The caching tourist

Almost two weeks ago, I left Moncton and flew out to Los Angeles California for a sort of mini-vacation. Knowing that I had not found any caches in California, I wanted to cross that state off my list/map, so I made sure I loaded the GPS up with caches of where I would be so in the off chance I was wandering around, I could do a bit of caching.

While there, I managed to snag four caches. Now, the physical caches I got were no different than any others I have seen before. But two of the experiences I had there did get me to thinking about caching in a somewhat different light.

We’ve all had geocache adventures where cache locations have taken us to some pretty spectacular spots. Great views, cool waterfalls, and plenty of other awesome spots. But how often do you find geocaches that actually end up being almost part of a typical “tourist” type attraction?

We see a lot of virtuals set up like this, but while wandering through the hills of Hollywood, I stumbled upon this cache. Me and my good friend wildmangw parked the car and went looking. At first glance, all we could see was this. Now, if you look at that, it looks like someone’s driveway which is exactly what I thought. But, I got a little brave and looked closer and found that there was a small path which lead to a chain and a sign that said “No Tresspassing”. It was quite easy to go around the chain, and that actually lead to a series of back road and back paths which were at the foot of the infamous sign. The picture you see here was taken from that path.

I then proceeded to take a PILE of pictures because none of the spots we had found came anywhere near as close and as clear as this one would. Shot a little bit of video, and then dug out the GPS, only to discover that the actual cache was an oversized bison tube sitting at the base of one of the trees before the No Tresspassing sign.

We had found a really nice spot to take a picture of the sign, but this spot was by far the absolute best. Not mentioned on any tourist map, or tourist site that I saw, but absolutely the best place to get a good photo. Had I not been into caching, I would never have found this great spot.

Have you had the chance to have geocaching “enhance” or greatly add value to typical tourist type sites or activities?