Posted by Karen on 21-Apr-2007
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Geocachers try to live by the “CITO” motto… Cache In, Trash Out and today the River City Geocaching and Dining Society (RCGDS) participated in the Folsom Creek Week cleanup efforts. Theresa and I joined them in their 3rd year efforts at cleaning up Gold Creek. We shimmied down the steep embankment to the creek below and started helping haul out junk and trash that people had thrown down there. I sort of figured we’d be with a trash bag picking up fast food wrappings and cigarette butts…. noooo, we helped haul up tires and a couch and a cloths dryer and a microwave and some other large things we couldn’t really identify. The large number of young teens that turned out to help was quite impressive and they worked hard! It was a fun, dirty, wet morning and we helped clean up a ton of trash! Afterwards Theresa and I headed over to the nearby park to try for some new geocaches that had been recently hidden. And then is was home for a long hot shower to clean off the mud from me!
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 03-Mar-2007
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Happy Birthday Maria! Theresa, Jason, Alda and I met up with Rebecca and David at the Bear Valley Visitor Center in Point Reyes National Seashore to hike into Sky Camp, where we were meeting Maria and Ron to celebrate Maria’s birthday.. YAY.. it’s a party!! Maria and Ron had camped the night before at another campsite on the beach and had a heck of a trek to get up to this campsite. Jason, Alda and I decorated her campsite with balloons and banners, while the others hiked up Mt. Whittenberg to grab a geocache. As we’re decorating, I hear a load “WOO HOO” coming from down the trail and shout, “hurry, that’s Maria’s woo hoo”. So we quickly finished and had everything done just as she rounded the corner in the campsite. It was so great to see her surprise at the decorated campsite and all the good, non-backpacking food we’d all brought in. We all did our parts and ate way too much food because nobody wanted to carry it back out the next day.. LOL! After a gorgeous sunset, we borrowed Paige’s trick and did some glow-stick dancing for the camera–see what you missed Paige by going to the beautiful Grand Canyon instead!
