Matilija Canyon

Don_J, albackore , BWidget, deeznutz® (kneeling),

EMC of Northridge, CA, tozainamboku, Eagle Rock Rob,
and GeoCraig, with skinny bones behind the camera

PB210049, originally uploaded by rkropp8

On Saturday, November 21, 2009, the GeoConnection took on Matilija Canyon.  We met at 6:30 AM at Matilija Road Pullout to set up the car bridge.  We left 2 cars at the end of the trail–Gatekeeper Awakens–then drove the 30+ miles north on 33 to start the geo-adventure at Stovepipe.   Seemed like a very long drive to hike 8 miles back to the cars.

We found 22 caches along Cherry Creek Road on our way to the Matilija Canyon trailhead.  When we parked the cars at Connect the Dots, it was chilly and breezy.  Luckily, as we started hiking down into the canyon, it warmed up and we were sheltered from the winds.  It was a beautiful day for this hike.

It’s a nice trail (in most parts) from the trailhead to the bottom of the canyon, but it’s pretty steep in many places.  The trail through the canyon is mixed quality–very nice in places, almost nonexistent in others.  If you like stream crossings, this is the trail for you.  Don’s GPS track showed we crossed at least 35 times.

The hike was about 9 miles–with 49 geocache finds and several DNFs.  We started hiking about 9:15 AM and arrived at the cars about 5:00 PM, just after the sun disappeared behind the western ridge of the canyon.  Then it was the long drive back to get the cars at the top of the trail.

Even though we had our collection of stiff ankles, sore muscles, and a tick bite, I think everyone had a great adventure.  I had a personal best one-day total of 70 finds.  With most of those finds on the trail, Matilija Canyon is a great place to go geocaching—especially with 9 sets of very experienced eyes looking for the caches.

At Traffic Circle to Nowhere GC1TNP9PB210046, originally uploaded by rkropp8.

 

Rob and Stacy

The Long Look for Rock Hugging Tree

My View at the Lunch Break

My Favorite Shrub

One of the Many Stream Crossings

Grinding Hole at the DNFed GC1FF37 Big Rock Matillija

My list of Finds for the day–a personal best 70 finds in one day:
Matilija Road Pullout
STOVE PIPE
No Dumping
Down Range
FUN WITH GUNS
Shellshock
Sooo Square!
Shell Shocked Too!
ICE NINE
R-OPS
Up A Shadey River
Red Rum
Creekside Sentinel
No Shrooms
v for victory
Pretty Coney Hide
CARIBOU F-1
No Climbing Necessary
CACHE STACHE
Caching My Breath
Traffic Circle to Nowhere
CONNECT THE DOTS
OVC, FMHG, or GBD?
Crazy Train
Sponge Bob Square Cache
Down on the Corner
Werewolves of London
Smoke on the Water
ROCKIN’ CONE
Puppy Dawg
Rock Hugging Tree
break on through [to the other side]
Luv’n the OVC
Sit and Log a Rest
Many Trees
this works fine
Dragon Tree
Deadwood Wedge
Cairn Above A Chasm
Matilija Blue Bison
Tumbling Gold
The End of Dead Oak
Matilija SPOR
Matilija Tree Cluster
Matilija Brothers Five
Stuck In The Middle With You
Matilija Split Oak
O-Tay!
Red Rocks Red Bison
How Far to 33?
A Decon for Matilija
I Have a Big Crush on You
Sandwiched In The Middle
I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up!
Hair Blown Back with Surprise
Lean Lanky Long Legged Lass
Pearl’s Cache
Probably not the last.
I’ll See Your Ha and Raise You a HA!
He Who Hesitates Loses
BlackBarry Log
Ha, one more!
4 More Crossings
Don’t Take This For Granite
Off the Beaten Path
Retaining Log
Sit a Spell
Tilted Tree
Piedras Amarillas
Gatekeeper Awakens

#5000

Today I found my 5000th cache. It was GC1R5Q0 Bush Island, a cache along the Chumash Trail, in Simi Valley, my hometown.  I was joined my Don, Elin, John, Ellen, and Bart.

Even got a certificate for the find.  Thanks, John.

