We All Scream For Ice Cream!

On Friday we drove over to Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor for lunch.

I'm eating!

I love ice cream!

While there we tried to figure out the small print on some Mexican money. That's Diego Rivera, it is a self-portrait.

We also went geocaching (surprise) and found three caches in the mall.




After stuffing ourselves and walking off the stuffiness we drove back to San Diego.  Did I mention Farrell's is in Mission Viejo?  I felt so cosmopolitan skipping off to Orange County for luncheon!

We stopped at Califia Beach so that L. could dip her feet in the Pacific Ocean.  I watched the surfers, and the train went by.

Trains a'coming!!

We drove down the freeway a bit and stop at the Las Flores view point to see the pretty setting sun.

And then we headed home!

NOW It's Precipitating!

It has severely darkened over and is sprinkling as I speak.  It's almost like having weather!

Friday The Thunderstorm

I woke up at 6:20 this morning, which is an hour later than usual. Someone forgot to set the alarum clock.  Funny, I remember hearing the upstairs neighbor's alarm going off. Which usually rings AFTER mine does.

It was pretty much perfectly partly overcast this morning. The Winnebagos are heading east for the weekend.  I don't see no thunderstorms on the horizon, but they are still predicting 90% chance of rain.  It must be our destiny...

This morning is Breakfast Club, so I've been grazing a bit.  Back in the library one of the students brought in these evil things (see below), so I flaunted all the rules and ate one, right there at the circulation desk.  You should have seen the smile on my kisser

Slightly 'shopped...

So, I'm not sure if the picture is actually there, I think work is blocking it.

Speaking of work, I better get back to it!

Thursday Tomorrow?

Wow, it's Wednesday already!  I hear we are setting clocks forward this weekend. Or backward? Fall back? Either way, I'll have Sunday to figure it out.

Had to ferry the wife to the doctor's office this morning.  While waiting I took a picture of the headliner in the truck, as it is coming loose and I just want to document it.  One would think it would last more than five years.  Come on, it's a TRUCK!  Ruggedly built and all that!

I would have engineered some sort of plastic piece to secure it if I had designed it. Just saying, Ford!

Here is my wife coming out of the doctor's office through the rather pleasant mini-jungle-with-giant-stone-ball-fountain, with wooden bench.

I went grocery shopping again after work.  The giant vehicle next to mine had three dogs waiting for their mistress, one of whom was very barky.

 

On the way home I came upon an electric vehicle making a VERY SLOW u-turn on the on-ramp to the 8.  I guess he was losing power and didn't want to get stuck on the freeway. Or maybe he was just an idiot.

Just another instance of stupid driving I saw today. I'm glad I'm perfect!

Oh, and made a detour before shopping to my local Radio Shack.  What can you buy there besides cell phones? Why, fuses, if you must know! I needed a 1.6 amp fuse for a VCR at work. We shall see if that fixes the problem, or if there was something more serious that caused the fuse to blow. 

I also spent two hours at work on YOUR tax-payer's dime to exchange all my loose change from home for dollars. Now we will have plenty of pennies for the next book faire!

Later!

Manic Wednesday

Lots of craziness going on today!

Got this fish at a Destiny training today!

How cool is that, eh?

Saw skateboarder nearly get creamed today as he ran off the sidewalk into the street on a red light.

A few minutes later, only a block away, I was checking out a chick in hot pants (Hot pants? What year IS this??) who decided she could cross on the No Walk signal as I was turning right. Almost fendered her, did I!

We keep the lights on low in the computer room here at Manic Central, and my keyboard is down in the shadows.  There are no nubbins on the "J" and "F" keys, so I keep placing my fingers on the wrong keys and typing ALL SORTS of gibberish.  I need a keyboard with lighted keys! Do they make such a thing?  Or maybe an under-desk light!

