Caching 8/28 - Micro Managed

There are a number of micro caches that have been hidden within a few miles of the house. I set out on my bicycle yesterday to see if I could find a few of them. the first is a small item that I guess is hidden in a pine tree along Wildcat. I was unable to find it. I'll bet it is a small capsule attached to one of the limbs on the tree. It is really hard to spot those.

The second one is called Head Scratcher #2. I didn't bother looking for this one since there were a bunch of muggles sitting in the grass nearby. I'll try again another time. I had looked for this one once before and failed to find it. Another clever hide.

Cache #3 is called Recurring Dream and I was able to find it. It is a little box with magnets holding it to a bolt underneath a footbridge. I signed the log and replaced it.

There are several micros along Highlands Ranch Parkway that I considered looking for but there were too many people (muggles) around.

Lastly I rode over to another cache that I had found once before because there is supposedly a white jeep travel bug in it. I found no jeep or cache. I think it is missing altogether. Oh well.

This 13 mile bikeride yielded 1 cache out of 6.

On my next bikeride, I am going to try to find some benchmarks which are loggable like caches.

The Mushroom

I believe that I have identified the mushroom I wrote about in my previous blog. Here is the photo again:



I believe it is a Lycoperdon Marginatum. It is supposedly edible when young though you won't catch me eating one because how would I know if it's young or not? And what if I am wrong in my identification? It is supposed to have some "psycoactive characteristics". It is described as a puffball mushroom. This photo illustrates young and old (I suppose).

Saturday GeoCache Hunt

Had a great day of geocaching on Saturday and here are the highlights. Click on the photos for a larger view.

The first cache I went for was a historical cache. There is a fellow who has registered a bunch of these on the caching website all around Douglas County. I have found a number of them and I found one on this trip. There is no actual cache at the location; rather there is something interesting of a historical nature at the site. This one is the Indian Park School. It is a small schoolhouse with a cemetery out back. In order to claim such caches, you have to email the owner of the cache certain facts about it. In this case, I had to email the information from the building under the bell (school district information and the build date of the building - 1884), information from one of the cemetery headstones, and what is written on a stove that is sitting in a field out back.

The second cache of the day is called Indian Creek Cache. This is near a campground where there is a fee to even park there for a little while ($4). Since I parked along the road, I didn't have to pay. I saw a park ranger there checking on the cars that were parked in the lot. I had a very nice hike to the cache though I was a bit wary of the 12 year old practicing his archery in my general direction at the campsite that I skirted to get to the cache! Don't worry; no arrows came close at all. I got to the cache area and found that there is no visible trail in the immediate vicinity. This made it extra fun. The trees caused some problems with the GPS receiver so I did the usual circling and zeroed in on the cache. Just as I found it, a bee got very interested in me. I did the usual smart thing with a lone bee - gave him a swat! Seemed to work. For a while. He came back. Another swat. Gone.

The next cache was up by the Noddles which are large rock outcroppings out west of Sedalia. The cache is called "Noodle?". I was a bit wary about hiking this trail because it is mainly intended for ATVs. However, I only encountered a single group of 4 off road motorcycles and they were not a problem. They were having a lot of fun - maybe as much as me! I stayed off of their trail for most of the hike where I could examine the plants and wildflowers. This is a really neat area for a cache. It was a little tricky finding it. It was hidden under a huge rock behind a rather prickly shrub. Here is the view from the cache area:



The next cache is called Totally Worth It and it really was totally worth it. This was a hike up a portion of the Colorado Trail about 1/3 mile as the crow flies. But since the elevation gain was about 500 feet, many switchbacks were involved. This made for a much longer and more strenuous hike. Here is a picture from the cache area (the hike started by that road down there):



After this cache, there was another one farther down the same trail. It is called the Quartz Quarry Cache and it is one of my favorite caches so far. The climb to this cache was another 100 feet relative to the previous one making the total climb about 600 feet and the ending elevation about 6635'. I guess the hike was about 1.5 miles one way. The quarries in the vicinity of this cache are very interesting. I have so far been unable to determine when they were last used but it is obvious that it was not any time recent because of the overgrowth on the switchback roads in the area. I guess 40-50 years ago. The area is littered with millions of white rocks. These were quartz quarries so I wonder what the white rocks are. I brought back a few rocks with me. Here is the view from this cache:



Here is a picture of a mushroom I found on the way to the quarry cache. It was right in the middle of the trail and there were quite a few of them along the way.



During my trip up to the quarry cache, I had run out of water. The next cache I planned to find was in Reynolds Park. On the map for that park, there is one cache location that is advertised as having drinking water. The only problem was that it required a hike of about ½ mile uphill. No problem. However, when I got to the pump, it was locked down. So, I found the cache called, Fee-Bee Chickadee Out of Site and then drove into Conifer to quench my thirst.

Another cache I had to hike and climb to is called Raven's Roost. This required a hike of about a mile and another elevation gain of 600 feet. This trail was the steepest of the day but was quite enjoyable nevertheless. I saw only 3 other people on this trail.

For my last cache, I picked a multi cache called Keychain Cache. The first location was up the South Platte river about 2/10 mile where I had to find an altoids tin that was hidden under a rock. There are about a million rocks up there but I found it anyway after checking under quite a few. Inside the tin were new coordinates. I was glad I didn't have to hike all the way to the final location. I had enough hiking for the day already at previous caches. The final was a bit more than 3 miles away but near the road. But it was about 100 feet up a steep hill. I discovered when I got to the location that I didn't pick the easiest route up.

I left home with a goal of finding 16 caches which would have beaten my old record for one day, 12. I ended up skipping 3 altogether for various reasons (too many people around, poison ivy, too far/too tired). There was also one that I couldn’t find. So, I found 12 altogether tying my old record. This day was more fun though even though my feet really hurt today. I hiked about 8 miles altogether and a good portion of the hiking was either up or down fairly steep grades.

Union Pacific Steam Train

This train went from Denver to the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo yesterday. Nothing like the approach and passing of a fine train like this one. Click on the pictures for better views.





Dang pole:



There were 14 passenger cars. The train carried 320 people.

Interesting Bear

That bear is very interesting.

Recent Birds Out Back

Heather spotted these two interesting birds in our back yard recently. The first one is some kind of hawk. Here are two photos.



He had at least one of the little birds that frequent our bird feeder for lunch. The little birds were quite excited to have this big guy in the neighborhood.



This is another large bird that came for a visit. A woodpecker.



He even thought he would sample the food intended for birds less than half his size.

Another Bike Ride

Today's bike ride was the longest I have done in Colorado. 42.5 miles. I've had some others that were nearly as long. I started about 8 am when the temperature was quite nice. By 10:30 or so it was getting hot and the ride ended about 12:30 pm. I did some geocaching along the way finding 9 new caches and not finding a number of others. I even overshot one by almost a mile and went back to find it. That's what contributed to the extra long ride on a route that is normally more like 39.5 miles. I did a few other minor detours as well in search of elusive caches.

Heading to Texas tomorrow to bring Sarah back to school at Baylor. We are actually going all the way to Houston to visit Heather's sister.

Might do a few caches along the way but I will be staying out of the weeds. We were in Texas a little more than a week ago for a wedding and while I discovered some caches, some chiggers discovered me. I have had them before and was reminded how nasty and itchy 13 chigger bites can be. And this was less than two weeks after getting into some poison ivy!