Explore the World

Well, it's the first of the month again and once again, it's time for P.J.'s monthly photo blog. This time the theme is "Explore the World" and while I didn't leave the country or even the state, I did get around, so I have lots of shots to choose from for this month's theme. Without further ago, here's my take on the theme, Explore the World.

1. Reaching milestones

Part of the fun of geocaching are the goals that we attain as we play this silly game. I keep a number of goals in the back of my mind all the time just in case. Sometime back in February, someone told me that they were going to make one of their number milestones the Block Party in Elysian Park near Dodger Stadium. Geocaching has given any Mega Event (Events over 300 people attending) the chance to be a Block Party this year since it's Geocaching's 25th year of existence. The Block Party icon is different than the normal Mega event icon, which got me to thinking. I wonder if I could get my numbers to such a point that I could make the Block Party a major milestone?

I looked at my numbers and I was in a dilemma as I would either have to really slow my amount of geocaching down in order to make my 26,000th geocache find the Block Party which I plan on attending in late June up in San Jose, or pick up the pace of my geocaching and make my 26,000th fall at the Block Party happening at the beginning of May. Well, as you can see, I picked up the pace considerable, and made the Spring Fling Block Party my 26,000th find since I started back in March of 2001. In reality, it's just a number and I have many of my friends that have bigger numbers in less years and others who have less numbers in about the same number of years as I have been geocaching, but it's kind of cool to look at my geocaching profile and see the icon as 26,000. WARNING! If you click on that link, you'll be inundated by more maps and statistics that you probably thought were possible, but it'll give you a little bit of a glance into some of the things that interests me when I'm geocaching.

2. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Another thing that interests me is walking around in cemeteries. Yeah, that might sound kind of morbid, but usually I'm there for a purpose. In this case, I was up visiting my tiny human just before Memorial Day weekend and on one of the days when she was at pre-school, I decided to visit the town of Colma, California. Colma has the distinction of most of its land being dedicated to cemeteries and the dead in town number around 1.5 million, which outnumbers the living by about 1000 to 1. This has led to Colma being called "the City of the Silent" and has given rise to a humorous motto that was featured on the city's website in the past: "It's great to be alive in Colma." I actually visited a couple of cemeteries in Colma as there were earth caches to discover and a virtual cache as well. Sometimes people will place Adventure Labs at cemeteries to allow people to discover some of the interesting aspects of that particular cemetery. I was actually doing research at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in order to create my own Adventure for others to discover.

When I wander around cemeteries, it's also intriguing to figure out why people ended up there as opposed to somewhere else. I know that most of the San Francisco politicians end up being buried in Colma, because there isn't any land available in San Francisco proper to be buried unless you have a plot in one of the military cemeteries there. But others make you think a little bit, for example Joltin' Joe. He was born in Martinez, California, but spent most of his adult life in New York and later Florida. Why did he choose to be buried in this particular Catholic cemetery in Colma? And it's especially intriguing since none of the rest of his family are buried there.  His brother Dom is buried in Massachusetts and his other brother Vince is buried at Ft. Bragg National Cemetery in California. But after a little digging, I figured out that both of his parents are buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in the Mausoleum, so now it makes sense.

3. Always watch where you put your feet

Coming home from Colma, I stopped in several locations to find some geocaches and I stopped in a Park n Ride just off the freeway. I pulled into the parking lot, parked the car, then got out and walked through the lot over to where the geocache was hidden. The cache wasn't hidden very well, as I could see it as I walked up and I was focused on it as I took my first step off of the pavement into the surrounding terrain. Something in the back of my mind said, "Self, have you looked to see where your feet are going to land?" So I glanced down and then pulled my foot back as I was about to step on this nice 3 foot gopher snake. Curious, it didn't seem to be the least bit interested in me and didn't flee right away, which allowed me to get several shots off, before it decided to head down a hole which was right in front of it.

So I circled around the snake, went over and found the geocache, signed the log sheet, replaced the geocache, turned around and was surprised to see the snake in the same spot, about a third of the way down the hole.  What the heck? About the time I got close, I saw the snake jerk a little bit and then I could see its body tense up. Then I understood. It had been silently waiting for that squirrel or gopher to come out of the hole and I kind of interrupted its lunch. So it went after the rodent instead. I believe it had a hold of the rodent in the hole and was slowly tensing its body in order for the rodent to expire so it could have lunch. Lots of constrictor snakes don't need to wrap their bodies around their food, they just have to maneuver them into an area where they can press against it and basically accomplish the same thing as constricting around the animal.

At that point in time, I could hear my own lunch calling my name, so I left the snake go and walked back over to the car. As I drove out of the Park n Ride, I could see the snake still partway in the hole, so I'm pretty sure that's what it was doing.