I discovered that one can, if one inserts it at JUST the right angle, slide an SMC memory card UNDER and INTO the bottom of the card reader case, necessitating the removal of said case from the computer and shaking it all about to get the card out.

That is about all I can think of.  Cheers!

Thanks to the generosity of Matt I now have a pretty darn fast computer with lots of memory and disk space.  Google Maps no longer takes five (or more) minutes to load a satellite view! Wow!

Here's a picture of Gimli (Son of Gloin), the dog I mentioned the other day over in the bicycle blog. The dog that chewed everything!

Gimli, circa 1976

Cam got him when we lived in the apartments next to the church. She got him at a pet store that used to be near Food Basket on University. She saw him in the window, and just had to have him. A classic impulse purchase!  Of course, living in a two-room apartment didn't work very well, so we moved to a house-behind-a-house in El Cajon, where this picture was taken.  I was trying to grow rhubarb and berry plants in those wire  protectors, by the way. I had hopes of some free rhubarb pie. Didn't work out.

Back in 1970 or so I got a dog named "Asia" from a couple I knew.  When I went off to war my poor mother ended up taking care of her.  Asia was a Shetland Sheepdog, and every so smart.  She was also a very prolific mother.  Her is a picture of one of my many brother with her and her puppies.

Asia with puppies, and one of my brothers, too!

Lastly, we have the White Phantom, a Buick convertible my father let me drive. I can't remember the year or model, 1962 or 63, maybe.  It had a sensor that would automatically dim the high beams, and a very good heater. Eventually reverse went out and I gave it to my brother, effectively abandoning it. As did he.

Hey, it's the same brother! I wonder how old he was when I "gave" him the car... fifteen?  The years, they all run together!

I went geocaching at Lake Murray today, making the find on a puzzle geocache in a very odd container.

I am reading A Tale Of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens.  It is dragging on very slowly. Dickens uses twenty words when one will do, in my opinion. He is certainly no Robert Parker! I quite lose track of what is going on at times, and who various characters are.  I was quite certain, for many pages, that Monsieur Marquis was not the same person on the Monsignor.  I'm going to look online for an outline... Oh, now I see that I was confused about that! Monseigneur was both the person who gave a party (the chocolate episode) and a title of Monsieur Marquis. I think.

Well, that's about it for today!

Monday Is Shot

I had to haul the cat to the vet for his shot today, so I needed another cat carrier, as he peed in his cardboard one the last time.  I saw one at my regular Albertson's, so I naturally went to another Albertson's before work, 'cause it was closer.  Nope, no cat carriers there.  I decided to get a cardboard one at Petco in the afternnon, as I was short on funds.  Nope, couldn't find them.  So I finally went to my regular Albertson's and YAY, they had some. I picked one out and took it up to the Express Lane. The cashier did a price check. Yay, it was less than the amount on my gift card, so I bought it. She even washed the dust off of it!

Here's the cat in his new carrier:

I found this antique book of matches yesterday in a drawer. How much do you think I could get on E-Bay for them?

That's about it for today!

Wednesday

Got the tooth covered with a porcelain crown yesterday.  Still need a crown replaced, but insurance doesn't cover it. Not gonna happen soon!

Also found out one of my caches is missing.  I took a look, and I can't find it either, so I replaced it with yet another one on the way to jury dooty!

Jury Dooty...

I did not get picked for a trial, and I nearly finished the book I was reading!  I got a nice present from the County Sheriff for my services, a citation for not having proper registration, in this case, not have my tags displayed!  My bad, I forgotted to put them on!  Well, there's $32.50 down the drain!  I wonder if they would have noticed the missing sticker if I had backed in when I parked...

EDIT:  I put the sticker on when I got home.

