CRUISING THE COAST

We were up at 4am this morning to begin our trip along the Northern California Coast with Linda and Larry (L3-Geo). We were on a mission to pick up counties for the “Discovering and Logging California’s 58 Counties” cache and quads the “California DeLorme Challenge”.

The morning commute traffic slowed us down for a few minutes but finally we were on our way. We traveled through the wine country and were amazed by the acres and acres of grape vines. After two hours of travel we found our first cache at a new winery in the Calistoga area. Now we were cooking.

Next stop – Clear Lake, via a long curvy mountain road reminiscent of a roller coaster ride. Unfortunately, Mike (the driver) was the only one having a good time. Everyone else was too busy hanging on to their high tech gear and themselves to appreciate the experience. Clear Lake according to Larry was formed from the tears of Konocti, an Indian Chief, after he lost his daughter.

Our next stop was Lakeport, where we walked out on a pier over the water to find the cache. While there we visited with the nearby fishermen and gave them our advice on how to catch a fish. I guess we were good luck, because as we were leaving, one of the fishermen caught one. We also were lucky enough to spot a catfish meandering through the shallow waters near the pier.

We had lunch nearby and were on our way again. Trees lined the road and covered the mountains on both sides of us. Because we are from the driest state in the country (Nevada), we were in awe of the green countryside. Further down the road we made a quick stop and U-turn to look at bison lounging in a nearby field. There were flies all over their eyes, so they wouldn’t hold still for a picture so we did our best. Mike made a joke about picking up a bison tube for a future cache (only geocachers would understand his humor).

Our next cache took us to the Mendocino County offices to search an old tractor. Unfortunately, the sprinklers were on. So Mike, Linda and I stood with our feet on the sprinklers to block the water while Larry searched. He managed to stay dry, but I was soaked. The wind blew all the water right back at me. Next Linda took over the search, but after searching for about 15 minutes, we all decided enough was enough and we headed out to find another cache in this quad.

Before we knew it, we passed through “The Gateway to the Redwoods” at Willits, California. It took us forever to get through this little town. Everyone seemed to be in Willits today.

As we drove to the next quad, we realized that somehow we did not have the information for the next cache – one of the downsides to paperless geocaching. So Linda got on her phone, connected to the web, and looked up all the info. Luckily we found this one so we didn’t have to attempt a nearby cache where previous geocachers had reported bear activity (no not that kind of bare).

Eventually we reached the Richardson Grove State Park where we wandered through a grove of huge redwoods searching for some answers to a virtual cache. We weren’t sure if we found the right answers, but we got some great pictures of the giant redwoods.

Our final cache for the day took us to an old locomotive and a steam engine in Scotia. We learned about the 19th century lumber industry in this part of Northern California. There was a fantastic old inn where we considered staying for the night, but it was too early and too expensive so off we went again heading north.

We finally called it a day in Fortuna, California. It’s about 30 minutes south of Eureka, our first overnight stop on our trek up the coast tomorrow.