The day started out quite foggy, but as we headed up the hill, the sun burned off the fog and it was a perfect day for a hike.

And me taking the picture above.

It was a good morning for the hike.  The weather was perfect and the company was fine.  It was nice to share a major milestone cache with some friends.

Number 4000 was found on September 13, 2008. That day was my “Most Find in a Day” day: 68. The next 1000 caches were found in seven states (California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Texas, Massachusetts, and Maine) and three Canadian providences (Nova Scotia, Price Edward Island, and Quebec). These 1000 finds took xxx days. They were found as close as .23 miles from my house–GC1XYE0 Dirty Dozen Maggot–to 3091 miles–GC1DJE0 Baddeck #3–my most distant find to date. Besides the most easterly find, I have my most southerly find–GC1FYXG Chemical Plant Tree–part of a clever series in southeastern Texas.

The best cache of the group was the most challenging–GC1C4Y4 Spinal Tap. This cache requires you to find all the caches placed along the 70-mile Backbone Trail before you qualify to find it. See my post Spinal Tap–The Backbone Trail Challenge Cache for more details about this cache.

Here are some photos taken during the last 1000 finds.

Here are the stats for the last 1000 caches.

Geocaches found by GeoCraig

GeoCraig has 1000 Finds on 998 unique Geocaches

Statistics generated on 10/12/2009

Finds by Month

2009
	89	33	46	110	65	42	61	114	105	51			Total finds 716 Days caching 132 Average finds per caching day 5.4 Overall finds per day 2.5 Average finds per week 17.6 Average finds per month 76.5
Month:	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Days caching:	19	11	11	16	13	12	16	12	15	7

2008

65

57

102

60

Total finds 284 Days caching 60 Average finds per caching day 4.7 Overall finds per day 2.6 Average finds per week 18.1 Average finds per month 78.6

Month:

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Days caching:

4

11

14

31

Milestones

Milestone	Date	Interval	Code	Cache Name
1	09/13/2008		GCV73M	kimchee cachee
100	10/25/2008	42 days	GC1FQ2Z	Perfect Place for Shellster
200	11/26/2008	32 days	GC1HF2B	Down by The Riverside (Cafe)
300	01/12/2009	47 days	GC1HTWF	Hellen Von Seggern Nano
400	02/16/2009	35 days	GCHK3T	The World’s Largest Artichoke
500	04/15/2009	58 days	GC1P54P	MoorPark and Grab #2
600	05/22/2009	37 days	GC1N8YR	Drink up Me Hartys YO HO!
700	07/24/2009	63 days	GCRPPQ	road side pull off
800	08/24/2009	31 days	GC1XGY2	East Simi hike #3
900	09/12/2009	19 days	GC1KXEP	Arn’ge you glad you took this trail
1000	10/10/2009	28 days	GC1R5Q0	Bush Island

GeoCraig should reach 1100 finds in 40 days (21 Caching days) on 11/21/2009

1500 finds in 200 days (101 Caching days) on 04/30/2010

and 2000 finds in 399 days (202 Caching days) on 11/15/2010

Some Numbers

Overall Total Finds:	1000 finds in 192 caching days over 393 total days (48.8 %)
Overall Averages:	5.21 finds per caching day, 2.54/day, 17.81/week, 77.46/month
Most consecutive days with finds:	31, from 12/01/2008 to 12/31/2008
Most consecutive days without a find:	8, from 09/19/2008 to 09/26/2008
Most finds in a day:	44 on 09/13/2008; 29 on 09/12/2009; 23 on 11/15/2008
Best weekend caching:	44 finds, on Saturday 09/13/2008 & Sunday 09/14/2008
Best week caching:	48 finds, from Monday 04/13/2009 to Sunday 04/19/2009
Most finds in a calendar month:	114, in Aug 2009
Fastest 100 finds:	15 days from 08/29/2009 to 09/12/2009
Fastest 1000 finds:	393 days from 09/13/2008 to 10/10/2009
Total cache-to-cache distance:	19005 Miles, Note: excludes locationless caches.
Maximum distance in a day:	470 Miles, on 08/12/2009 Note: excludes locationless caches.
Nearest cache found:	DIrty Dozen Maggott GC1XYE0
Furthest cache found:	3090.67 Miles, Baddeck #3 GC1DJE0
Most Northerly cache found:	N 46° 13.996, Founder’s Wharf GC14N8N
Most Southerly cache found:	N 29° 00.763, Chemical Plant Tree GC1FYXG
Most Easterly cache found:	W 60° 45.080, Baddeck #3 GC1DJE0
Most Westerly cache found:	W 122° 29.526, Hwy 37E Quickie #1 – Sonoma Marina GC109EY
Cache centroid:	N 34° 43.365 W 116° 54.973 Map Note: excludes locationless caches.
Youngest cache found:	10/07/2009, Sunrise: A walk in the park. GC1RRD0
Oldest cache found:	06/08/2002, Harbor Cam Cache GC6212
Caches found which are now archived:	40 (4.00 %)