4. Zoo and Museum with the tiny human

Friday of Memorial Day weekend was a "Day with Daddy and Papa." The tiny human didn't have pre-school that day, so we decided to go down to Palo Alto to a children's museum and zoo. Meercats, giant tortoises, flamingoes, rabbits were all on display. 

There were several areas that were designed for children to view the animals in a different way, including this very large tank of African Cichlids. Of all the photos that I took of my tiny human this weekend, I believe this is my favorite of them all. She just loved looking at the fish and we stayed there quite a while until other aspects of the zoo and museum beckoned.

5. David in pieces

On the last day of the month I went geocaching with a friend of mine down in the Fullerton area. On the campus of Cal State Fullerton was a new Adventure Lab that highlighted some of the pieces of artwork that dotted the campus. One of the places the Adventure took us to was this life size replica of the statue of David, although it was in pieces, with just the feet still in the upright position. The statue was originally installed at the Forest Lawn cemetery in Cypress, California, but fell over and was damaged beyond repair during the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake.

Donated to the CSUF campus, it was installed in pretty much the way the statue was laying when it fell. The Adventure also went on to say that campus legend states that you will receive good luck on your finals if you rub a certain area of David. Hmmm.  I wonder what that could be?

And there you have it, my take on the theme for this month of Explore the World. Please feel free to comment. I will not bite and I read each and every comment and try to comment back on each one. Click on the link to P.J.'s page in order to see how others dealt with the same theme.

Sidewalks and Roads

It's the beginning of the month, which means it's once again time for P.J.'s monthly photo challenge. The theme for April was Sidewalks and Roads. For those of you who regularly read this, you know that I don't always participate in this challenge. The reason is simple. I prefer to have my photos happen organically, meaning I don't go out of my way to take photos for a specific theme, but once the month is over if I happen to have enough that I think make the theme, then I'll participate. With the theme being what it is, I was pretty sure I would have enough for this entry. And so without further ado, I present my take on sidewalks and roads.

1. New Wheels

For the past 9 years, I've been traveling around in a 2015 Jeep Cherokee. I bought it in April of 2016 and put almost 200,000 miles on it.  I would have put more but the fuel pump decided to give up the ghost at the beginning of the month and the cost of the repair, plus upcoming repairs that were due at the major mileage milestone made it not worth keeping it anymore. So we traded it in for a 2022 Subaru Forester. I've been taking it through its paces for the past month and it's really a fun car to drive. This month we drove up north to visit the tiny human, I took it out to the desert a couple of times for a little off-roading and a lot of geocaching. I thought the Cherokee had a lot of bells and whistles on it, but it doesn't compare to this one. And the nice thing is it's in my favorite color too, so I've got that going for me. 

Because the Cherokee was a white SUV, it was difficult to spot in a parking lot. The next time you go to your local Target, just look at all of the white SUVs. What I did to combat that was adding travel stickers to it.  Made it a little bit easier to spot in a parking lot. I haven't started stickering up the Forrester yet, but I'm sure I will get around to it. I have several National Park stickers that I'd like to add. And what I've heard is car stickers are much like tattoos.  You just can't stop at one.

2. Geocaching with the tiny human

Sometime just before we went north I received a video of my tiny human pointing out a geocache that's hidden in the park behind their house, saying she wanted to go geocaching with Papa when he got here for Easter. Well, that didn't happen, because of time constraints, but we did go look for this one. We'd already found it and I'd logged it on line for her. She's very proud of the fact that she has a geocaching name. Still, we had to check on this one every time we walked on the sidewalk to the park to make sure it was there. One time, she even had me check the log sheet to make sure our names were on the log sheet.  Yep, there's Papa's name, there's your name, there's the dog's name. Yes, even their dog has a geocaching account. Do mom and dad? Nope. I guess it's my responsibility to bring her up in the ways of geocaching.

3-5. Geocaching roadtrip

At the beginning of May, the Los Angeles area geocaching community had their 4th annual Mega Event in Elysian Park overlooking Dodger Stadium. It's just a big geocaching bash with my 300 closest friends. I tell you this, because I wanted to make the event my 26,000th find and so I had to do several road trips to bump my numbers up. My friend and I did a three day road trip up to Kern County to work on a couple of challenges. One was the Incorporated Cities of Kern County. It's pretty straightforward. Just find a geocache in each incorporated city in Kern County. With only 11 cities, it's very doable and so we decided to kill two birds with one stone and also work on the Cities of Kern County in a Day. Yeah, we're a little nuts, but we find these kinds of things enjoyable, so that's why we do them.

The other thing we were working on was finding some specific caches for my friend to reach the gold level and receive a geo coin at the Mega Event. We spent our first night in Ridgecrest, which is the easternmost city in Kern County. The next morning, we drove a well executed path through the cities of Ridgecrest, California City, Tehachapi, Arvin, Bakersfield, McFarland, Delano, Shafter, Wasco, Taft and Maricopa. In Taft we ended up at this monument/memorial to the oil workers of the area. There was a virtual cache here and we used that as our qualifier for the city of Taft. From there, we drove to Maricopa, found a cache there and then headed to the coast in Santa Barbara County to spend the night.

