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| Late Christmas in Fresno |
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| by Scott Legal |
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We took a short trip to Fresno to visit with my wife's family for a belated Christmas celebration. On our way Saturday we stopped to find Tulare's three lone caches. There was nothing remarkable about any of these, so I've just listed them: Fly Boy, Farm Boy, Tulare Welcome Center.
Sunday was the big day. It was thirteen months to the day that my brother-in-law,
VPLaMar,
introduced me to geocaching and created another addicted geocacher. Today,
we reunited for the first time since that fateful Thanksgiving weekend
to geocache once again. Vern is a fair weather cacher. The only problem
is that he lives near Seattle, WA, where it rains 364 days a year, or
something like that. So, while he started caching before me, he has over
500 fewer finds than me. Vern, if you're reading this, come back to California
and you'll have a few more fair weather days.
Our group consisted of myself, my son Jeff, my brother-in-law Vern, my
niece Kristi and my father-in-law Ed. Ed and I had found almost all of
Fresno's caches in September and there weren't too many new ones hidden
since we last cached there, so we set out for Madera. On our way we stopped
at Moroni's
Cache, a cache that Ed and I couldn't find in September. Vern found
it about 60 feet from where my GPS said it should be. Ed & I just didn't
expand our search far enough. On we went to Madera. Most of the caches
in Madera are park and grabs. The first was an unremarkable cache in a
remarkable area. The Stuck
in America cache is located next to a small grave yard. The graves
contained the remains of Chinese immigrants whose remains were not reclaimed
by family and taken back to China. At one time there was an acre of graves,
but all but 8-10 bodies were reclaimed and taken back to China. Hence,
the remaining bodies are "Stuck in America". The next three caches, The
Long And Wineing Road, The
Old School House and Northern
CA Solar System Model: Planet Pluto, were not too interesting to write
more about here. The next one, Lion's
Cache, was a real toughie. This was the third or fourth time I have
seen this hiding technic and it has given me trouble each time. A day
after finding this cache, I received an e-mail from EMC
of Northridge, CA, asking for a hint. So it obviously causes others
trouble as well.
We continued on to a cache called Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200, which is a micro located at Madera's courthouse. The cache was very tough to find and turned out to be attached to the building. Glad court wasn't in session while we were there. We walked to the next one, Let's Get Tanked, which was just over a quarter mile away. Then we headed to Loud And Fast, and parked about a half mile further away from the cache than we needed to. Oh well, we weren't getting much exercise prior to this cache.
We headed back toward Fresno where we found RedyFoot
Cache which was very well camouflaged, for a film cannister hidden
in plain sight. The next cache was Independence
Day, which was billed as a 3 star terrain. I give it a 1.5 or 2 for
a terrain rating, but I can see where it might get a little over grown
at times. Right after sunset we found Joggin'
along. This is under a bridge, so it was tough to spot in the dark
without lights. Our last cache is less than a mile from Ed's house. We
didn't look for it in September because it had three no find logs on it,
so I concluded that it must have been plundered. Well, I noticed it had
been found since then, so we stopped by and found Harry's
Screw rather quickly.
Everyone had a great time. No one complained. Vern reached a new personal
best of 13 finds in one day. That was also about 10% of his total total
finds. Everyone found at least one of the caches we set out to find, so
no one was left out. All in all, our day was a success. I get bored rather
quickly looking for urban micros, but good company made it fun. And when
a few of the caches turned out to be a good challenge, it made the day
that much better.
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