Early Morning Summer Caching

I haven’t been geo-hiking in a while, so I decided to go for a couple of quick finds early this morning in the Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park before it got too hot.

The poison oak is doing well, in spite of the dry conditions

I had the Park almost to myself this morning, only sharing it with the birds and the bunnies, with an occasion bug.

This was the view this morning from Hometown View.  The view was right into the sun, but the view of the San Fernando Valley was a good one this morning.

Hometown View was the second stop today.  The first stop was at Need a Lift?  The truck was a bit beyond serviceable condition, but an interest find.  I needed the spoiler photo to help me locate the cache.

I got a bit carried away looking at the scenery and the wildlife and missed the cutoff trail that leads to Hometown View.  Got a little extra hike out of the deal.

Had a nice walk this morning.  Enjoyed the morning cool.  Now laying low as the day is heating up.

This is the guy that greeted me when I arrived at the trailhead this morning.

CITO, Hummingbird Style

CITO, in geocaching terms, means Cache In, Trash Out.  This morning, a CITO event was held in Simi Valley–Simi Valley Hummingbird Creek Trail CITO Number 2 –organized by Mike/lightningstar.

At 8:00 AM, we had a good-sized group gathered at the Hummingbird Trail trailhead.  The goal was to paint over graffiti and to pick up trash.  I asked Mike where he thought I ought to go and he directed me to the area where the stream enters a tunnel under the freeway.  I hit the mother lode of trash.  At least half of the larger bag of trash was made of spray paint cans.  I started counting the cans I was picking up, but stopped counting at 20.

I twisted my back a bit when I lost my balance on the rocks lining the stream and decided to quit before I did any more damage.  As it was, I made a pretty good haul.  I know that many of the others did too.  And I’m looking forward to seeing the before and after photos of the graffiti clean up.

It’s nice to associate with people that will take time out of their busy schedules to clean up messes left by inconsiderate, thoughtless ********.  You can fill in your favorite word for these vandals.

Thank you to the geocachers, the Simi Trailblazers, and the Alcoa employees that worked this morning on making  a big difference in this little corner of Simi Valley.