The following morning we work up to rain. Was this going to ruin the rest of the trip? Nope. By the time we were ready to leave our motel, the clouds had cleared somewhat and although we had some drizzles in the morning, we had a nice dry morning for our drive up to Pismo Beach to find some caches and some Adventure Labs. From there it was a drive down the coast with several stop along the way.

I mentioned that my friend wanted to make it to gold level for this certain challenge, so we stopped at several spots along the way to find specific geocaches that were part of this challenge. Our first stop was in Ridgecrest because he needed one of these caches from Kern County. The challenges was to find a 2025 Cache Across Southern California (C.A.S.C.) in each Southern California County and then find five more random ones anywhere. I'd already accomplished this on past trips north and south, but he needed Kern County still.

The other three that he needed were located in San Luis Obispo County, Santa Barbara County and Ventura County. We found his C.A.S.C. cache in Pismo Beach, then decided to park on the street near the pier and walk out on the pier. There happened to be a virtual cache located on the pier. Once of the requirements was to take a photo of your caching name from the pier.  Mischief managed, although I'm sure the San Luis Obispo County Fire Department thought I must have been nuts to be writing in the sand like I was near some of their equipment, but I didn't care.  I was having fun. I ended up taking an extra photo of my caching name from down below because it looked like the waves might wash the first part of my name away before I got back up on the pier. But as luck would have it, it was still perfectly intact for this shot. Nothing like taking a photo from the pier, which is pretty much an extended sidewalk.

One of our last stops in Santa Barbara County was to a virtual cache entitled Frog Shrine. I'd been here one other time where there was a different cache at the same spot, but this area has grown tremendously over the past couple of decades. When I visited it back in 2006, there were some frogs up on a low wall facing a sidewalk. Now there were frogs up on the wall, frogs down at the base of the wall and frogs on the other side of the sidewalk as well. Just an amazing collection of all sorts of frogs, some very tiny and some that were quite large as you can see from my photo. Yes, I just sat down in the middle of the sidewalk for this selfie.

After the Frog Shrine, we then headed to Ventura County to pick up one more C.A.S.C cache for my friend and then we headed home. It was not long enough in my opinion, but we accomplished everything that we'd set out to do, so it was a very successful geocaching road trip.

And there you have it: my shots taken from the sidewalks and roads where I went this past month. Please stop by P.J.'s page and read his blog and also check out some of photos of others who wrote about this challenge in their blogs. As always, please feel free to comment here.  I won't bite, I promise.

Free For All!

I keep getting these notifications every month for P.J.'s Photo Blog challenge and when I took at my photos, I never seem to have anything that fit the theme. And thus I've been sitting on this blog for well over 6 months now, having not written a thing. However, the theme for this month is Free for All! Yeah, not only can I do that, I have quite a selection of photos to choose from so I may be hard pressed to get photos down to just five, but I will try my best. So here we go with my five photos falling into the category of Free for All.

1. Block Party

2025 is the 25th anniversary since Geocaching became a thing and so headquarters has come up with several ways to celebrate it, extending a rare type of cache known as a Block Party to all of the Mega Events happening this year. I've previously written about Mega Events several different times, but this post regarding the Mega Event that happens every February in Yuma, Arizona probably gives the best description of it.

This year's Yuma event was the first Block Party I've ever attended and it lived up to its billing. We drove out to Yuma on the Thursday before the event and basically for the next five days geocached. For the most part, it was a week long party with 600+ of my closest geocaching friends. I averaged finding close to 50 geocaches per day.  Needless to say, it was a lot of fun.

2. 25

Every now and then, Geocaching will introduce a limited edition Locationless Cache. These used to be quite popular when Geocaching first got started, but eventually, headquarters did away with them because they didn't feel like they fit in with the direction the hobby was headed. Now, they come back occasionally. The principle is simple; find something or do something that fits the theme of the locationless cache. In this case, this year's locationless theme is the number 25. What they want us to do is find a permanent number 25 somewhere out there, while we're geocaching and take a photo of it. Then we can log that particular cache. 

Originally, I had intended to head up in the central coast of California and get my photo with one of Hwy 25's highway markers. But I was exploring a cemetery in Quartzite, Arizona at the end of the Yuma Block Party and I came across Duane Bindewald, a sailor, born in 1925 and who probably was involved with World War II since he would have been the right age at the time. Once I saw his gravesite, I could think of no greater tribute than to memorialize him as my 25. Thank you for your service Mr. Bindewald.

