Over the river and through the woods

yesterday, we finally went geocaching again. I wonder again, why did I take such a long hiatus from this activity?

We went to Sanborn-Skyline Park and took a lovely, low impact hike through the redwoods. It was pretty apparent that the recent storms had taken a big toll on the forests... lots of fallen trees, debris everywhere. But still, the majestic redwoods never cease to make me stare up in awe.

We went and found the appropriately named "Sanborn Cache"... there aren't too many other caches in this park because of the tree cover (bad GPS reception). The park is well deserving of more activity, I think it is a well-kept secret here in the south bay. I will definitely go back there.

My faith has been restored. I'm pretty darned happy to be in California again.

bought nothin'

Hope you are all enjoying your holiday. I love long weekends. I can sleep in for FOUR days... yes! Such a bonus.

Today was Buy Nothing Day, of course, and I hope that everyone was able to steer clear of the retail hells out there. I saw many a automobile driving on the streets, the back windows packed to the limit with shopping bags. Pretty sad.

But hey, we honored BND for ourselves, and it was really a good choice. We drove down to Castle Rock State Park (which is down towards Big Basin) this afternoon, to take a hike, enjoy the views, and possibly go Geocaching. Unfortunately, we were a bit late in the day, so the sun was setting fast. We took the scenic route, and stopped along the way to enjoy a lovely valley and ocean view.

Once at the park, we scurried along the Summit Rock trail, with the last fingers of daylight disappearing more and more every minute. Lovely trail, I might add... especially with all the golden leaves falling about. The blue haze of the imminent evening was all we had to see us along the trail... I had to start using the backlight on my GPS to help us along. Hmm. Not too good of a sign, but we pressed on, with about .39 of a mile to the cache.

Darkness was falling. Fast. I could barely recognize the forms of the barren trees around us, and I had to squint to see. My GPS read .28 from the cache, and I peered in the direction that the GPS was pointing. It wasn't comforting to see a fairly large hill ahead... this meant a quarter of a mile uphill? I was afraid that this was not feasible at this point.

Yup, it was. It was a sliver away from darkness, and we would barely make it back to the car before then. So I made the executive decision to turn back. I had almost forgotten that the hike in was mostly downhill, so we had a nice(?) challenging climb back. Jeez, I am so outta shape. I was horribly winded, but we made it back to the car as the day turned into night.

Oh look, a present.

We got a parking ticket for having the car parked after sunset. Grrrr. I guess that Buy Nothing Day bought us a lovely parking citation!

Oh well, I wouldn't trade this experience for shopping any day.

Beginning of an Obsession

This Geocaching stuff is really getting to be an obsession. I'm going on at least one every day since I've started. I even bought a new GPSR... threw down $248 on a Garmin eTrex Summit at Fry's this past weekend.

I dragged a bunch of friends out on some geocaches these past few days, too. I think I got Asa hooked. He wanted to go on trip to Yosemite today with Joe to hike and find caches, but Joe ended up having a date. Priorities, priorities.

Today, Kevin leaves for London, for The Gathering 2. It's a gathering of game programmers and developers, of course. Registered atendees get a free GeForce4 Ti graphics card, heh.

I'll miss him a lot. At least we'll be in touch online and all, but of course, it's not the same. Lucky guy gets to go on some geocaches while he's there, too. ;)

Must get through this week...

geocachin' in

I found my first geocache!

I borrowed my dad's Garmin eTrex GPS receiver, and it worked pretty well. I think I hafta buy one of these babies or the next model or so up.

I got to the site in the early afternoon. I stupidly did not eat lunch beforehand, nor did I bring a water bottle with. I was baking in the sun within minutes. Once I started feeling dizzy and dehydrated, I headed back, without even finding the cache.

When the sun was going down, I returned to the site and found the cache right away! The disposable camera inside the cache was all used up, so I shot a photo of myself there. I left an IKEA yo-yo that I got on their opening day, and took a fray.com sticker (part of the original cache contents).

This is fun. I think I'm gonna do some more... granted that I'm more prepared next time.

Stupid newbie.