Wednesday Trek

I had four caches I wanted to find today.  Three of them were on the dirt roads near the 52, and one was to the south.  So I got up EARLY and BEAT the sun! Took a chance and didn't even put on any sun block. I hate that stuff, it's so greasy!

It was too early for the gates to be opened at the dam, so I parked a bit away from where I WOULD have parked. A bit more walking involved. The first part of the hike was pretty flat, I COULD have taken the bike. The second part of the hike was like a roller coaster, up and down and up and down, repeat ad nauseum!

Here's the view from the SECOND hill! It looks like a straight shot, but there are three more steep little hills between here and the distant "peak", which is where the last geocache is, of course!



The uphill parts are steep and slippery. With the occasional pothole!



I can't imagine bicycling this, but people do! Or should I say, gods on bikes to!

Down hill isn't any better, still slippery, but at least I can hear the sounds of nature, rather than my labored breathing.



On the way back, having survived, I took a pic of Fortuna Mountain. Hey, I was just up there Monday!



I saw several bunny rabbits today. This one was pretending to be invisible.



The final cache was one I've been looking for since last August. The cache owners replaced it last month, so I checked it out and made the find. Which I was signing the log a Cooper's Hawk burst out of a nearby bush, flew over to a tree, and glared at me.



I passed by the dam view on the way back and had to take a pic.



I would have parked over there if the gates had been open when I arrived. But they were not, so I had to walk maybe a half-mile more to the parking spot. Actually, since you can't cross the dam (at least I have not figured out how!), the walk would have been about the same, figuring in the river-crossing points!

I drove over to Loew's and spent WAY too much time looking at tools, then I went to Grossmont Nutrition to buy some birthday cards ($.99 for three!), then to Sports Authority where I bought a pair of Thorlo Hiking socks. For $13.99. They ought to be REAL good socks!

First Monday Of Summer Vacation

After not doing anything all weekend, except reading, of course, I decided to take a crack at those geocaches on Fortuna Peak in Mission Trail Regional Park. So I got up early and headed over to Tierrasanta.  I found an EXCELLENT place to park, and headed out from there. It was REALLY foggy. At the first cache one was supposed to spot some certain rocks where the cache was, but it was so foggy I couldn't see which way the rocks were!



I had to get this cache on the way back, after the fog had lifted. I DID see this strange contraption, though...



This cute little cache utilizes an old Velox bicycle tube repair kit. Or maybe it's for tubular bike tires, the ones racer's used, with the integral tube. I'm a Rema man, myself, but I do like the Velox rim tape.



I think this spider is listening for radio signals from outer space...



I could HEAR the traffic on the 52 as I headed up the trail, but I couldn't SEE it.  When I got to the ridge above I could see down into Santee as the fog was clearing on that side.




But on the west side it was still socked in.  There was almost a rainbow.



A little more, almost there!



Strangely, the fog was moving from right to left in this picture, for a while. Fortuna peak up there.



I finally made it to the peak of Fortuna Mountain, and started down the other side.



I only saw one person on the way up here, a trail runner passed me as I was rummaging around for a geocache just off the trail.

Down on the (relative) flats I came across this geocache with some sort of nest on it. I'm just glad it wasn't inhabited!



I also saw a couple out hiking, for a total of three humans today!

The last cache of the day was way down in a valley about five hundred feet from where I parked. Horizontal feet...add a couple of hundred more UP and a couple of hundred feed DOWN!  Plus a couple of hundred MORE to follow the trail! It was situated on an ant nest. The little red ants were mightily upset when I pulled the top off of their nest!



I posed myself picking up a piece of trash, a mylar balloon. I had the backpack on by one strap, and it slipped off. I was too lazy to re-pose the shot, though! Anyway, as they say, Cache In, Trash Out!!



Finally I was done for the day and headed directly up the hill (not following the trail) to the vehicle. I could see where a pipeline had been buried and followed the fairly-clear path, not having to bushwhack. So my trail-cutting wasn't a TOTAL sin.

As soon as I opened the door to the vehicle I fired it up and turned the AC on FULL BLAST, so by the time I got unloaded it was pretty cool. A relief, as I was pretty warm! Sweatin' like pig. And so I headed home.  And on the way home I saw this RV with its steps hanging out.  Hope none of those silly lane-splitting motorcyclists run into it!



Oh, and in case you are interested, you can view the route on Gmaps Pedometer. Just click HERE!

Friday On The Mountain

In a fit of pique I headed off to Cowles Mountain this afternoon to get me some geocaches.

The plan was to walk UP the road from the Barker Way entrance, then hang a right DOWN the Big Rock trail, go about half-way down, then hang a left on a very small trail and go west.

I turned on the GPSr. It said the first cache was quite a ways off, so I kept walking and walking and walking, over hill and dale.  Up and down. Finally I got near the first cache, but noticed a REALLY BIG hill up ahead. I KNEW the LAST cache was on that hill, and there was no way there were three two more caches twixt here and there.  Checked the GPSr a little more carefully, found I had neglected to enter the co-ordinates for three of the caches, and I had walked right past two of them!  Oh, well, at least I had them on my printed list. Well, I had TWO of them on the list, but not the one on that BIG HILL up there. That means I'll have to do the whole thing over again to get  it!  Yikes!

Here's a picture of where that last cache is. Up on that hill. Somewhere.



Hey, remember you can click on the picture to visit the zooomr site, see the image larger, and ofttimes I geotag the image so you can see where it was taken. How nifty is that?