3. Community Celebration Events

The third thing geocaching has brought back this year are the Community Celebration events. These are events put on by regular geocachers that bring our geocaching community together. You had to have hidden a geocache and also hosted a regular event last year and then you were qualified to host a Community Celebration event sometime over the course of this year.

I was awarded mine early on, mainly because I host events every month in our local community and I decided to host myself a birthday party, and so 67 on Route 66 was conceived. The event was held in a local Shakey's Pizza Parlor about 5 miles east of where I live and when I approached the manager back in January about reserving the place, he didn't hesitate. We blocked out the time and he asked an estimate of how many people were going to be there and at that time I had about 25 "Will Attends." Geocaching headquarters says when you're hosting an event to multiply the Will Attends by 1.6 and that will give you a fairly accurate head count. So I told the manager 40. 

Well, the will attends kept coming in and by the time of the party, I had 49 will attends, which if you're keeping up with your math skills translates out to about 75 actual bodies. And that's about how many showed up. We pretty much took over the place and Shakey's didn't even bat an eye. They were busy, but they were also getting a lot of business that they might not have gotten if I'd held the event in a nearby park instead. So it was a win/win situation all the way around.

There was lots of spirited geocaching conversations to go around and I don't believe I sat down at all as I moved from table to table. The photo is one of my geocaching friends and I. I chose this particular photo because we share the same birthday, so it seemed appropriate to have this photo of my birthday buddy.

4. The Tiny Human

While I'm having my birthday party, my daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter drove down to visit me for my birthday too. That weekend we ended up doing a lot of different things. I haven't written about this here on this blog, but I have posted things on Facebook, but my mom passed away last September and so this birthday was the first one I celebrated without her.  My daughter knows when I'm going to get "the feels" and she also knows that the best thing to get me over my big feelings is a visit from my tiny human.

We went down and visited my dad for one afternoon. We walked through the neighborhood and played on the nearby playgrounds. We picked oranges from the backyard trees and then enjoyed the fruits of our labor by drinking freshly squeezed orange juice. It was a very enjoyable visit and altogether too short, but I know I'm going to see them again later on this month, so I have that going for me. I always dismissed people who said that being a grandparent was the best. I understand thoroughly now and look forward to our nightly FaceTime videos as well as our visits north and their visits south. Being a Papa is the absolute best.

5. Spring is starting to spring

Even though it's only early March, you can start to feel spring in the air. I went for several hikes in the nearby hills this past week and the latest hike on the last day of the month I was rewarded by seeing a variety of wildlife. I saw my first two snakes of the season, both small gopher snakes and while out on a walk just in the neighborhood the day before I came across this beautiful Cooper's hawk taking a drink from the fountain in the front yard of this house.

It didn't take too kindly to me being right on the sidewalk, so it flew up to a branch of the nearby tree and just perched there. I admired it from the distance and then remembered to take a couple of photos of it, this one being one of the better ones.

And there you have it, my take on the Free for All theme for this month. Please feel free to stop by P.J.'s page and check out the other bloggers who post to this particular photo challenge. Please, also feel free to comment here. I won't bite.

On a side note, I'm hoping this will spur my interest in doing this again. I found another travel blog app that I've tried out that allows me to do travelogues in real time, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable allowing everyone on the planet seeing what I do in real time. Most of what goes on on those is a lot of geocaching and I know all of my audience here doesn't necessarily go for all the geocaching, so I'll probably continue to do that, but then synthesize those down into a feature here. I have several trips I have written about that I can post here, plus a couple of geocaching stories that I can throw into the mix as well.

Thank you for you patience during this long absence.

A Look into my Life

Well, once again, it's that time of the month where P.J. has his monthly photo blogging challenge. This month's theme is "A Look into my Life." I figuredwith the amount of photos I took this past month, I should be able to come up with five photos that sort of personify me.

1. Geocaching and travel

As you all know by now if you've been paying attention, I love to geocache. I also love to travel which works out well since they go hand in hand with each other. Last month I attended two geocaching Mega Events, one in the Los Angeles area (Spring Fling) and the second one which was in Flagstaff over Memorial Day weekend (GeoWoodstockXX). Both of the events were put on by the same individuals, so there was a lot to compare and contrast but if push came to shove, I'd say the GeoWoodstock was Spring Fling on steroids. It was just bigger and better all the way around and that's to take nothing away from the Spring Fling. 

Let's just say over the course of five days in Arizona, I got to see a lot, find a lot of geocaches and just have a really good time enjoying this crazy hobby that I've been doing for over 23 years. With the two events and other geocaching excursions I did this past month, I found 430 caches, which was my second best month ever. 

