Hot Day

Today, oh frabjous day, I put together a geocache-expedition and headed out to Santee around nine. The sun was out, and brightly shining.

It was hot.

The first cache was near Fanita. I was supposed to park on Farrington, but confused it with Weld. So there was a bit of wandering around until I found the correct street. The finding of the cache was the anticlimax.

I then headed to Big Rock Park. What can I say, it's summertime, and the kids are at the park. I just hope they were not creeped out by the old man wandering around mumbling at his "cell phone".

As I was making the turn from Bik Rock Road to Mission Gorge the engine died. Oh, you guessed it, the Fuel Pump Safety Switch had tripped. Yeah Ford! No emergency lane, of course, but there were not any cars coming. I coasted to the side of the road, with the emergency blinkers on, and leaned over to reset the switch. One would think something as critical as that would be nearer the driver. Truly a defective part. I ought to get an advocate to talk to the Ford people.

Anywho, I headed over to Mission Trails Park -- The Dam End. I parked near the trail up the K. Peak, saw a coyote crossing the road as I was loading up, and then hiked halfway up the hill to the cache. It's a puzzle cache, that's is why I didn't get it that last time we wuz up here. It only took me five hours to solve the puzzle. Or rather, to drag the answer out of the puzzle. It involved a code invented by Sir Francis Bacon. ANYWHO, there was a large pile of branches on the cache pile-o-rocks, whiched I brushed away (get it?) with my big stick. I saw a likely-looking crevice, and there was the cache. I pulled it out, and, out of another RATHER NEAR crevice, a large rat jumped out, looked at me, and ran off through the bushes!

As I was going down the trail I happened upon three girls who were looking at something on a boulder. I asked them what they were looking at, they said a lizard. I told them about my rat sighting. One of them said, "He is just trying to scare us!" "Eek!", I'm sure one of them said. Then I told them about seeing the coyote earlier.

I returned to the truck and moved it down the road to the parking lot at the dam. I filled up my water bottle and headed out the Oak Canyon Trail. After a goodly bit I fired up the GPSr to see how far north I was. That was when I found out I had left all the cache coordinates and descriptions back in the truck. All I had was the cache list and and aerial map. I decided to go looking anyway. And you know what? I found them all. Who needs a GPSr?

Not completely true. One cache I found turned out to be a "rogue" cache, placed by a kid named Trevor. It doesn't seem to be on the geocaching.com website. It was placed about five feet from the "real" cache. So I have to go back for that one.

I'm already planning the next trip!

P.S. It was very warm in Santee, I was sweating like a pig. Not that there's anything wrong with that! An occasional cooling breeze was nice, though. The Weather Underground says it was 88.3 °F at 11:20, with 8% humidity. I guess it is hotter if you are climbing hills!