Rot13 encrypted comments on the courthouse bathrooms:
V birepnzr zl srne bs choyvp gbvyrgf naq unq n avpr objry zbirzrag va gur pbhegubhfr gbvyrg. Gurl unir n irel avpr g.c. qvfcrafre. Fbzrbar yrsg n pbcl bs Cbchyne Zrpunavpf juvpu znqr sbe fbzr vasbezngvir ernqvat. Vg'f n yvggyr gbb dhvrg va gurer, gubhtu, gurl arrq n abvfl sna be n juvgr abvfr trarengbe. Nf sne nf pyrnayvarff, V engr vg na "8" bhg bs gra. Abg onq sbe n choyvp snpvyvgl! Gur syhfure qvq na rkpryyrag wbo, gbb!

The East County Courthouse must have the worst exit I've ever seen, since El Cajon decided it would be a good idea to make downtown a single lane in each direction.  A good plan is to sneak out the back way from the parking structure, which I didn't do, or park over by Rubio's, which I also didn't do.

I'm reading "The Road". I'm not sure why someone decided this would make a good movie. I'm not sure why it got a Pulitzer prize. I'm not always sure who is speaking. I'm unclear on why the author doesn't use quotation marks. I'm certainly not sure why the author doesn't use an apostrophe all the time. Maybe it will be revealed at the end, but I've only twenty pages to go, so...

It sure is hot today!  I hear it at the century mark today in El Cajon!  Glad I have air conditioning!!

EDIT:  In La Mesa right now (3:55 P.M.) it is 97 °F, but the humidity is 22% so it feels like only 95 °F.  It's a DRY heat!  In Granite Hills (essentially El Cajon) it is 102.4 °F right now, but it feels like only 97 °F, which must be a relief to them.

A New Week

The weather has changed once again from cool to warm.  Warm and SUNNY!  Yuk!

I went geocaching yesterday in the canyon off of Federal Blvd.  I wore my new shorts.  Bad move! Bushwacking in shorts is not recommended!  My legs are all scratched up!

And hairy!

I found two of the caches, but one, the bushwackiest, eluded me. Oh, well, the last log said they couldn't find it either, so I don't feel bad. Except my legs!

My shoes, especially the shoe strings, and my socks, were chock FULL of little stickers and seed-things.  When I got home I sat on the garage step to pull them out. The tail-less cat wandered by and into the garage. I set the shoes down to fetch the cat out of the garage, when I came back to the shoes most of the debris had mysteriously VANISHED!

I find my pro membership at Geocaching.com has expired. Now I just a regular guy!

Last week at work I bumped my measuring cup/coffee cup into a door jam.  It cracked rather spectacularly! I had to toss it, so now I am reduced to using the many regular cups people have bought me over the years.

While getting ready for work  I spent twenty minutes looking for my work keys. I found them in the pocket of the pants I had on. How sad is that?

Here's a pic of our miniature textbook storage room.

Most of those boxes on the floor are workbooks that we don't use. I am trying to send them back to the warehouse.  See our giant stapler over there on the right?  In the foreground, just off the picture, I'm building a pallet of boxes to send back. It takes up most of the rest of the room.

Tomorrow is the dentist, then jury dooty on Wednesday. I'm a bit tire of civic responsibility, but at least I get paid for it!

George et George

I find, to my chagrin, that I have confused George Sand with George Eliot.

I should twitter this!

Fiesta Island Redux

Since I had the day off today (THANK YOU, oh power outage!) I decided to head down to Fiesta Island and find all the rest of the geocaches there.

Best laid plans...

I didn't find two of them, but I did set a new personal best of nineteen caches in a day (a far cry from what might be the record of 917 in a day by TeamAlamo).

I met several dogs today.  This one came up to me to say hi while I was trying to be incognito.

He was pretty friendly, I just captured him in mid-smile.  I was pretending to take pictures of the bay!

Yup, it's a bay.  I guess that is Mt. Soledad in the background.

One of the caches we looked for last week required a ladder, which we did not have.  We DID spot the cache, though.  When I checked the geocaching.com today I found that cache had been disabled and archived as some muggle hurt himself climbing the pole to "see what was up there".  People, leave the geocaches to the professionals!

