What a BuzzKill

I’ve been Geocaching since 2003. Like most new hobbies, I did A LOT of it at first. Eventually I found other things to do with my time, but I never completely quit Geocaching – I just slowed it down quite a bit.

This month I got my regular Geocaching newsletter, which I always read. In it they announced a 31 Days of Geocaching challenge. They were encouraging people to get out and find at least 1 geocache a day for the entire month of August. I’ve been sitting here at my desk, staring at the screen all sedentary and shit, and not really getting out and moving much for months. Part of it is because of the unbearable heat we get out here in Menifee during the Summer, but to be honest I have to admit that most of the reason is just sheer laziness. Seeing how I hadn’t been doing much Geocaching lately, I decided that I’d give this challenge a go and try to get back into it.

So far I’ve missed 1 day (August 4th) of the challenge but have chosen to keep going and I’m doing pretty well so far … well, considering it’s only the 6th now. Today was a bit of a challenge, however. According to Geocaching.com there are quite a few geocaches in my area. What it doesn’t, or rather can’t, tell me is whether or not those geocaches are still there. I went out to grab one near my house only to find out that it’s no longer there and hasn’t been in months. When I went to look up other local geocaches I found that many of them hadn’t had a “found it” posted in many months, and some of them hadn’t had a find posted for over 2 years! There are also a bunch of other geocaches where people have posted notes that the geocache was in need of maintenance or appeared to be missing but the cache owner never followed up with them. It seems that there’s a problem with geocaches in the area of Menifee!

What I’ve decided to do is to start searching for the long-ignored geocaches and either verify that they are still there or that they’re long gone. The ones that are gone I’ll recommend for archiving so they don’t show up on searches. The rest I’ll be able to post as a find, hopefully encouraging other local Geocachers to go out and find them, too. I might even place some new ones of my own again!

_{This entry was written from 33°43.148′N, 117°09.795′W.}

It’s been too warm and humid lately for me to feel up to doing much physical activity. The result of remaining sedentary for so long is that I’m finding myself pretty out of shape. Christine recently asked if we could go up to the mountains to get away from the city life and to reconnect with nature. Seeing how this was the last weekend before Sam and Rece began school, we decided to go.

We drove up to the San Bernardino National Forest and made our way from Lake Arrowhead (or at least above it) to Big Bear. With some quick checking the night before, I had found a couple of hikes that we could do and downloaded the coordinates for a half a dozen caches that sounded interesting.

The part we’ll likely remember the most is the hike up to Castle Rock. It’s a short hike of about 1 mile each way. What makes this hike interesting is the steep incline – about 600′ in 1/4 mile. Our not-so-top physical condition and the higher altitude made this short hike seem like quite a workout. When we finally did reach Castle Rock, gasping for breath, we were rewarded with a beautiful view and plenty of fresh air. Rece and I decided to climb to the top of Castle Rock and had a lot of fun climbing the rocks. The view from the top was definitely worth it. We enjoyed a hearty lunch of MREs and relaxed for awhile.

After finishing lunch and making our descent, we drove around Big Bear Lake before heading back home to feast on nachos and beer. A good day, indeed!

We snapped a few pictures along the way. Here’s the photo gallery from the pictures taken with my camera.

_{This entry’s legs feel just the right amount of ache.}