Stats generated by FindStatGen3 3.0.34 by rutson, tweaked by lignumaqua, running on
GSAK v7.6.1.27

Theme from pisg
by Morten Brix Pedersen

Statistics generated in 25 seconds.

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons License
.

Some Swashbuckling Urban Geocaching

I haven’t been able to do much lunchtime geocaching for a while because I’ve found most of the caches within a lunchtime radius.  That all changed with Molly Shock’s Murder Among the Mateys series.  She set out 45 caches in North Hollywood and the Hollywood Hills for an Event cache that I wasn’t able to attend.  I’ve been picking them off a few at a time either on the way to work or during lunch.  So far, I have 22 of them, which is probably more than half of the available caches because some of them have already disappeared, or as Molly says,  “off to Davey Jones locker.”

It’s been nice to see the effort that Molly has put into this series.  And it’s been nice to do some lunchtime caching instead of just staying at my desk.

Thanks Molly.

Geocaching in Point Mugu State Park

I had a great day of geocaching in Point Mugu State Park on Saturday.  It was a perfect day for a hike.  It was sunny, but not too hot (for the most part), often with a nice breeze off the ocean.

I have hiked Sycamore Canyon several times, but this trip would take me to some new areas.

The Route:  I started my hike at the trailhead at the end of Wendy Drive and hiked to the windmill.  After visiting the windmill, I headed along the trail toward Boney Mountain so I could pick up the trail down into Upper Sycamore Canyon.  When I came out of Upper Sycamore Canyon, I headed south along the Sycamore Canyon Road to pick up a few caches.  After back tracking a bit, I headed up the road that leads to the Hidden Pond trailhead.  I did the Hidden Pond Trail, then went down into Wood Canyon.  The trail drops by into Sycamore Canyon about 3 miles from the campground.  Total hiking/geocaching time: 9 hours.  Geocaches found:  29  Mileage:  I haven’t figured the mileage yet.

It was a great day for hiking.  These two photos show the sunny skies with the fog near the coast.  Because of the season, everything was very dry and crispy.  While I enjoyed the hike very much, I think Spring would be the best time for this adventure.

The old windmill and Fill In The Blanks was my first stop.  Then it was down into Upper Sycamore Canyon.

Considering the name of the canyon, I figured that I had to include a couple of sycamore photos.

Leaving Upper Sycamore Canyon and entering Sycamore Canyon, I left solitude for the 405 and rush hour.  There were a lot of people on bikes.  The canyon road was very busy.  Be careful–some of the bikers aren’t.  I was able to pick up a few caches in the Canyon, had a nice lunch stop at A Picnic Time Log, including a DNF there, and then backtracked to Ranch Center Road which leads to the Hidden Pond Trail.

Hidden Pond Trail is a single track trail of mixed quality.  The direction I took leads up the steep slope of the ridge.  At times, the trail is very fine sand–almost dust.  Judging by the number of thread marks, I appeared to be a popular mountain bike route.  There are several caches along this trail–some easy, others more difficult.

If you are looking for Arn’ge you glad you took this trail, you don’t need to climb the wall near the cache.  The cache is reachable from the trail.  Unfortunately, it appears that some geocachers have really damaged the area.  This is one of three slides presumeably caused by people looking for the cache.

