It's The First Day Of The New Year!

And guess what, I went geocaching!  Surprise!



YESTERDAY we went to Rice Canyon in Chula Vista.  Here we are on the water crossing. No danger of falling in the water, it goes through a pipe underneath, but the rocks are rather tippy.

And even though I haven't in years, and swore I wouldn't, I was awake when the New Year came in!

And that is why TODAY I didn't get out of the house until seven!  And what do I find?  Frost all over the windshield!  Took a while for it to melt, to.  I noticed it was thirty-five degrees when I woke up at six.

I did all the caches around the shopping center near the Rice Canyon neighborhood.  This little cutie was one of the toughest ones, it being located in a bush ten feet in diameter and just as tall.

A lot of the plants had frost on them, but I forgot to take a picture after thinking of it. I noticed one interesting phenomenon involving warm water that causes an ethereal fog to rise.



This is feeding a microwave antenna.  I just wonder what purpose those metal bars (busses?) on the standoffs are for.  Looks like one of them is grounded to earth. They are both touching that conduit, which would seem to negate the purpose of the porcelain standoffs, right?

I retrieve the sandwich from a cache we found yesterday and here I am (later) eating it!

 I found a couple of caches near where I parked, then I headed to the apparantly nameless little canyon below the shopping center.

The little canyon had a bunch of bicycle obstacles, including a teeter-totter.  This isn't that, though. I put the phone camera on timer, clasped to the walking stick (the one I DIDN'T leave in M.'s car yesterday) and ran over to lay down and pose.

I could have done a better job with the camera but the batteries were almost dead AND I didn't know how to put it on timer.  Now I do.  But will I remember?


I can tell you were this FREE HAT is located, or you can look it up in the image's EXIF data.

I finally found a cache big enough to drop off this Super Bowel collectable (ha!) pin set.  This cache was initially very tricky to get to, but fortunately for me someone had done the bushwhacking so once I found their track I could follow it.

After leaving the canyon I drove a short way and parked at a school to find a couple of more caches,  I found one, didn't find the other, and that was my only Did Not Find (DNF) for the day.

I found seventeen caches, and didn't find one.  I've been in communication today with two cache owners today about their caches' condition. It's gratifying to have them respond to my logging a problem.  Today I fixed one problem with a cache after consulting with the cache owner (CO) yesterday.

I calculate I walked five miles today, in four sections to which I drove.

And that is about all I got for today.  I wish you a Happy New Year!