Super Geocaching Weekend!

The beginning

Marcus and I planned a super hike... Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into. We started out on the trail and we ran into troubles with our first few caches. We kept on and started to get luckier and better with our fickle GPS. We traveled down the spectacular Big Sycamore Can trail. The trail is busy on the weekends, many hasty mountain bikers were on the road so digging around in the bushes for small hidden treasures was difficult to be discreet about. (Perhaps they just thought I was peeing!) As we continued up the trail the amount of people dwindled.

The Serrano Trail

Marcus and I went off the main trail to find a Cache. The Serrano Canyon trail was stunning! The trail is narrow which criss crosses across a bubbling brook. There are trees that form a corridor that shade you from the sun. We found one cache and looked for a second. It was not too much of a misfortune because the rocks where this 2nd cache was hidden were fascinating conglomerate rocks. My class is studying these rocks as well as the shell fossil prints found on another rock nearby. I snapped many photos to share with my class this week! We hiked back to the main trail ready to call it quits for the day. We just wanted to find one more...(we must be addicted)

Addiction!

We headed up the trail and a windfall of caches came our way. We found some hanging from the trees and discovered our first travel bug (a special coded coin which traces it's travels.) It wasn't long until we were 1/2 way out and we could either hike back the way we came or try to find more caches. Being the over achievers that we are Marcus and I trudged along the trail from cache to cache. We began to get worried as the sun began hiding beyond the hills and the shadows became cooler. Our pace picked up and our searches became quick. Luck was on our side and we still found several. Our short cut turned out being a brutal up hill climb but led us straight to a cache. We continued on our way and we found our last trail... the Ray Miller Trail. We hoped it would lead us back to our car (with caches along the way of course). Perhaps google maps was not the best choice for our trail blazing but a map from the rangers shop would have saved us some time because we found the end of the trail and no caches, much to our chagrin. What was more disappointing was the trail would not take us back to the car. We began to back track to the last trail we were on. Marcus and I began to jog the rest of the way we were cold and racing the sunset (ala Will Smith in I am legend). The trail was serene as the sunlight began to fade. We made it to a small fire trail that switched backed down to the Sycamore trail. We made it back to PCH where our car was lonely in the once crowded parking lot. It was so nice to finally sit down after our titillating adventure! We were tuckered out and ready for dinner and bed. We found 13 caches and our GPS told us we hiked almost 17 miles; however google pedometer says 13 miles... Based on our hike today I am not sure who to trust.

Hooked on Geocaching

So all we could think about was our next find. I was even dreaming about weird locations and new logs to be signed. We set off right after a long staff meeting and brought our dogs along. Lola was a little difficult because she is still learning to walk. When we left it was dusk so we knew we would have to work fast. Cody's little legs kept up the pace and Lola found a warm spot in my jacket. Our first location we thought would be "easy peasy" but we looked and looked but to no avail had to give up for the evening. We decided to try Bubbling Springs #3. It didn't take long for us to find this one. Marcus had to use his man muscles to open up the box because it was almost rusted shut. We signed the log and took home a hair clip as a souvenir.( we thought this was pretty lame) We left behind some of our wedding matches for the next geocacher. We retraced our steps to last nights Cache and took the treasure (a small turtle )and left some more wedding matches. We plan on investing in something better but this is all we had lying around... If you ask me they're better than a hair clip. Well we are off to some Sushi to fill our bellies.

Kayaking and Geocaching

Today we took our kayak out for a celebratory jaunt around the channel islands harbor in honor of good ole' honest Abe's birthday. This was our first time kayaking in this harbor and it was a pleasant experience. It was very quite not nearly as many people out as there are in Huntington harbor and the houses aren't quite as extravagant either. Perhaps its so quite because its nearly impossible to find a non-private boat dock. After we found one we launched our 'yak in short order. It was a nice work out, but we both got some nasty blizasters on our thumbs. After our yaking adventure we decided to try our luck at geocaching, which has quickly become our new obsession. If you don't know what geocaching is check out www.geocaching.com, but basically you're like Nicholas Cage from National Treasure piecing together coordinates and clues to find some treasure (if you can call it that). We started off our geocache by finding the longitude and latitude of our house. After we got our bearings we drove off to where we thought was a close spot to the location of the cache. Well... we actually went way too far south and ended up walking all the way back up past our house. By the time we got near the cache it was getting pretty dark and we almost gave up, but our perseverance paid off. Right as we were about to leave Marcus saw a potential hiding place. Since it was so dark he was a bit hesitant to stick his hand into an unknown hole, but he did it anyway and we found the cache inside a painted altoids box. It was very exciting to find the hidding treasure and write our name down in the log book and see all the other people who have found the cache before us. We can't wait to go find another geocache tomorrow.

Mishe Mokwa Trail

Today we Hiked the Mishe Mokwa trail. It's about a 6 mile moderate difficulty hike. Many people were out hiking (perhaps because this is the first weekend without rain). However, not too many people followed this trail. (It is the longest maintained trail) The best part of the hike was the calm stream at the bottom of the trail that we had to hop across. A huge rock is down there that is split in two hence the name split rock. There is also a rock that appears to be balancing on a smaller rock (let's hope there are no earth shaking events that topple this rock from its precarious perch). The hike was beautiful but the Marine Layer kept us from seeing the best views at the top.