The trail switchbacks up the ridge. The caches along this stretch of the trail offered a good excuse to take breaks.  The switchbacks were sheltered from the ocean breeze so it was getting pretty warm.  Most of the heat was radiating up from the rocks.

The climb did have its good points.  The views back toward Boney Mountain and Sycamore Canyon were very nice.

The rocks around Buzzing Around Easter Island are covered with interesting lichen.

Descending into Woods Canyon brought a change in vegetation.  I started seeing a lot of cacti and a lot more oaks.

And speaking of oak, there is a lot of the poison variety.  I didn’t want to take a photo of it because I was afraid of infecting my camera.  Most of the poison oak is either red or turning red.  Just thinking about it is making me itch.  If you have read this blog before, you may know that I can get a poison oak rash just looking at the stuff.  I passed on several caches in this area only because the poison oak had encroached on the GZ.

Santa Ana, what’s yer twenty? was one such cache.  Lots of poison oak in the area.  As I walked up a creek bed trying to figure a way to the cache that was away from the poison oak, I smelled something awful–and it wasn’t just me.  I found a full skeleton of a deer that appeared to have been dinner for quite a few.

It was a long, but enjoyable day.  If you are interested in some caches that are off the beaten path, I recommend both Upper Sycamore Canyon and the Lost Pond/Wood Canyon area.  Just be careful around the poison oak.

Here’s my list of finds for the day:

Fill In The Blanks

A View By De-Fault

Boundary

Shandi’s

Rocks On Rocks

Consider the Lilies….(of the Canyon)

Log This One

In the _ _ _

Where’s My Yellow Ribbon?

Rusted

Rabbit Hole

En Un Tronco Podrido

No Parking

Thirstier

Sin Nombre Crash Corner

Bottom of Hidden Pond Trail

Arn’ge you glad you took this trail

Another reason to get off the main trail.

Very Rocky Switchback

Hidden Pond Trail Switchbacks

Buzzing Around Easter Island

Hidden Pond

Sapphire Sage

I Sea the Oxnard Plains!

What ever happened to the roadrunner?

Stupify!

Trunk Hollow

Winter Solstice

Lowest Level of Hell

That Has to be a Geocacher

After an enjoyable picnic breakfast at sunrise at the beach at Silver Stand, we did a little geocaching on the way home.  As we approached Ugly, we saw a car parked on the side of the road.  This cache is placed in the middle of the farm fields of Oxnard and there really isn’t any reason to be parked there, unless, of course, you are a geocacher.  As I stopped the car, I saw the tell tale signs of a geocacher that can’t find the cache:  pacing back and forth, looking again at the GPS, wondering “Where could the cache be?”  I’ve been there many, many times.

I walked up and said, “Have you found it yet?” and then introduced myself.  bythewind777 is a fairly new geocacher from Las Vegas.  She has a boat in the nearby harbor.  We looked for a while together and I did the same bewildered geocacher dance: pacing back and forth, looking again at the GPS, wondering “Where could the cache be?”

The cache was well named.  It is located next to a pile of trash dumped along side of the road.  (I never have figured out why anyone would choose to locate a cache near a trash heap, but I’ve seen it quite a bit.)  I looked at the cache a couple of times before realizing that I had found it.  A nice cache in a lousy location.

The best part of finding the cache, of course, was getting to meet a fellow geocacher.  Nice to meet you, bythewind777.  Keep the finds coming.

Geocaching Across the Country

My Finds by County

I just ran my numbers through www.itsnotaboutthenumbers.com and did a Finds by County map.

It’s an interesting record of where my geocaching adventures have taken me.  I’m sure one of these days I will have a find in all 50 states.  Right now, I’m halfway there–25 states down, 25 to go.

August

August was one of my better months of geocaching–114 finds in 12 days.

The finds were in 4 states (CA, NV, AZ, and UT) and ranged from .23 miles from home to 582.56 miles.

Because of added functions with the last upgrade, I was able to use the iPhone geocaching application to directly log the finds in the field.  I enjoyed doing that.  I don’t mind taking a minute or two logging the find right at the cache.  I don’t like coming home from a nice adventure and then needing to get on-line and do the paperwork.