I was sitting on the ground signing the log at a cache in the doggy area when a large friendly and VERY WET dog with curly hair came over to inspect what I was up to.

I also talked to a fellow with a Basenji, a breed I admire very much.

Most of the caches were pretty easy to find, and I even avenged a Did Not Find from a year ago, which was very satisfying.

This cache I spotted from around sixty feet away.  Can you spot it? 

HINT: It's yellow. I telephotoed (that may not be a verb, maybe zoomed would be the better word) in a bit on this, so I'm farther away then it looks.


My nose is sore, maybe it's sunburned.

Power Restrored

Woke up this morning around 4:15 in total darkness.

Reached over and switched on the lamp.

It lit!  The power is back on!

Grabbed my reading book, The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle, and started reading! It was a long night without lights...

No work today, the schools are all closed because of the power outage. Maybe I'll go geocaching!

Friday Summary

Rode the bike two days this week, but today I had a massive Charley-horse in the early AM and felt I would be unable to pedal, so I drove.

Finally found a geocache I've looked for several times, but I DID need a massive hint. The massive hint was -- It IS a rock. Here's a picture, can YOU spot it?

And this is just SMALL view of the assortment of rocks available to check!

Saw a motorcyclist this afternoon who DIDN'T cut to the front of the line of cars at a stop light. How about that?

That's about all I've got, have a good weekend. Take Monday off!

Saturday On Pyle's Peak

Hiked up and over Pyle's Peak to pick up the seven geocaches I still had to get that were north of the peak. Found all seven, although two of them were very tricky.

Panorama I made of Pyle's Peak and Cowles Mountain.



Picture of ME at a flag pole in the middle of erehwon.



Gmaps Pedometer claims a round trip distance of 3.6 miles, with I-don't-know-how-much elevation gain, but it must certainly be MILES! Felt like it! By looking at a topographic map I'm guessing around 1,700 feet of "up", and the same "down", spread over those 3.6 miles.

Thursday At The Other Lake

I worked up some gumption and drove over to Kumeyaay Lake to pick up some fairly new geocaches. On the way I stopped on one library to return books, took some moola out of an ATM, stopped at another library to check out some books, looked for a geocache that I haven't been able to find yet (Going for the DNF record!), looked for yet another geocache (and found it), and bought some grass trimmer line at San Carlos Hardware (that turned out to be cheaper than Lowe's).
But, I digress...

There were three geocaches at the lake. I've never been to the lake part of the campground, nor the campground part, for that matter.  I HAVE plugged up a toilet in the restroom on a dark, dark day in November 2009. I managed  to find all three caches, even though two of them had "3" (out of five) difficulty ratings. One of the caches was full of GUNS!!



I spotted only one person at the lake, an artist sketching.

I did a bit of reconnoitering  for some caches I need on the north side of Pyle's Peak. I discovered that what I, for some reason, thought was a valley, was indeed a BIG HILL. Topographic maps, how do they work?

Next I went to Lowe's to get some sticky ant pads, checked the price of grass trimmer line and was glad, then I went home.

Not Much Going On Here

Bacon and Eggs - A day's work for a chicken; A lifetime commitment for a pig.

Tuesday Meanderings

I walked up Mt Nebo today, up the secret stairs, looking for some geocaches. Geocaches that have eluded me before.  I found one of them, but two remained, uh, elusive.  The GPS receiver refused to acquire its satellites for an hour. I thought maybe we were at war!

Walking home, I waited at a four-way stop for the first car on my right to cross. I stepped off as he crossed the intersection. The second car, containing Jerk-person, took off and almost hit me as I was half-way across the street, in the crosswalk.  I screamed at them, and called them a curse-word.

Up at the nasty University/Baltimore intersection I observed a bicyclist SIGNALING as she changed lanes. Some people!