I've said in the past and I'll say it again here; geocaching takes me to places that I wouldn't necessarily visit were it not for geocaching. I mean, I got to stand on the corner in Winslow, Arizona while the store across the street played "Take it Easy" in a loop all day long. Unless you make it a point, a lot of these interesting tourist spots just get driven right by, but because I have an interest in travel and geocaching, I've gotten off the main highway and done some scenic byways that I might have missed otherwise. Watch the Pixar movie "Cars" and I think you'll understand perfectly.

2. Hiking

I also really enjoy hiking along all kinds of trails, but I have a big interest in longer trails, trails like the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) and the Arizona Trail (AZT) to name a few. I've hiked portions of all of these trails in my lifetime and while my age is starting to become a factor in how much backpacking I can actually do, I haven't ruled out the possibility of doing some section hikes on any of these trails. I've just become more accustomed to the finer things in life, like an actual bed to sleep in when I travel as opposed to a sleeping bag and sleeping pad on the ground.

While in Flagstaff, I was able to hike a portion of the AZT. Once again, geocaching was involved. We'd gone up to finish off a geocaching adventure up in the mountains north of Flagstaff and we'd noticed this cache just off the road at a turnout. We decided to find that cache after finishing off the Adventure stop and I am really glad we did. We pulled off at the trailhead, then took a side trail, which took us down to the AZT, which then took us up to the junction that led us out to the meadow you can see in the distance. Eventually, we found another side trail, which led us to the geocache we were looking for, one that had been hidden in July 2001. It's always cool to find caches that are 23 years old. As time goes on, these old caches are becoming rarer and rarer and so they become valuable in the game for different challenge caches out there that want you to find old caches.

3. Photography

If you're still reading along, you're probably noticing a theme for this entire entry, but you knew that was going to happen anyway, didn't you? Anyone who travels knows to bring a camera along to record their journeys and refresh their memories when they get back home and I'm no exception. 

This particular shot wasn't taken on any trip I took, but I happened to spy this ladybug right outside our community center about two blocks away from our house. I really loved the large amounts of yellow and green with that little splash of red thrown in which made for a very pleasing image in my opinion.

My photographs tend to lean heavily towards the natural side of the earth as opposed to the cultural side of things and so I have lots of landscape type photos in my galleries and photo albums. I will also tend to have lots of animal photos both large and small. Looking back on this blog entry however, I think I've actually achieved a good balance between nature and culture this time around. Sometimes that's just how it goes.

4. Food

When I'm out and about traveling, I tend to lean toward more local cuisine, especially when I'm eating at the dinner hour. This trip to Flagstaff last month was no exception. We had Mexican food, we had Neapolitan Pizza, and then we had some American comfort food in the form of this Texas burger with sweet potato fries and a stout chocolate porter. And yes, there's bacon in there too. Just looking at that photo makes my mouth water. This meal, for the most part, was the perfect ending night of that weekend.

Please also understand that for lunch I'll usually eat at a place that's tested and true for fast food, mainly because I have an agenda that I like to complete. We ate at In-n-Out for lunch one of the days on this trip. It was quick and easy and I can now say I've eaten at the highest elevated In-n-Out at just around 7000 feet above sea level. In fact, it's the only in-n-Out I've eaten at where they didn't have the crossed palm trees (a corporate symbol) out in front of the restaurant. It's just too cold for the palm trees to survive. So it's fast food for lunch but breakfast and dinner are really supposed to be savored when I'm traveling.

5. Family

I really couldn't go an entire blog entry about myself without talking about my family and particularly, this little gem. I found myself getting to hang out with my favorite tiny human in the middle of the month in Paso Robles so her parents could attend a wedding there. We got to hang out all weekend together, play in the park, go to a farmer's market and then enjoy each other's company in the evening while her parents were at the wedding.

I don't know if you've ever heard the sayings about being a grandparent, but everything you've heard is definitely true. Being this tiny human's Papa is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. We're fortunate enough that we live only a half day's drive away from them, so I get to see her on a regular basis. That, plus the technology of the day where we can FaceTime at meals really allows me to see her grow up. And yet I'm still amazed when I look back at videos from six months ago and see how much she's grown. Let's just leave it at, I'm really enjoying this part of my life.

And there you have it, my take on the theme "A Look into my Life." Please feel free to comment and check out the other entries to this month over at P.J. blog.

Exploration

It's the beginning of the month and although it's a little late, it's time for P.J.'s photo blogging challenge for the month of February. The theme this past month was Exploration. After looking at my photos that I took last month, the explore theme fell right into my lap and the tough part was picking the photos that I wanted to represent each exploration, but I narrowed them down to five and so here we go.  This is my take on the theme Exploration.

First off, I want everyone to know right now that most of this post will be about geocaching, so if you're not interested in geocaching, then feel free to stop at this point in time. All of the photos for this month's theme dealt with geocaching in one form or another, sort of.

