Past The Dump

If you have ever wanted to see the Santee dump from the north, here is an enormously ginormous picture I took while geocaching this morning.



I hope that pool of water is sealed off from the dump proper!

You can see Cowles Mountain way back there, and Pyles Peak. I been there!

I picked up twelve caches this morning, plus one mystery cache that does not say what it is, nor is it on the cache map, but has a log inside. So I signed it!

Just for fun, I kept track of what time I found each cache:


6:30 Parked truck.
7:10 Found Shrekin Eats M&M's With Halftrack Guy.
7:30 Found Catus Carcass aka Rest Stop For Harmon.
7:45 Found Blame It On JonnyA!.
7:52 Found Santee Views.
8:06 Found Another Rest Stop For Old Folks.
8:21 Found Don't Blame This One On Me.
8:35 Found Mocha-Chocha-Lata-YaYa (Redux).
9:05 Found the mystery gold bison cache.
9:16 Found Blame It On The Wind!.
9:23 Found Barrel O'Cache.
9:31 Found Blue Bison Tube.
9:58 Found Pains CHAUDS! (Redux).
10:08 Found The Rusty Cache.
10:30 Arrived back at truck.

The batteries died in the camera right after that one picture above, and my leather watch band rotted itself away when I got home. I also found either two ticks, or two little red spiders, when I got home. Yikes!

Foggy Morning?

Today was a spouse-approved geocaching day, so I headed out to four five locations and picked up thirteen caches. Two of them were caches I had visited AT LEAST four times before, so I had a FABULOUS day of it!

I saw this dumped truck in the Emerald Hills Open Space. The bushes have grown up around it, so I can't imagine how "they" got it there. Seems like more work than it would be worth. Totally stripped.



It wasn't foggy, I just breathed on the lens, for effect.

My shoe started making a clicking sound. When I got home I found there was a rock stuck in there!



I really need to get some new shoes!

I have 561 caches found to my credit. I am hoping to make 600 before the end of summer. Three more weeks! And to think SOME people think I should get a summer job!

Caching In The MTRP

I drove out to Santee so i do a little caching in Mission Trails Regional Park. I parked at the Equestrian Staging Area (ESA). This is a very excellent place, I bet, if you have a horse. There are corrals and picnic tables and plenty of parking. It is a good place to start hiking from, too.

I did a Big Loop by going to the west, then south to the dam area, then east back along Mission Gorge road. I then headed north on the West Hills Parkway, to Mast, then west back to the ESA. Here, check it out. I've numbered the caches found today, so you can tell them from ones already found. Wow, that image is small! You may want to click on the image so you can actually SEE something!



I found eleven out of the twelve caches I looked for. That frowny smilie is the Did Not Find (DNF).

I also killed my shoes. Or rather, they died on me. The cheap hiking shoes. Don't buy cheap hiking shoes with any expectation that they will last an appreciable amount of time.



You can't replace the liner. It is glued it, you can see where I pulled out the bottom of the shoes. The rubber cushiony-things look all deflated. There's twenty bucks gone!

Knot Happening

I did some French lacing on my hiking staff, as recommended by this site.

It did not turn out as nice as theirs, plus it keeps getting stuck in bushes. I'm taking it off.

I went geocaching this Sunday morning, but in the vehicle. One of the caches was only accessible by vehicle, and I did most of the ones I was going to do yesterday by bicycle so as to justify taking said vehicle. I only put forty-one miles on the vehicle, and used nearly a quarter-tank of fuel. I found six caches, and didn't find three.

Assault & Battery

I WAS going to ride to the IMC to return our Panther for summer safekeeping, but I through threw a fit and stayed in bed to work on reading Steinbeck's The Log From The Sea Of Cortez. A book which is very tedious in parts (I skipped chapter thirteen) , and extremely ribald and humorous in others. It is worth wading through the tedious parts, I maybe something erudite will stick. And I am full hope I did not abuse that word too much!

I also located two geocaches on the trip, so it was not a TOTAL waste of gas! That's the assault part of this, I assaulted the IMC chore and found two caches!

I think I have a bad battery in my camera, so I have performed a scientific-type experiment to locate which one it is.

NIMH 1800mAh Batteries Testing Results

The following results were obtained after recharging the batteries overnight.


BATTERY VOLTAGE BATTERY TESTER

A 1.43 volts Good

B 1.43 volts Good

C 1.42 volts Good

D 1.45 volts Good

No conclusions were obtained from these results. Further testing after the batteries are discharged may be illuminating.


Testing Equipment:

Cent-Tech Digital Multimeter Model 90899

Micronta Battery Tester Model 220-32A

Saturday

Went geocaching in another canyon over by Rancho Mission Canyon Park. Found two caches, startled a lady walking her dog who was placing rocks in the stream to afford better fording.

I warshed AND waxed the vehicle in the afternoon. I am so proud!

Friday Finally

A whole week of vacation, and what has been accomplished?

Not much!

I went clomping around in Rancho Mission Canyon Park yesterday. The day before that, I didn't even know where that was! Now I am fairly intimate with every bug and pricker bush in the place. I found several geocaches, didn't find a couple more, and have to go back a-gain for other I was JUST TOO TIRED to look for.

I was listening to the radio this morning (while reading Tanner's Tiger, by Lawrence Block). KPBS radio, it was. Sheryl Oring was telling about her art project to have people write postcards to President Obama. She dresses up in a retro 60s outfit and types out their missives on an old typewriter. She said it didn't have a key for the exclamation point, so she had to write it in by hand. Well, this old fart still remembers how to make that symbol. You type a period, backspace, then type an apostrophe. Try THAT on your fancy computer!

Later, dudes.