Check out the action at this odd-jointed intersection. As SOON as the light changes, Mr. Black Car on the right honks his horn. As soon as Mr. Pink car gets NEARLY half-way across the intersection, Mr. Black Car turns left, cutting off Mr. White Car(s) coming from the left, who (is)are going straight. And they complain about bicyclists!

Well, that is enough complaining for one day!

Sat. and Mon.

Saturday I walked over to my second-nearest cache and replaced the wet log and added a bit of camo. The next day a guy looked for it and couldn't find it. Maybe the camo was too good? See the pic below:



Monday a new cache popped up in my email so I drove over to MTRP to make the find. I was first, so I scored the FTF! As I was exiting the bushes I met the fellow who would be second-to-find (STF).

In the afternoon I had to run an errand, so I looked for some caches along the way. One was called Claustrophobic Canyon, an ominous name! It was deep little narrow canyon just off of Collwood sort of in the Collage area. The water must really run during our "rainy" season, those shopping carts are really buried!



My backpack kept snagging on the overgrown overhead brush and trees. This pic looked much more interesting in real life, the pic is sort of flat. That's the trail, as it were, heading into the canyon.



I finally made the find, and only got stuck a few times by a wicked-sharp agave plant. I suggested in the log that one might need to wear safety goggles here!

Friday Wanderings

I headed off to Cowles Mountain this morning to pick up that geocache that I didn't get because I forgot to bring the coordinates (not hyphenating THAT anymore!) that other time.

I made the find, and sat for a while, waiting for my heart to slow down a bit. Took some pics.

Looking back down the hill I just came up. You can see the trail going back up the other way from the ravine way down there.



I saw a camera flash from atop Cowles Mountain, so I took a flash picture right back at them!



And one of me, with my demi-walking stick, for posterity!



I continued up the hill to where the trail joined the main trail, and hung a left.  I continued for a while, then all of a sudden the trail ended!  Whoops, that wasn't the main trail, it was the trail to the view point. So I backtracked until it finally met up with the REAL main trail.  THEN, I hung a left, and headed towards Cowles Mountain. 

I was looking for a multicache, one with a twist.  In the cache are the coordinates for a cache in North Carolina.  You have to partner-up with someone there whose is looking for the companion cache in NC. Their cache has the coordinates for the final cache in San Diego. You exchange coordinates, and everyone is happy!  I made the find, got the coordinates, now I gotta find someone in North Carolina!

I check another cache that I had found in May 2010. I didn't sign the log then, as it was missing. The log, that is. Actually, the whole cache container (back then) was strewn, STREWN, I tells yah, along the trail. I put it back together, but I didn't have a log sheet to put in. So this time, I signed the log. Gotta keep the paperwork up-to-date, you know!

Coming down from Cowles Mountain peak I took a picture, on maximum tele-photo, of the my vehicle parked WAY down there, parked near the Barker Way trailhead.




Lastly, the rangers have put up this rather nifty thing for bikers going down the Big Rock trail.. You grab a bell from the box before you go down, then drop it off in a box at the bottom.



Well, that was about it. I headed on down the road, and then home.

STATS: 

Geocaches found: 1
Waypoints found: 1
Old logs signed: 1
Water bottles consumed: 1

What Day Is IT?

I ask, 'cause I wrote the wrong date (AGAIN) on both the geocaches I found today.

And it's not like I don't carry a watch, and the GPSr has the date, too.

I went caching  to two different spots in Mission Trail Regional Park today.  I found waypoint #2 of a five part multicache, which gave me the co-ordinates to waypoint # 3. Which I will attempt another day.  The five parts form a giant star shape. I don't count this as a cache find, but there are three more locations to find.


Cache number one was rather near that, just up the powerline road from Oak Canyon to the Fortuna Saddle. It was a puzzle cache, wherein one had to solve a puzzle to to discover the co-ordinates. It was pretty easy, though.  I had a lot of trouble finding it, thought maybe I got the co-ordinates wrong. As I was composing the Did Not Find log entry in my head I looked once again in the spot I had looked in several times already, and there it was. Magic! See the pic!



