Posted by Karen on 18-Mar-2007
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Theresa and I headed over to Cronan Ranch Regional Trails Park to do some hiking and geocaching. Cronan Ranch is a relatively new park in Pilot Hill and there are 12 miles of trail to explore, with more planned. The American River Conservancy has an online trail map. We started off by looking for the first geocache called “Hanging Out in the Old Corral” and I think it was Theresa’s cowboy hat that allowed her to be the one to find it. Next on the agenda was the “Welcome to Cronan Ranch” cache, where lizards ran out and welcomed us. We climbed hills and traipsed through weeds. We successfully used our geometry skills to figure out the “Center of a Square”, but were unlucky when traveling around the circumference of a “100 Meter Circle”. These were geocaches with a twist, the hider didn’t give us direct coordinates, but gave nearby points and we had to puzzle out from there where the cache was hidden. We went for one called “Abazaba” up in the rocks on a hillside. As we’re looking around Theresa shrieked and pointed out the biggest darned rattlesnake we’d ever seen! Giving the rocks a wide berth, we circled around to see if maybe we could see the cache from the other side, but then I shrieked when I came upon another rattler, only a little bit smaller. We called it good on that one and high-tailed it back to the trail, just in time to see some horse-riders coming at us full gallop. We decided to take the smaller trail and head up the hills away from all the horse riders. After we reached the top of the hill we started going across country, following deer trails and trying to avoid the oh too plentiful poison oak plants that were everywhere. We found the first part of the “Scope it Out” cache, which had us look through a scope to see where the actual caches was hidden. There are some very creative geocachers out and today they out-witted us on a couple. But there’s always next time! 
GPS Stats: • Odometer: 5.87 miles • Total Time: 5:18 • Moving Time: 2:48 • Overall Average Speed 1.1 mph • Moving Average Speed: 2.1 mph
Posted by Karen on 04-Mar-2007
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After a wonderful night celebrating with friends, some of us spent Sunday exploring the area a bit. We started with a short walk along the Earthquake Trail to look for a geocache and learn a bit about quakes. The San Andreas Fault bisects Point Reyes from the mainland and if any piece of California were to ever fall off, this could possibly be it… LOL! We then went over to the Point Reyes Light Station to check it out. The lighthouse was in operation for over 100 years before it was retired. We caught the bus to the end of the point and then walked the last half mile to it. The last bit of the hike 308 steps down to the actual lighthouse, which isn’t so bad going down, but is a good little haul coming back up! The bus driver said they had spotted 57 whales from the lighthouse the day before, however we didn’t see any today during our short visit. Here’s a webcam view of Point Reyes Beach from the lighthouse (it’s pitch black at night time and foggy alot during the day). We left Point Reyes and headed over to the Iron Springs Brew Pub for a wonderful lunch and for David and Rebecca to refill their “growler” with micro-pub brew. 
Posted by Karen on 16-Dec-2006
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It was a typical valley winter day, gray and bright–even though you didn’t see the sun directly, and Tim and I headed over to Hidden Falls Regional Park to hike a bit. Definitely less people today than when I visited on opening weekend in November. Using the only park map I’ve found, Tim and I headed towards the waterfall, which I didn’t see last time I was here. I introduced him to the geocaching game and he’s a natural… he actually found half the caches once we got near them; we found 6 caches today. It was a fun day and we met some other geocachers out on the trails too. As we were heading out, we ran into Eric and his girlfriend, who were just starting their hike to some of the geocaches. It was a nice rain-free day exploring more trails in this new park.
GPS Stats: • Odometer: 4.90 miles • Total Time: 4:51 • Moving Time: 2:25 • Overall Average Speed 1.0 mph • Moving Average Speed: 2.0 mph
Posted by Karen on 04-Nov-2006
(Click photo for all 25 photos)
Hidden Falls Regional Park is a brand new park in Auburn that opened last week and I went and explored it a little bit today. According to the Placer County news release the park is 221 acres and has 7 miles of trails designed for hiking, running, biking, and horse riding. On the way to the park entrance, you pass sprawling horse ranches and it’s all very idyllic. There were lots of people out exploring the park this weekend. It’s a very family-friendly park, I saw numerous groups with kids, dogs and even the stroller in tow on the nice new trails. The park map I’d found online was very sketchy and the signs at the trail junctions weren’t extremely clear always, so everyone that met up asked each other, “which direction did you come from?”, “is the waterfall down that trail?”. I started down the poppy trail, crossed the bridge and took a connector trail over to the Seven Pools area. I then started my return on the Seven Pools Loop trail and connected over to the Hidden Falls trail, but didn’t see the falls. I thought I heard them, but the trails weren’t clearly marked and nobody was around, so I headed in the direction of the parking lot as dusk wasn’t too far off. I’ll definitely have to go back and try the other trail loops in the park. It’s great to have such a nice park just 30 miles away from home… hooray!
GPS Stats: • Odometer: 3.67 miles • Total Time: 2:54 • Moving Time: 1:32 • Overall Average Speed 1.3 mph • Moving Average Speed: 2.4 mph
