Santa Barbara

Painted Chumash Cave

Wendy and I spent Thursday and Friday in Santa Barbara County on a mini-vacation. We enjoyed the Santa Barbara Zoo and the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History on Thursday and spent some time in Solvang and Santa Barbara on Friday.

I really enjoyed the Museum of Natural History. It is very well done. We especially enjoyed a temporary exhibit–the Butterfly House. Because the weather was warm, the butterflies were very active.

We visited the Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park on Friday. It’s not much of a park, just a place to pull over on a very narrow mountain road. But the cave was impressive. The state has fenced/gated the opening to prevent the painting from being destroyed. The painting were quite vivid–much better than I was expecting.

I got in some good caching–reached 1600 caches. Here are the caches that I did:
Hole in the bricks, Lake Cachuma Rock, Stage Stop, Painted Chumash Cave, Moving Plates, No Homes Here!, Along the Rincon, Golden Years - C. I. Harbor, “BETWEEN STOPS”, A Picture Says a Thousand Words, Get the habit, Peter Meter Pumpkin Eater, La Conchita Landslides, Butterfly Houses, and “Someone told me…”.

Latest Adventures

New caches have been pretty quiet this summer. I needed to get some exercise, so yesterday I went after Dudley’s–reportedly a short, but very steep hike. It was steep, but not too bad on the way up. It took 12 minutes from car to cache. I didn’t like the walk down the hill–too steep, too much loose sand on the trail. The views were pretty good–it was clearer than usual for a summer’s afternoon. The photo above is near the beginning of the hike. I’ve been there a couple times for other caches. I always enjoy these oaks. However, all the green on the ground is poison oak. Just looking at is makes me a little itchy.

After Dudley’s, I went on to finish the last 2 remaining caches on the Tujunga Wash Caching Trail. One I could get to because of high water and the other was MIA–probably washed away by the rains and floods. I did Tujunga Wash Caching Trail # 7 and Tujunga Wash Caching Trail # 12 to finish off the series.

There wasn’t too much water–just enough to make it interesting. A few month’s ago, I tried jumping across a narrow place in this stream, only to have the log I landed on collapse. I ended up in water up to my armpits.

Locationless Caches Become Waymarks

I’ve enjoyed doing locationless caches. To date, I have 118. They will soon be a thing of the past, being replaced with www.waymarking.com. It appears that the criteria for waymarks will be a lot looser than it was for locationless caches. I’m not sure what I think of the new program yet. I will have to wait and see how it operates.

Because locationless caches won’t be counted as geocaching finds any longer, I’m trying to pick up some of them that I have had my eyes on. I did OK yesterday, logging World Mosques, Monarchs in the Americas, It’s the Cheese!, and I Can’t Drive….21?. Earlier in the week, I did The Noble Guardian (Sphinx Hunt) and Historic Synagogues of the World. I’m looking for a few more. Hopefully I will be able to find and log them before them turn into pumpkins (waymarks).