No, it was NOT out in the open like that!

The things I do!


As I was hiking back to the vehicle I saw two guys fishing at the dam. I didn't know you could do that!



I drove back to a spot near the base of Cowles Mountain and quickly made the find of cache number three.  Then I drove over to Big Lots to look for a patio-type blind, but I couldn't find them. I didn't ask anyone for help, of course. I see, on line, that they have them. So, I shall have to go back there, I guess. While I was in the neighborhood I looked, futilely, for a nearby geocache. I didn't find it. I guess that's the "futile" in futiley.

The Other Day

Sunday morning, at 2 A.M.,  I was awakened by the dulcet sounds of "The Boys Are Back In Town", as performed by Thin Lizzy, blasting from the house next door. Not sure if Richard or his tenants, though. Oh, and accompanied by singing.  Just that one song, then it went relatively quiet.

And this is why I hate classic rock!

No, just classic rock radio stations. They tend to play the same stuff over and over and over, ad nauseam.

---

All this morning I worked on a spreadsheet solution to the vexing problem of figuring out how many of the Mission Trails Regional Park geocaches I have found. There are nearly four hundred on the current list. You get a prize when you have found them all!  

Not really, what you get is your name on a list. A very EXCLUSIVE list!

Anyway, I read about conditional formatting and copied the author's technique that highlights the items in one column that re not found in the other.  And so I compared The List with my list of caches found.  I been doing this manually, and it's a LOT of eye-straining work. The comparison showed me that I had not marked two caches found on the list. A little calculation (probably incorrect) told me I have found 90.8% of the caches.

I spent A LOT of time trying to make the formula work in this document, when I had it working just fine in a practice document.  After half an hour I figured out that I was referencing an empty column...

 

I also found out that a component of Open Office, soffice.bin, doesn't always quit when you exit the program. And that stops you from firing up Calc again.  I keep having to off it in Windows Task Manager.

Friday

Yesterday I went up to the grocery store (up?) to pick up a prescription and some peanut butter and something else, oh yeah, bread.  I dropped off another geocache I made. It was found within an hour by two guys, one of which described as, if I may quote, "amazing". Look at the background picture in the link. Don't tell anyone, but you can see the cache hanging down on the limb.

Here is a better picture!



I was thinking about my dad again, and I came up with two awesome times we had, both related to Scouting. One time, in Cub Scouts, we went on a Father-Son camp out and I remember the burnt pancakes cooked on the griddle over the fire. Best pancakes I ever ate!  Another time, the Webelos patrol went out to the desert and we got to do some target shooting. That was pretty cool!

And something awesome he did for me: I had bought a big ol' Ford bread van that was outfitted for camping. Flathead V-8, four on the floor, no synchos. The base police (I was in the military) told me to get it off base, as it was quite an eyesore. I was driving it to San Diego when the radiator sprang a leak, so I left it at a gas station along the way.  I couldn't get back to it for quite a while, and it turned out the gas station wanted to charge me like a hundred bucks for space rent.  He and his buddy went up there in the middle of the night and "liberated" it. How full of awesomeness is that?

Ford Bread Truck

There is the Ford bread truck, and my two motorcycles, on the base. That's is a Matchless 500 single, and the other is a Yamaha 650 twin. Now that I think of it, I hauled the Matchless to San Diego in the back of that van on the fateful trip. I later sold it for fifty bucks when I got married.  I think I eventually sold the truck to George for fifty bucks.

Speaking of George, this photo was taken AT George. AFB, that is.

And speaking of the Matchless, here's a lesson I should have learned from this, but did not: Never buy a vehicle without all its paperwork in order. Never!