I’m at 4843 finds.  5000 finds doesn’t seem too far away now.  I might be able to do it by the end of the year.

Ventura County Caching

We did a nice geocaching adventure in Ventura County today.  We were trying to get out of the smoke from the Station Fire that settled into Simi Valley.  We first drove north out of Fillmore toward the a Condor observation area, collecting 15 caches along the way.  The area is a new one for me.  We had been in the area before, but the road was locked at The End, which was really the beginning for us today.

It’s a great area, with a series of fine caches along the road.  The photo above was taken near Dough Flat Redux.  It’s about a .2 mile walk up the hill from the road to an area on the top of the ridge with a couple of benches to view the condors. I didn’t see any today.  Wendy saw a couple of large birds soaring in the distances that could have been condors.  We want to go back in the spring when the greenery will be out with perhaps some wildflowers.

After the trip up and down the canyon, we went to Ojai and had a nice lunch.  I did a quick cache after lunch–Libbey Park Walkway–and then we drove up to the Matillija Canyon trailhead for a shot at Gatekeeper Awakens.  It was a DNF.

When we got back to Simi, we needed to get a new wiper blade for the back window of the car.  They was a cache in the parking lot–Cache of loose change–and one across the street–Gassed.  Gassed is a very cleverly done cache.  Give it a try.

Total for the day:  20 finds and a couple of DNFs.  Lots of nice scenery.  All in all, a very good adventure.

Here are today’s finds:

No Motor Vehicles

The Giving Tree

Matilija Hots Springs

Piranha

Hot Stuff

Birds

Oak Flat

Bees

Butterflies

Sespe Sojourn – Trailhead

Miriam’s Cache

Mountain Lion

Coyote

Sespe Dino

Condor

Dough Flat Redux

Lizards

Libbey Park Walkway

Cache of loose change

Gassed

July 2009

I started July in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, finding GC14N8N Founder’s Wharf.  It was Canada Day and the cache was on the edge of the area being used for the holiday celebrations.  It was a good cache to find because I DNFed all the other caches in town.  Founder’s Wharf was my only PEI cache.  It is 2977 miles from home, the second farthest cache from home.  (The farthest is only 113 miles farther–I found it the day before in Nova Scotia.)

I just ended the month by finding the closest unfound (for me, anyway) to my house.  GC1WDBT Inside Job is only .5 miles away.

We also traveled to Texas last week and found 46 caches ranging from 1400 and 1440 miles from home.

While not my biggest month of finds, it certainly was the most far flung.  We had a great time caching in the rain in Maine and Nova Scotia to the heat and humidity of southeast Texas, and a few at home, too.

Geocaching in Texas

At the Mosquito Festival

I got home yesterday from a visit to my daughter and son-in-law’s in Texas.  They live in the southeast Texas town of Richwood.  As far as geocaching goes, there are a lot of them in the area and I had a good time finding some.

My first attempt ended with a DNF–at least.  It was called P. I. Farm.  I didn’t realize what P.I. meant until I arrived at the site–Poison Ivy.  Why anyone would knowingly put a cache in the middle of a bunch of poison ivy is beyond me.  I cautiously looked for a while, but then decided that it just wasn’t worth it.  From what I can tell, poison ivy is everywhere.  It’s difficult to go into the woods and not be surrounded by it.  Sandals and shorts aren’t the way to go in these areas.

Later in the day, while my wife and daughter were shopping, I did a little urban caching in downtown Lake Jackson.  There is a magnetic cache on the underside of the table above.  I decided to go for it.  I got the cache and replaced it without the guy sitting at the table even aware that I was there.

That evening we attended the Great Mosquito Festival in Clute.  Luckily, no mosquitoes that night, but I did find a well hidden cache on the Festival grounds–Willie Man-Chew–named for the mascot of the festival.

We took a nice trip along to Gulf Coast on our way to Galveston, picking up a few caches along the way.  One of my favorites is pictured below.  It was located in a bird viewing area on Galveston Island.  While I did see some birds, I saw a lot more mosquitoes–or should I say that they saw me.  As long as I was moving I was OK.  As soon as I stopped, my legs were covered with mosquitoes.  Motivation to sign the log quickly.