1. Exploring Geology

The first weekend in February I took a road trip to southwestern Arizona, most particularly, Yuma, Arizona. The geocaching group down there hosts a large event on the Sunday and there's all sorts of things happening the entire weekend. One of the things I like to do when I'm on a road trip is to get as many different icons (geocaching types) as possible. One of the types that I found that weekend were five earth caches, where you learn about a geologic phenomenon of some kind, then answer some questions regarding what you've seen.

This particular earth cache is located just north of the town square in Yuma. We actually had a little time to kill before heading down to the town square for a flash mob event, so we stopped off here to study the rock and answer the questions put to us on the cache page. Most geologists that I know always carry a coin in their pockets so they can use it as a reference marker for grain size of a particular rock, hence the photo of the quarter on this rock. We ended up finding five different earth caches that weekend, not a large total, but it was enough for us with all of the other things that we explored that weekend.

2. Exploring History

One of the newer types of geocaches are the Adventures. They are kind of a cross between a multi cache and a virtual cache. We did quite a few Adventures on our way down to Yuma, mainly because it was raining all the way down there and the Adventures tend to work better, because you're looking for information, as opposed to an actual container and so you can usually get the answer much more quickly.

However, several of the Adventures that we'd chosen to do that day were quite moving and we ended up getting pretty wet in the process. One Adventure in Cathedral City had a stop at a Cancer Survivor's Park, which, for obvious reasons, was quite emotional for me. I chose not to post a photo for that one, mainly because I didn't feel a got any really good photos and so I opted to post this second photo instead.

This Adventure was in Palm Desert and explored a huge park in the city. One of the stops along the Adventure was the Desert Holocaust Memorial. This particular sculpture was right in the middle of the spot and I felt the sculptor caught the essence of the tragedy of this event. I hope I was able to convey with my photo what I felt the sculptor had already done.

3 & 4. Exploring Food

In our local geocaching community, I have a reputation of liking my food and I also have a reputation that when I say I'm hungry, that's usually the signal that we need to stop very soon and find a place to eat, otherwise "Webfoot" is going to get hangry. And hangry Webfoot is not a pleasant individual to be around. On this trip, I don't think I ever had to worry about being hangry, or even hungry because we ate well.

We were in the Palm Springs area on the first day and my daughter, when she heard that we were going to be going through Palm Springs, recommended Sherman's Deli and Bakery. The menu was extensive and I eventually settled on Sherman's Philly, with brisket, peppers, onions and provolone. Then of course, I almost had buyer's regret when I saw the man at the next table get served his Reuben sandwich. Man, that looked good, but once my sandwich came, I was all in. I guess what this really means is I need to go back there again to try the Reuben. Yeah, I can do that.

We had an asian buffet later that weekend and the last night we were there, we had fantastic Mexican food at this place that used to serve up from a Taco truck, but in the past year or so have found a brick and mortar building to serve great food. After we finished there, I mentioned that we really needed to go get some ice cream and so we ended up driving up to Mooos Creamery.

The wait was a little long, but the ice cream was worth the wait. My friend Kami had already decided when we walked into the place that she was going to sit on the ice cream bench as opposed to a booth, and so that's why we ended up there.The place had so many choices, that this is one of those places where you're going to have to go back more than once to really enjoy yourself. I had two different flavors and I could have probably chosen six or seven different ones; they all looked so good. Once we were totally satiated with that, as always, we checked our geocaching apps and realized there was a geocache right behind the building, so we walked out and around to the back of the building to score one more find before the night was done.

5. Exploring Geography

If you don't already know it, then I should tell you that I majored in Geography in college. I ended up taking a physical geography course while in community college and I was off and running from there. I'd found a subject that really interested me and I took more and more courses there and when I transferred to Humboldt State University, I continued to take courses in Geography pursuant to my degree.

I can honestly say that most of my hobbies revolve around geography in some way or another. I discovered Where's George? the dollar bill tracking web site. You enter your dollar bills, mark them in some way telling people to come to the website and then you spend your money in the hope that it will show up again. This hobby led me to Geocaching and although I still find Where's George? interesting, it's more of a passive type of hobby since you can't really control where your bills go.

Geocaching, on the other hand, you control what you do.  You want to go on a road trip to find geocaches? Go for it. You want to find urban micros? Go for it. I guess the point I'm trying to make is you can decide how your geocaching hobby works for you and that's why I like it so much more so than Where's George? I think that I like geocaching so much more because it involves all sorts of the different types of geography that I studied when I was in college, physical, historical, political, and many others.

Geography in general is a combination of different fields that sort of overlap. For instance in this last photo, we can see the physical geography of an area, what the lay of the land is doing and how those mountains in the background might be influenced by the river that you can't quite see behind me (that's an irrigation canal directly behind me). You can also see the political and human implications if you explore more deeply into this photo. I found this photo interesting from that point of view. Here I am, exploring my hobby of geocaching in Arizona, with California over my left shoulder and Mexico over my right shoulder.

