I started out the day in Stockton and the original plan was to head up into Gold Country north of northeast of Sacramento. Many years ago, I'd heard about a challenge cache that wants you to find a cache hidden in every county seat in the state. While at the time, I thought that challenge was well beyond my scope, I've slowly chipped away at it over the course of the last 12 years or so and am now down to the last two county seats (Downieville in Sierra County and Quincy in Plumas County) to fulfill that particular challenge.
The problem with that plan was a major wildfire burning about 100 miles north of Sacramento. The plan was to drive into Downieville, then head to Quincy and eventually head out to Red Bluff where I would stay the night. The fire wouldn't be a problem until I wanted to head out from Quincy as it had shut down roads leading back out to the Central Valley, which would mean that I would have to completely backtrack back south to Downieville.
As I've gotten older, I've found my driving stamina isn't what it used to be. I used to think nothing of hopping into the car and heading off to college in Humboldt County, usually around a 12 or 13 hour drive with minimal stops. Yeah, that doesn't happen any longer and I've found that 6 hours of driving is usually enough for me before I'm exhausted. This side trip to get those two county seats would have been too much driving, so I opted to change my route and just head up to Red Bluff, stopping here and there along the way to grab some of the Adventure Labs that had been placed in the small towns along Interstate 5. The first Adventure took me around the campus of the University of the Pacific which is where my daughter and son-in-law went to school. I sent them this photo just to show them where I was.
After dinner I worked on a letterbox hybrid geocache that looked interesting just east of the restaurant. Letterbox hybrids are an offshoot of the hobby letterboxing. In letterboxing, a person is given a starting point and then follows clues in order to find the letterbox, which is similar to a geocache. There's usually a homemade stamp inside that you can use to stamp your letterboxing book. In geocaching, sometimes letterbox hybrids can be at the posted coordinates, or they can give you starting geographic position and you have to follow clues to find the cache. The only real requirement for letterbox hybrids in geocaching is that they must include a stamp in the cache container. This one was one where I had to walk down the street following the clues that had me examining the various murals that were on the sides of buildings as I walked. Eventually, it led me to the cache that I found in a back alleyway. Maybe not the best "scenic" spot in the world, but it was an enjoyable way to end my day.
