A Cacher's Christmas in California

I was up bright and early on Christmas morning, at first light, rushing out to try and pick up a FTF (First To Find) on a cache that wasn't too far away from the RV Park. It had actually been published on the 21st, but nobody had logged a find on it yet. I wound up getting the FTF I'd asked Santa for, logging it at the official sunrise time here, 6:50 A.M. A great start to the day! I picked up a $5 bill as my prize, a pathtag from the CO (Cache Owner), and immense satisfaction.

The name of the cache was "One Out of Fifty", and the hint was "California". The coordinates were noted as jumpy, as the site was under trees, about a quarter mile in the woods off the main road (Rainbow Valley, appropriately enough). Once I got there, it took me a couple of minutes to zero in on the hiding spot:

That's its camouflage... a fake rock in the middle there. I lifted it up and found the container:

A nice big one, completely wrapped in camo tape. That was quick work... I opened it up to see what was inside and to log my FTF...

A bag full of swag, but what's all that underneath it?

It's dozens of 35mm film canisters (wonder why they're here?). In the swag bag, amongst all the (really good) loot, was a small envelope for FTF, with the note "Must Sign California". (there was another one for whoever will be tenth to sign the log). There was no log book. Oh dear, now I knew what the title "One Out of Fifty" was referring to, and the hint "California". OK, I opened one of the film canisters: "Vermont - this is not the log". The next: "Arizona - this is not the log". I kept going in this fashion, right to the very end, and was starting to get a nasty suspicion. After opening the final one, I did what I should have done at the beginning... I counted them. 49. Uh oh, this is sneakier than I suspected. I looked high and low, far and wide but couldn't find that magic 50th container I needed. A flash of insight made me inspect the big container more closely...

Hm... is that... YES, it IS!

...the log is in a secret pouch underneath it (that's it poking out). The big container was actually the 50th. Now THIS is worth a favourite point.  :-)

The rest of the day was great, too. I drove to some rural areas where there were linear stretches of caches (6 to 8 at a time), then did them all by foot. Picked up another 21 that way, and got some great exercise. The temperature was in the low 80's, but the amount of humidity (10%) made it quite comfortable. Some of these caches were pretty creative, too, but none matched that first one.

Hope you all had wonderful Christmases too, however you best like them to be.

...and to All, a Good Night.

Oh, a postscript... I asked one of the supermarket clerks down here if they were open on Boxing Day. She looked at me blankly. Not only is everything open (everything's closed on Christmas), and it isn't a holiday for anybody, but they don't even recognize the term. Culture shock.  :-)

Pechanga CA

It's the middle of December, it's 78 degrees (25C) with a clear blue sky, and there are palm trees... I'm in heaven.

I'm actually in Pechanga, which is just outside of Temecula. Pechanga (the place where the water drips) is the band of Luiseño Indians (they don't use the term First Nations here) who were relocated here in the late 1800's. The name derives from a spring at the base of the mountain. They opened a huge casino here in the 1990's and have never looked back, their people are now quite well to do. I'm in their RV resort, right next to the casino.

Temecula loosely translates as "where the sun breaks through the mist". Haven't seen any mist since I've been here (since December 1), but I've seen a lot of sun. A couple of days it's actually rained, and twice it hit freezing overnight. Naturally, all of that bad weather happened as soon as sister (the sibling, not the nun) Barb came for a few days' visit. When she left, it was back to the high 60's and 70's. Tomorrow is forecast to hit 84 (29C).

Lots of good caches in the area. While Barb was here, I even dragged her out early one morning to score a coveted "first to find" for one that was a few minutes away.I did one series that consisted of twenty arranged in two concentric loops, with 10 on the inside ring and the other 10 on the outside. By gathering letters at each of the 20, and solving a puzzle with those letters, coordinates for the final cache were revealed. That series was a lot of fun. One that Barb and I did (with Doug and Shannon) was at a formation known as Turtle Rock, because it looks like a turtle swimming upwards.

They sure do take their nationalism seriously down here. Every where you go, businesses large and small (and many homes) are flying the flag.