Yesterday and Today

Yesterday I got up early to revisit the rock-climbing area in Mission Trails. I didn't have any new luck finding a way up, and I had a touch of, shall we say, tummy-trouble, so deciding discretion was the better part, blah blah, I went home.

Today, I was reading on Reddit a thread about the coolest thing you've done with your dad. And I can't remember much of anything, except going to a nudie bar when I was 21. Which was actually a little more creepy than cool.

It's not that we didn't do stuff together, it is that I often didn't really want to be there. Golf? No, thanks, I'd rather read a book. Or build model cars. I always seemed to be on a different road than him. And in the slow lane, at that!

I always felt I didn't meet his expectations. He was a "Type A" person, very motivated, ambitious, and a real people-person. A salesman, if you will. I seem to be the complete opposite of him. We never did seem to connect, although he tried, when I was a kid. After I got married I didn't see him very often, and he never met my kids. At his memorial service, I was pressed into action to speak, and I really had nothing to say. Which may say more about me, than him!

I was much closer to my grandfather, who had a myriad of hobbies and interests. He would take me to the hobby shops, the union hall, the stock exchange, that liquor store with the pink elephant hanging in the window. Not always the most interesting places to a little kid, but it was great being with him.  The coolest thing I remember doing with him is the time he took me and my grandmother on an off-road excursion  through the sand dunes near their home. In his Jeep Forward Control. I got to sit on the engine cover, between the two of them, with the motor warming-up my behind. We got stuck a few times, but he got us out!

Oh, I just thought of another! Now, this was back in the 60s, I must preface, after they retired and moved to the Needles area. We were driving down the dirt river road in his pickup, when he stopped and yanked the rifle off the rack behind our heads, and fired out the window at a coyote. The passenger window. He being on the driver's position, you see.  He missed, though. It was a little scary, but it was cool.

Yesterday and Today

Yesterday -- I went to the library to return a book. Saw this sitting by the fence. I have no idea.



Unfortunately, the book I wanted was not at THIS (San Diego County) library, but at the San Carlos (San Diego City) library. So, I headed over there. Unfortunately, they were closed. They close at 2:30 on Saturday. And, they are not open on Sunday or Monday. Yay San Diego! How can the County keep their libraries open Sunday AND Monday, with longer hours, but the City can not?

I also popped over to the Fletcher Hills branch, just on the off-chance, but they did not have it. Oh, well!

I also picked up a geocache in Fletcher Hills Park.

Today-- I went geocaching in Mission Valley, snapped my walking stick in a hole-on-a-hill, then headed over to Mission Trails Regional Park. Here's the poor stick. Now it's more of a cane! At least I found the geocache!



The plan at the park was to get the caches around the rock climbing area. It was a pretty steep climb up, but the views were great!



I followed the trail along the base of the rock climbing cliffs. There were a few people climbing in the early morning cloudiness. I didn't get any good/dramatic pics, though.

Here's a climber. There is another guy above him, out of the shot.



Here's some of the rocks they climb. This picture goes on top of the one before, but the 'above' guy is in the cleft somewhere.



The trails are pretty funky and I had trouble following them. I was kind of lost, actually. I talked to a woman who had the trails maps, which didn't help too much, but reassured me that there WOULD be a way down, when I so chose to go.

Since I never did figure out a way up and over the rocks, and declined the kind offer of the rock climbers to go up their ropes, the last cache I found was, well, the last. But it was the best, too! Can you spot it?



Well, that leaves me with three caches still to find. WAY UP there! Maybe I'll get a helicopter!

Here's a panorama I tried to create. I had to edit the rocks a bit on the left as the pics did not stitch together properly. Click on the image to visit my zooomr page, where the BIG version is!



Heading DOWN the trail to the road I encountered several groups of people heading UP the hill to climb them some rocks. You could tell, they mostly all were wearing their climbing harnesses. They looked like they had garter belts on! And with the sun coming out, they were sweatin'.

Total caches found today: six.