And there you have it, my interpretation of the theme for this month Exploration. Please feel free to stop by P.J.'s blog and see how he and others interpreted the same theme. Please feel to comment here. I promise, I won't bite.

Where Will I Go?

Wow.  It's been over a month since my last post, which I guess in a way, that's a good thing. Most of my previous posts this year have been about my health, but since I'm feeling really good right now, it's allowed me to get out and about, which means that P.J.'s monthly photo theme of "Where Will You Go" worked really well for me. 

This past month, I was able to get two short road trips in.  One was totally geocaching related and though the wandering was just within the state of California, it gave me an idea of what my stamina might mean in the coming months should I decide to do some longer road trips out of state. The second road trip was a bit longer and it involved the granddaughter, so that's always a good thing. That trip near the end of the month was the first time we'd gone up there since my diagnosis back in December. So here's my monthly installment of the theme for this month.

1. I went where the wild things roam

A lot of my geocaching friends call me a snake whisperer. I take that as a badge of honor, but in reality, as I've noted in the past, I like to think that I'm just a little bit more observant around reptiles, especially snakes. I know of three people in my geocaching world who've been bitten by rattlesnakes and I don't want to become part of the club.

This being said, I found this guy crawling across the road that lead up to an old cemetery where I'd found a geocache. 5 minutes previously, he hadn't been there, but was halfway across the road when I came back down the hill from the cemetery. So naturally, I got out of my car, walked over and took several photos while it continued on its way across the road. I did that for two reasons, one of which was to obviously get some photos, and secondly to make sure that it got across the road without being run over by anyone coming up the road. Once it disappeared into the brush at the side of the road, I hopped back into the car and continued on my way.

2. I went where there are some "interesting" things to see

I've noted this several times in the past, but geocaching has taken me to spots that I would have just ignored previously. I'm not saying that Gum Alley was a prime tourist attraction, but it was quite different and something that I wouldn't have even known about were it not for geocaching, so that in itself is a good reason for me to continue this silly game I play.

I walked back and forth down the alley and was followed by another family of four. The older boy (about 5 or 6) had it right off the bat when I heard him whisper to his mom who was busily trying to keep younger brother from touching anything, "This is disgusting!" And yet people keep coming to sites like this, not only here in Atascadero, CA, but also other places around the world. I guess disgust breeds a kind of fascination.

3. I went into a child's imagination

My granddaughter is walking and talking and has a very vivid imagination. Her breakfast smoothies she makes have quite the list of ingredients and of course she expects you to eat them. This was the first time we were able to see her up there at her house since Christmas time and since there were other geocaching related things happening up in the Bay Area at the same time, I was able to kill two birds with one stone. It was a very fun trip and I wish we'd been able to stay longer, but we had a short window of time sandwiched between optometry appointments and dentist appointments. Fortunately, they're coming down here twice in the next couple of months so I'll still be able to get my Papa fix. We also FaceTime on almost a daily basis at dinner time, so I get to see her a lot. She fills my spirit.

4. I went hiking

This was so good. I like to hike a lot and with my health problems over the past half year, I haven't not been able to do that. But a couple of weeks ago, I went on a full fledged hike in the Claremont Hills Wilderness Park and hiked the loop trail which ended up being over 6 miles round trip from parking spot back to parking spot.

I was able to check up on a couple of my geocaches that were along the trail, four of which I'd noticed had problems since the last time I was up there. As it was, I ended up archiving two of them because they'd been buried by trail crews right before I wanted to get up there, but was able to confirm that two others were right where they were supposed to be. I also helped a couple other cachers out by checking up on their caches. 

When I got home, I was definitely gassed as my body was saying, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING TO ME?" Yeah, I know, I haven't done this in a while, but it's going to feel good once we get back into the rhythm of it again. My problem is I need to start getting up earlier in the morning as summer is definitely here and if I wait until 10:00 in the morning it's way too hot to hike the loop. What I need to do is get up at 6:00, hit the trail, then have breakfast, a cup of coffee and a shower afterwards. Yeah that's the ticket.

5. I went geocaching with 300 of my closest friends

Well, that's definitely an exaggeration, but I did attend a geocaching Mega Event up in the Bay Area when we were up visiting the granddaughter. For those of you who aren't geocachers, we have events all over the place. I host a monthly coffee event on the first Saturday of the month in my local area, usually drawing between 10 to 25 people. A Mega Event draws over 300 people! 

This was held in an historical park in San Jose, CA and geocachers from all over the country and possibly other countries as well converged here the last Saturday of June. There were all sorts of gadget caches (caches that are more difficult to open to sign the logbook) that we could work on at the event. The historical park gave us lots of interesting things to explore, plus there was a nice hiking trail that took us around the park to other newer geocaches that published that same day. This was the 6th Mega Event I've attended and it was a very enjoyable event. I look forward to my next event, probably next February in Yuma, AZ. 