 One cache took me to the Palm Springs Air Museum. I didn't have time to go inside, I just grabbed the cache outside, as the truck's "check engine" light came on and I hightailed home. After being in the shop for the whole following day, they announced that it needed an oxygen sensor, which has to come from back East, so it's a question as to whether it'll even get here before I move on the 30th. If it ain't one thing...

I saw what has to be the most audacious hide ever:

Yes, that's the cache, the small bison tube hung right in front at the bottom. I guess because it's the same colour as the hydrant, muggles are supposed to think it belongs there. That strategy's worked so far...

Here's a holiday themed cache container I found stuffed under the skirt of a lamp post...

It's been interesting to see how the local caching style differs from place to place. I've been picking up a few good hide ideas for when I return to the Island.

Good Night, Palm

It's been a fun month in Twentynine Palms, but the time has flown and it's now time to move on, so tomorrow my trusty navigator and I head south to Temecula. Here are some more caching memories of the past month.

the nose knows

long live drive ins

the sky's the limit

Frackle rock

sailing the desert

murtle the turtle

good night, palm

Power Trip

One day I decided to pick up some more of the power trail series that Doug & Shannon and I did a little while ago. I managed to get 192 over about a 6 hour stretch, which wasn't bad considering I had no team (unless you want to count Mishu sagely nodding his approval periodically). At lunch time, though, the diesel truck indicated its disapproval of the stop and start regimen by throwing up an "exhaust 80% full - diesel regeneration required NOW" alert. I'd already researched that, and knew I had to take it for a high speed (high RPM) spin, so I charged back down the highway for 10 miles until it indicated completion, then headed back to finish the day's run. I'd lost 20 minutes in the process, but still managed to get all the caches I'd loaded (including eight or so independent caches off to the side). Diesels don't like power trail caching.  :-)

The highway had been recently resurfaced, so it was a nice ride, but some of the shoulders were REALLY soft. Here's where I almost had to call BCAA:

I'm in a rut

At one point the shoulder became paved, on the very side that the caches were on. "Great", I thought, "somebody in Highways likes cachers.

cachers' delight

Unfortunately, my elation was short lived, as a few miles down the road it reverted to "soft shoulders" once more. That stretch of paving apparently had more to do with (water) catchment than caching.

It was a varied terrain day. Sometimes the mountains were miles away

and sometimes you could reach out and touch them

I found this huge weed that looked like it'd be more at home in the rain forest than in the desert.

After researching it, I think it's a type of Datura. It's very poisonous, so I'm glad I didn't snag some for my salad.  :-)  I saw some earlier that had large lily-like trumpet blooms, but didn't have my camera with me.

Fine Art in the Desert

The desert isn't without its Artists in Residence. I posted some of the murals that are in town, but there are quite a number of other public art pieces around. All of these pieces had caches either in them or very close by. Here's a giant cross beside the highway that looks like a cactus from a distance (it even has a crown of thorns)...

But up close you can see that it's made of hundreds of horseshoes.

These next two may look a little grainy, but that's because they're done in oil pastels right on the asphalt street outside the museum. As they wear away, more are done further along the road.

Don't get in the way of this character outside the art gallery (yes, there was a cache in the middle of it).

This large piece (it's about 25 feet tall) was untitled by the artist, bur it's known locally as "spokes" or "sun burst". It seemed to be reaching to the setting sun as I got there. I was so taken by the scene that I almost forgot to retrieve the cache from one of the arms.

Here's a more complete view of it, before the sky stole the scene:

In case you forget where you are, these 8 foot numbers as you enter the city will remind you.

This "Chain of Life" beside the Visitor Centre had its cache in the base...

We found this spontaneous piece out in the desert as we were looking for a cache. The cache was about 5 feet away, I doubt the artist even knew it was there.

Finally, here's one of a set of three pieces, celebrating the sport of rock climbing that Joshua Tree Park is renowned for.

