There And There

A couple of days ago (August 17th, it was, ayevenar!)(I thought that was pirate talk when I was but a child)) I decided to head up to the Fortuna Saddle again and try to pick up those three powerline road caches.

I headed over to MTRP quite early, but it turns out they don't open the gate until EIGHT! So I had to park in the parking lot again, instead of the dam parking area. So that makes the walk a bit farther.

I headed out the Oak Canyon trail to the powerline roads, then choose the western-most one to go up. I'm glad I had both hiking staffs today, it was a VERY steep road, in parts. I found the cache there, so that was good.

There were not any clouds today, and it started getting very warm.

I summited the saddle, as it were, and headed down the other power line road. I had high hopes that the cache I could find on the big Fortuna Expedition would be located today, as someone else found THAT day. But, though I overturned every rock (I am sure) and mangled every bush (found a mouse foot) and examined every girder most carefully, I did not find the cache. Here is a picture of the area of my shame.



Yes, I edited the tower number. I don't know why.

I headed down the road (the steep and rocky road, there's a song title!) to the next cache, and found that one no problemo.

So then I walked back to the truck. And that was that.

Today, August 19th, I decided to do the Dictionary. Dictionary Hill, that is.

When you FINALLY get to the top there is a rather nice 360 degree view of San Diego. Here is the view to the south of Sweetwater reservoir.



I found these funny glasses'n'nose in one of the geocaches up here.



An improvement, do you thinK?

Once one has ascended the hill, one must descend the other side. I found a couple more caches over on this, the other side, and almost didn't notice these fine ham radio antennas!



Now I had to descend down into a valley for a couple of caches, then ascend back up for more. It was certainly a lot of ascending and descending! And it was very warm! I was sweating like a pig, and could hardly see through my sweat-filled eyes. It was just awful! At least I was finding caches. And not seeing snakes! Except for one rather rubbery one with a bison attached to its middle.

I just bought NEW SHOES yesterday, twelve bucks at Walmart. I'm afraid all this hiking around is doing my poor new sneakers no good!

I did not find the last cache of the day, even though I spent AT LEAST 45 minutes looking. I was so miserable with the sweaty eyes that I finally GAVE UP and headed back to the truck. Unfortuately, there was no trail going DOWNHILL without going UPHILL, and I wasn't going UPHILL anymore, so I had to pretty much bushwhack my down down. Which did the sneakers no end of good.

Gmaps Pedometer claims I only walked 2.3621 miles today. Isn't there some kind of heat multiplier? I burned 303.6940419107505 calories, too! I'm not sure of the elevation gained and lost, though. You go look at it and figure it out!

Lastly, I was driving along when I noticed something in the rear-view mirror...



And no, it got away! It's still IN THERE!!!