When I go out geocaching, I always take my green ball point pen with me to sign the log in the geocache. Looking at the photo, I think I need to invest in a couple of green Sharpies so my name shows up better on the log sheet for Mega Events.

Well, there you have it, my interpretation of the theme "Where Will You Go?" Feel free to check out P.J.'s blog for his interpretation. There are links down at the bottom of that page to other people's interpretations as well. Feel free to leave your comments down below. I try to respond to all of them. Thanks for reading along.

Yuma

This is a geocaching article, so if you're not interested in that silly hobby of mine, you can stop reading now. I won't be offended in the least. It's been almost a month since the Yuma Mega Event at the beginning of last month and I really need to write about it.

The Yuma Mega Event is hosted each year by the South Western Arizona Geocachers (S*W*A*G). This was the 17th annual and the first one I've been able to attend. It's never fallen on a good weekend to go and half the fun is getting there and driving home and all of the caching that you do on the three or four or five days, depending upon how long you stay. This time, we left early Friday morning and got home late in the afternoon on Sunday.

A synopsis of the weekend would be as follows:  We did a lot of caching, and I do mean, a lot. There are events happening all weekend and because the S*W*A*G group has been doing this for awhile, it's a pretty well oiled machine with regards to organization. New caches popped up all weekend, giving many people opportunities for first to finds, if they wanted to go that route.

We opted to just cache in the desert on the way to Yuma, stopping here and there on the east side of the Salton Sea. Once we got into Yuma, we checked out the park where the Mega Event was going to happen and also found a couple of caches that had been placed earlier in the day. There was a flash mob event later in the evening that was a lot of fun and then we started working on some of the Adventure Labs that had been placed in and around the city.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Adventure Labs, they are a new cache type that can best be described as virtual multi-caches. You need to visit an area and get information that you input into the Adventure Lab app which will score you a cache find. Because there's nothing to find, it's more like a virtual cache, but it comes in groups of five or ten places to visit, so you literally get credit for 10 cache finds if you find all of the locations from a particular Adventure Lab. In the second photo, we were looking for a particular Adventure Lab Location. The Adventure Labs kept us busy until nightfall and then we found a great Mexican restaurant and had dinner.

The next day was devoted to the Discover Yuma series where we raced around on a scavenger hunt, finding clues and new caches all in the pursuit of Discover Yuma Geocoins. We finished the Discover Yuma series around 1:30 in the afternoon, then hit the power trails out in the desert. Power trails are just that, usually dirt roads where there are caches hidden approximately every 528 feet, the minimum distance needed between geocaches. It's a great way to bump your numbers up while having fun with a group of people. And we did both. 

Another event that evening, followed by some more caching, more eating of Mexican food, finishing up the Adventure Labs which we didn't get the day before. and finally crashing for the night.

Sunday morning, it was time to head out to the Mega Event. A Mega event is one where there are at least 500 cachers attending. Lots of people, but the park was big enough and they had one more Adventure Lab in the park that it didn't appear to be that crowded, because everyone was spread out. We participated in the Poker Run. I got two pair, but nothing worth writing home about since the winning hand as a full house I believe. Geocaching venders were there, Signal the frog, the mascot for the Geocaching website was there, so I scored a location less cache for the trip as well. 

Locationless caches were all the rage back in the early days of geocaching, but they were shuttered. Locationless caches had you find something of interest that no other geocacher had already found. For example, one location less cache I found was about Presidential Statues. I "found" the statue of William McKinley in downtown Arcata, California. Once I found it, that meant that no one else could find that particular Presidential statue. Other geocachers would have to find their own. I liked location less caches because it made me more aware of my environment. I kept a half a dozen location less caches in the back of my mind. Once I found one, I'd add another one to the mix. All in all, I found 25 before they were shuttered. Because geocaching is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, they brought back the location less for this year. Signal was going to be at several Mega Events all around the world and all you had to do was get a photo of you with him to get credit for a find. And so I did. As of this moment, Signal has been logged 3724 times. I'm sure that by the time I publish this article, that number might be larger.

The event went on all morning and afternoon, but once we'd accomplished what we came to do, we decided that we wanted to beat the traffic out of town and headed for home, caching obviously on the way home. 

I'd heard stories of what a good time everyone had and I definitely wasn't disappointed with great expectations. It lived up to everything it had been billed by some of my friends and it's something I'm looking forward to going to again next year. There's literally so much to do out here that you could spend a week participating in everything and just scratch the surface. I think I actually need to go back there at a different time, perhaps in November when it cools down after summer and just cache in the some of the areas to the east of town. I've signed a challenge cache that wants me to find 1000 caches in two different states. Most of my 16,000+ finds are in California. This area could get me up to 1000 finds in Arizona very quickly.