So, I made the find on the second-to-last cache, then turned around and headed back UP the trail. Took another picture, of the peak of Cowles Mountain, since I've never seen it from quite this angle before.



Since I HAD printed coordinates (is there supposed to be a hyphen in there? I can't decide) the first two, now the last two, caches, I found them with no problems.

And so I walked back UP the Big Rock trail, and back DOWN the road, and went home.

Here's a picture of the cat in the bird bath. Ain't gonna catch no birds THAT way!

Duck Pond

Went back to the duck pond in El Cajon to search for that geocache, and found it!  I took a picture of one of the geeses.  That look in its eye is rather un-nerving. I think he (she?) wants to eat me!



I also dropped off my keys at work, for the summer, since I forgotted.

I gotta get one of those little mirrors that stick on the side mirrors. I seem to have some sort of blind spot. Almost merged onto another car today. Again. Even though my mirrors are QUITE carefully adjusted!  Maybe because it was white.  Yes, it is TOTALLY their fault!

Saturday Walk and Misc. Stuff

I went for a walk to do a little geocaching this morning, but didn't find ANY!  Zero for four! I did see this bottle cap stuck in some roots that tickled my fancy, though.



I thought at first it was the cache, but I guess not.  I hope not!

Before that I saw this strange antenna on the wall at the shopping center.  It's a magnetic-mount, like one would use on a car.  Nice how the cable runs through a dryer vent. Is that to code?  The big cable goes to an antenna on the roof, I think.



I made the acquaintance of some gooses at the duck pond near Gillespie Field in El Cajon. I think they were Chinese geeses, they had rather large basal knobs (And how long did it take me to figure out that technical term?). I shoulda taken a pic.

Here is a pic of the tailless cat sitting on the fence.



Here be a picture of a rose from our yard that my wife wanted to share. She took the pic.

Geocaching Sunday

Got up EARLY (5 a.m.) to beat the sun to South Fortuna Peak. I COULD have got earlier, I find, as it was quite light by the time I got to the parking spot. Speaking of, I had to park a few hundred feet farther away because the park just ain't open this early.

I went DOWN the trail to the San Diego River, which was running a little high, about an inch over the top of the path, so my shoes got a little wet.  Surprisingly, they didn't leak!

Next I headed UP the big hill on what seems to be known as the San Diego River Crossing Trail, which is really a big ol' power line road.  I saw two young deer.  I held quite still, and they came within maybe 75 feet of me.



That was quite amazing!  Oh, and there are a few more pics of the deer on the zooomr site. Just click an image to go there.

I continued up the hill, picking up three caches along the way.  Up at the top there are a bunch of what I call telephone poles, but I guess they are really power poles.  I thought it was interesting that there were different size poles. This may be part of the Sunrise Powerlink project.




I don't know what that big tower thing is, but it was making a kind of roaring sound.

I didn't find one cache I hadn't found before, but I DID find another cache I have looked for twice. This time it was right out in the open.  So I covered it up with some rocks.



I made a panorama of the view from the ridge between the Fortuna saddle and South Fortuna peak.



Earlier I heard some rock music way off in the distance, I bet it was the Rock'n'Roll Marathon. On the trail right about here I met a guy with a radio blaring rather annoyingly.  Geeze, it's nature, people! Enjoy it!

I also found the cache on South Fortuna Peak, but with a hint from the cache owner. Said hint was a picture of him pointing at the cache, with a big grin on his face!



I visited The Adrenaline cache again, but no luck.  It's very scary, right on the edge of a 1,000 foot (800?) drop to the river.  Birds are flying BELOW you!  I'm gonna need some help with this one, maybe someone with a ROPE!

Going down the dreaded Staircase I met up with a lady who claimed to be hydrating with coffee. I said I don't think it works that way!

I didn't find the last cache I looked for, but the second-to-last, that was an experience.  I read what turned out to be the wrong hint, so I was looking for something on the ground.  I spotted something in some big boulders nearby, and took this pic.  On maximum telephoto, mind you!



OMG, says I, it's my first rattlesnake!  I moved around the other side of the boulders to see if I could get a better pic.  I took a couple of pics, which didn't focus correctly because of bushes in between me and the snake.  I was NOT going to get too close!  I wondered why the snake was just sitting there.  Maybe it was dead?  Then I look at the cache notes, and realized I had been reading the wrong hint.  And then the name of the cache made sense. "Heart Attack".  I poked at the snake, just to make sure, mind you.  It was rubber.  Look at the picture again. You can see the Bison container just sticking out of the bottom of the snake's belly, and you can even make out the fishing line securing the snake to a stick so animals can't move it around.  Heart attack, indeed!

After all that excitement I headed down the hill, made that last Did Not Find, then headed home.

Of Indexing, And Links, Plus Suduko And Crosswords

I'm linking all OVER the place to my Corson Buoyant Transfer RR site, in hopes that Google will index it.

I've been doing the Suduko puzzles in The Reader quite often. I timed myself yesterday, I found I did the easy one in nine minutes, the medium in twenty-eight minutes, and the hard one? Still working on it!

I also work on the crossword, but I usually have to look up quite a few of the answers.  Is there some sort of ranking system based on how many answers you have to look up?

I usually read The Reader from cover to cover. Though I don't know why I even LOOK at the movie reviews, much less the restaurant listings. I haven't been to a movie in AGES!  And eating is just eating. Such a momentary pleasure! You pay a chunk of money, and then it's GONE!

Here's a quote from a library patron:

"I wish all the book in the library were Choose Your Own Adventures, so I wouldn't get yelled at for reading them"--Hannah, grade six