The cache was a lock-n-lock box under the feeder

Another interesting cache in the area was Heart attack waiting to happen!.  Check out the photo and you will see how it got its name.

We got a Webcam cache right before lunch.  You can’t tell that us in the photo, but we are standing on the corner of the dock in Galveston.

I ended up with 46 caches on the trip.  If Virtuals were still allowed, I found a few good ones at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.  Like “Touch a Piece of the Moon.”

Or, how about “Stand Next to Saturn?”

I got a new “most southernly” cache on the trip:  GC1FYXG Chemical Plant Tree.  There is a series of Chemical Plant caches and it only took me finding 3 or 4 before I figured out the names.  There are a lot of chemical plants in the area, but these didn’t have anything to do with the plants (as in factories); it described the actual caches–they were all attached to plastic (or chemical) plants.

And I think we have a new geocaching convert–my son-in-law James, or rw111.  He has a very good eye for finding caches (better than mine).  I knew he had the caching bug when he wanted to go after a 4/1 cache.  And he didn’t want to quit until he found it.

Here he is at the cache—19 Pelicans at dining hall 20–and, no, we didn’t find it.

Here is the list of the caches that I found this week:

7/28/2009 GC1E88H Hollow Tree Covered with Moss
7/28/2009 GC1E14F Take Time To Play
7/28/2009 GC1EDV2 Survey Says…!
7/28/2009 GC1N4WY Panache
7/28/2009 GC1F6WY Veterans Park
7/28/2009 GC1NHK4 Dedicated to E.D.
7/27/2009 GCF44D Mighty Mega House
7/27/2009 GCRK7A Pepper’s Flatt Lake
7/27/2009 GCWXRA Beat the Heat TH #1
7/27/2009 GCXYFN Brissany – One Degree of Separation
7/27/2009 GC11C51 one fish
7/27/2009 GC154RM FSB #4 – Art Wolfe
7/27/2009 GC1EE0G Last Lifeline
7/27/2009 GC1FRN9 The Tree Knows
7/27/2009 GC1F6WR Welcome to Angleton II
7/27/2009 GC1EXRW Brazos Lighthouse
7/27/2009 GC1VEK6 Happy Birthday Preston!
7/27/2009 GC1RCBC Yellow Pizza
7/25/2009 GC1TMHC Historic Galveston Cemetery Cache
7/25/2009 GC1TMHA Pirate Battle/Treasure? Site
7/25/2009 GC1TBGE A birds eye view
7/25/2009 GC1TARV Heart attack waiting to happen!
7/25/2009 GC1T89G asiel’s Mammoth Lake
7/25/2009 GCXDAG Phone Home
7/25/2009 GC6212 Harbor Cam Cache
7/24/2009 GCRPPQ road side pull off
7/24/2009 GC167CD Battleground
7/24/2009 GC1C88M Chemical Plant III
7/24/2009 GC1E604 Where generals keep their armies
7/24/2009 GC1EDD0 Flat_3 B&B_14
7/24/2009 GC1FYXF Park Post
7/24/2009 GC1FYXG Chemical Plant Tree
7/24/2009 GC1JW4K Copy Cat Chemical Plant B
7/24/2009 GC1QPN3 2004 5
7/23/2009 GC1EF6E Parking Way
7/23/2009 GC1DCEY FLAT_ONE B&B_12
7/23/2009 GC1EA6A Where’s George?
7/23/2009 GC1DPT1 Flat_2 B&B_13
7/23/2009 GC1AC2E Good Book
7/23/2009 GC19P9Q One Degree of Separation: MTP visits Gor
7/23/2009 GC1RXJG Yin and Yang 2
7/23/2009 GC1J8RX Can_U_C_SC_TX? B&B_31
7/23/2009 GC1HFKV Soccer II
7/23/2009 GC1VV8C Willie Man-Chew
7/23/2009 GC1VH60 “She thinks my tractors sexy”
7/23/2009 GC1NT33 Whatapipe