Geoart in The Desert

Some enterprising cache hiders will arrange a number of caches to form shapes and letters. Series like this are called geoart, here's a simple example in Google Earth:

Heartburn

This one's called the "Heartburn Series", with individual names like "Garlic Salt", "Pickles", "Hot Dogs", etc. (One was called "Cachews" (sic)) Each icon represents a physical cache to find and sign its log. Some people take their 4x4s and quads into the desert to do this series, but Doug and Shannon and I did this one on foot. We parked on the road at the top by the unrelated cache there. The total distance we walked was only about 3 miles, and we had a great time. On the way we saw this unique little cactus, quite appropriate for the geoart we were tracing.

lonely heart

Some geoarts can get quite elaborate Here's one up by Needles near the historic Route 66 that'd be fun to do some day:

Geocaches show up on the map as different icons, depending on what kind of cache it is (there are 13 different types). Here's a large geoart near the Mountain Home Air Force base in Idaho that uses the colours of the different cache types to good advantage:

It measures over 5.5 miles from nose tip to exhaust (as the F16 flies). And with more than 200 caches, it'd be a pretty good day's challenge.

Here's an incredible set of 1,000 near Boise, Idaho, measuring about 7 miles on a side.

Most geoart is placed in desert areas, as it's pretty hard to find large accessible open spaces otherwise. Some cachers have found a way around this, though, by publishing coordinates to trace out a design with puzzle type caches, with the actual cache for each being elsewhere. You obviously can't walk around them, though. It also poses a severe logistical challenge, as the published coordinates must be within 2 miles of the real coordinates, and real caches can be no closer together than 528 feet (0.1 mi.).

Next post, I'll show you some of the real art I've seen in the desert.

I've Been Through the Desert on a Bike With No Name...

...it feels good to be out of the rain.

Lots of great caching to be done around here, on both mountain bike and motorcycle. On the north side of the RV park is the largest US Marine Corps base in the world, so not much accessible caching there. On the southern side, though, is Joshua Tree National Park, named for the ubiquitous Joshua tree. It is said that the early Mormon settlers likened the trees branches to Joshua's arms reaching out to heaven and beckoning them to the promised land. It's one of the indicator species of the Mojave desert.

I've had a couple of good days exploring this huge park, and visiting some interesting cache sites.

miner's memories

Think you have bad neighbours?
"Here is where Worth Bagly
bit the dust at the hand of
W.E. Key May 11 1943

Arch Rock

balancing act

stop and smell the cholla

Skull Rock

To the East stretches the Mighty Mojave, and one day I got together with Doug & Shannon (Pouncers) to do a bunch of the Heart of the Mojave Desert power trail series. We totalled 258 for the day and had a great time. 

high desert caching

The last cache we did was called Desert Sunset, and just as we were signing the log, the sun was setting behind a mountain. Perfect timing.

Here's one of the caches I found on a solo trip into the desert...

can you see the cache?

here it is!

Twentynine Palms CA

We have arrived. And yes, that's the way it's spelled... no space and no hyphen. The highway is signed "29 Palms Highway", and some other signs use the numbers, but everything relating to the city is all letters.

The city's byline is "Oasis of Murals", and features numerous murals painted on walls all around. Reminds me of Chemainus. In fact, when I looked into it, I discovered that mural #1 here, dedicated November 19, 1994, was painted by two Chemainus artists, Dan and Peter Sawatzky (Chemainus murals started in 1982, and they were actually responsible for popularizing this form of tourist attraction in many other places). You can see the first dozen murals at http://www.cci-29palms.com/murals/walk/msiepage.html but here are a couple of others.

the artist and friend at work

closeup - no bull

the flying constable

The resort we're staying at has everything... pool, spa, exercise room, sauna, games room with pool table... and for anybody interested... a golf course. It also has some nice garden plantings.

All in all, I think I'll enjoy this high desert "oasis" for our November stay. It's about 74F (23C) in the daytime and 46F (8C) at night, quite comfortable. There are occasionally mild winds, but nothing dramatic. The sky is incredibly full of stars at night, the air is crystal clear. And of course there are lots of local caches.