What can you say about California in the Spring. Its green and lush, and the hills are covered with wildflowers and poppies. The hawks are all soaring in the sky and the egrets and water birds abound everywhere. The seals and sea lions are either playing in the ocean or sunning themselves on the beach. Today (Friday) we saw all of this and more as we headed up the California coast on Highway 1 to grab some quads for the California DeLorme Challenge.
We started our day at 4am and as usual our first stop was Starbucks where we parked next to a K-9 police car. The 90 pound German Shepard inside the patrol car made it very clear what he would do if we got too close. The policeman inside Starbucks said the dog was just getting his voice for the day. I don’t know, he sounded pretty intimidating to me already.
Since it was Friday, we tried to avoid as much traffic as we could so we traveled south on Highway 99, north on I-5, and then across 113 from Woodland to I-80. Much to our relief there was no traffic to slow us down. Next stop – approximately 2 hours down the road – would be Quad 103 near Stinson Beach.
We left 101 S at Tamalpais Valley and made our way through the eucalyptus trees on Highway 1, a small winding road over to the coast. The wildflowers on the hills were in bloom making them a beautiful shade of purple. As we traveled over to the coast we began to smell the sea air. The sun was trying to break through the fog but as we got closer to the coast the sun lost the battle, temporarily. Not too long after we began our drive up the coast on Highway 1, the sun finally burned away the fog and it turned into a beautiful day to be driving up the coast of California.
On our way we stopped at several beaches to find caches. We found ourselves in Jenner at lunchtime and we stopped at the River’s End for a very good lunch. As we ate our lunch a hawk was riding the wind just outside the window. From there we went only a short distance to a cache that gave us a great view of the sea lions and seals sunning themselves on a beach. At first we thought they were dead fish, but then some of them moved into the water and began to play. It was an amazing site.
After leaving this cache we wound our way back and forth up switchbacks to reach the top of a mountain with a fantastic view of the ocean. Unfortunately there was nowhere to stop to take a picture. And then, as we rounded a bend on the Pacific Coast Highway, someone yelled, “Slow down, cows in the road!” Traffic in both directions came to a halt and waited for the lazy cows to decide to get out of the way. We commented that no matter where we go we always find ourselves in at least one cattle drive.
Next we visited Gualala for a cache or as Mike said “I’ve always wanted to visit LaLa Land. It was a quaint little town with lots of restaurants where we were supposed to eat lunch, but by the time we were there it was 2:30pm.
Finally we got to see a lighthouse - The Point Arena Lighthouse. Larry and Mike hopped out to take pictures, but as we arrived at the lighthouse we discovered we had to pay to see it so we decided not to go inside. The pictures were enough.
We finished our last cache of the day around 5pm and headed over Highway 20 to Highway 101 and Ukiah to spend the night. Highway 20 was quite a ride down a winding narrow road. We were glad to reach Highway 101. After arriving in Ukiah, and checking into our hotel, we went to the nearby Raley’s and got some picnic food for dinner in our room. We all crashed early in preparation for the Sonoma Geo rally the next day.
Saturday morning we headed down to Sonoma to get our directions for the rally. We spent the day touring the area looking for answers to questions. We also managed to find 12 caches. We came in second for the rally, which was pretty good since we didn’t even know the area. After the event, we headed back to Ukiah to spend the night before heading north again for one more quad and number 5600 for us.
Sunday morning we headed north to claim the infamous Quad 62. We were expecting sun but awoke to rain. After a quick breakfast, we headed to Raley’s to buy some extra equipment – rain ponchos, knit hats, and warm gloves. Finally we were on our way through the fog and rain. We traveled north about and hour and a half passing through the Richardson Grove State Park and following the Eel River for quite a while.
We turned off Highway 101 just north of Garberville and started our trek into the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park via Briceland Road. The first part of the road was paved, but when we entered the state park the road became dirt and we bounced our way down to the ocean. While traveling along Briceland Road, we saw emu, horses, deer and huge redwood trees. It was a beautiful drive, but a long one.
An hour later we finally reached the Needle Point Visitor’s center. It was raining and cold so we bundled up with all our warm clothes, put on our ponchos and headed down the path. Very soon we came upon a herd of elk. They were grazing in the hills above the trail and were quite unconcerned with us. We were able to take lots of pictures. We headed on our way and just around another bend were more elk.
These elk were right along the trail and didn’t even move as we stood there and took their picture and walked between them. We continued on up the trail until we were quite close to the ocean and then headed down a game trail to the area of the cache. We found it pretty quickly and besides putting another quad behind us it was our 5600
th cache. We headed back down the trail and 2 and ½ hours later and with 3.2 miles under our belts, we were back at the car for a tailgate party. After eating, we headed back to Highway 101. Five hours from the time we left Highway 101 this morning we were back and headed to Roseville for the night.
We ended the weekend with six new quads completed and only 14 quads to go to finish the Northern California DeLorme Challenge.
For the rest of the story visit
The Adventures of L3-Geo.
Today we volunteered at the Creek Week CITO in Folsom. I was the traffic control person at one end of the road and Linda of L3-Geo was at the other end. We have a whole new respect for flag people. We were ignored, yelled at, shown people's IQ of 1 that involved a hand gesture and more. The questions were the most interesting part of being a flag person. What happened? What are you doing? When are they going to repave the bridge? How the heck should I know!! Other cachers told me I should have said we start next week.
