out a scream and when she turned around, I was lying on my back on the trail. She thought I had a heart attack. Actually, I had been checking our working on the gps while we hiked and I didnt notice the big limb over the trail at head level. I now have a red gash on the top of my head. I gows well with the Poison Oak rash on my legs and arms.
I mentioned that the camos are tough in this area. Here is an example.
You are looking for a micro in an area that has stumps and a fence and a giant eucalyptus tree. Where can it be? How about a nano glued to a tiny piece of the tree bark and inserted in the bark
We leave California tomorrow and still have a lot to tell, but been so busy caching, no time to write so will telll more later. One thing we did was try and get a variety while here.
We went to an EVENT and met many local cachers and had interesting discussions. There were also cachers who had come down from San Francisco, and one who was from Virginia and was in the area on business. It was interesting during the rest of the day, to run into three groups of these cachers at other caches later in the day. Even more interesting was to bump into one of them the next day, miles away at the Farmers Market in Campbell. There were many prizes in a draw, including a pink ammo can, which luckily we did not win.
http://coord.info/GC2QQJ2
We also got a LETTERBOX cache and a MULTI (2 stages)and two VIRTUALS and two FTF’s
We also got two PUZZLE caches. The puzzles here are pretty tough and some joked at the event that you have to be employed in the local high-tech industries to be able to figure them out.
One of the puzzles we got was the Audio Cache and may be the only one of these. It involves picking up a phone at the side of a building, and talking to a computer to get the instructions to locate the cache. It was fun to do, although we had to do it twice, to figure out what we were supposed to do. We went on a weekend so we wouldnt be bothered by muggles and spectators working there.
http://coord.info/GC12NHA
Like I said more to tell later. This is day 30 in a row that we cache (25 here in calif) and tomorrow we will try for a few on the way to the airport.
http://coord.info/GC1F3CH
The things you learn while caching
We left California a few weeks ago, so I guess I should cover our last week and give a little summary of the trip.
If you look at a map of the San Francisco Bay area you get the impression that you are looking at one giant city. There are millions of people living there in a series of touching cities on both sides of the Bay. If you drive south down highway 101 for 40 miles from San Francisco to San Jose, you are looking at one continuous urban area made up of many cities, such as Palo Alto, Cupertino, Mountain View, Redwood City, Milpitas, Campbell and on and on. Much of the area south of San francisco is high tech and is referred as Silicon Valley.
The entire Bay area is covered in caches. If we planned a day of urban caching, we checked a map and headed out to one of the cache rich areas. Urban caching doesnt necessarily mean lamp post caches. For example, the streams are protected, so there is often a wide wooded area along streams right in the city, with paths and trails along them. So you might find yourself taking a long walk picking up a number of caches, far from the traffic but still in the middle of the urban area.
One day in the final week, we went over to the huge Campus of Stanford University. There are hundreds of caches there of all types and they are tough. We found many caches there, but we probably had a higher DNF rate than we have ever had. We had DNF’s on Small caches in locations where I would have trouble hiding a Micro. They were quite a challenge, and we enjoyed it.
The city of Palo Alto has a protected marsh area called Baylands, right on SFBAY. It is an incredible area where we cached for two days and bumped into many bird watchers, artists, hikers, bikers, etc. We were really impressed with the place, and were pleased that geocaching brought us. Here is a paragraph from Palo Alto’s website.
“Bounded by Mountain View and East Palo Alto, the 1,940-acre Baylands Nature Preserve is the largest tract of undisturbed marshland remaining in the San Francisco Bay. Fifteen miles of multi-use trails provide access to a unique mixture of tidal and freshwater habitats. Many consider this area to be one of the best bird watching areas on the west coast. The preserve has a substantial resident population of birds as well as being a major migratory stopover on the Pacific Flyway.”
In these articles, I have tried to indicate how caching is different in the Bay area. The biggest difference is littering. As an NB cacher I am continually upset by the amount of litter in the woods, on trails, on the streets and highways, and by the garbage and appliances dumped in the countryside. I do not recall any garbage or litter anywhere that we cached. It was incredible to spend hours walking in the woods and fields and see no litter.
On the non-caching side, we had a great visit to the Bay area. Justin lent us his home, so we were able to make our own meals and make a lunch to bring with us on our caching trips. Going to a restaurant is an adventure. There are many small specialized restaurants. If you want chinese, or Japanese, or Mexican for example, you have to consider in what they specialize. Justin and Tammy took us to a few restaurants, inluding Malaysian, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Italian, Korean (a buffet where you grilled your own meat at your table), and Fresh Choice( a gigantic salad buffet, with at least 6 different soups and fresh baked bred, cake, and cookies.
From a non caching point of view, what struck me the most is the ethnic diversity in the area, and how ethnic and racial differences dont seem to matter. A group of friends laughing and talking in a restaurant could include individuals of many backgrounds. It was not rare to meet couples of different backgrounds. For example we met a wonderful young married couple, where Jason is black from Tobago and Ying is from China. Jason has a management position in a high tech company.
All in all it was a fun interesting and educational caching trip