Lachs, Geocaching and Bears, OH MY!!!!

While the coast burns and Arnie declares a drought, Ms. Sarah and I hopped into the ever trusty and fuel efficient Toyota Corolla and drove into the back country of the Sierra into Tahoe National Forest to go on a Geocaching adventure up at the Lach Leven lakes. After driving about 10 miles of forest roads, I have to give mad props to the 'Rolla.... given big props to the West Side for my sis-n-law.

What is geocaching you might ask? Well it is hands down the most fun you can have with a GPS unit! Scattered across this crazy world are hundreds of thousands of little ammo boxes, mint tins with magnets glued to them, and bar code stamped items traveling the globe... all right under our noses! Geocaching is fun, its free, and takes you to all kinds of fun places! Check out the link to the website and learn more!

Our first Geocache stop was at Lake Huysink. I thought for sure we'd get a FTF (first to find, highly coveted) but someone had been there first! *sigh* It was still great to bag our first find of the day! Here I am showing you how intrepid explorers work.

After a quick detour BACK down the road a bit to grab some industrial strength bug spray, we set off across the ridge bound for Salmon Lake and our second cache of the day. It was a relatively short hike at 2 miles or so, but the acrid air was pretty rough on our lungs. Still, even in the haze, the early summer in the Sierra's is beautiful!

Our second find of the day was a bit off of the trail at the far end of Salmon Lake from where the trail splits off. We thought we had been scooped yet again that day on the find by some people we saw, but it turns out they were only muggles (non-cachers) looking for a good place to camp. After walking right over the thing a couple of times we managed to find the cache, and in the process a beautiful view! We also picked out our first TravelBug, "the RAMbler"!!!


The third cache of the day was a THREE PARTER!!! This means that you get the coordinates for the first caches, which gives your the second which gives you the third! What a hoot! The first one was pretty easy. The second one taugth us a valuable lesson in GPS use... mainly, give it a second to catch up. After scrabbling up and down some good size hills, the second site turned out the be in a spot that we should have cut over to about a half mile back on the trail!! Never fear, we found it and went on to track down the third and final cache! Our GPS brought us to the edge of a lake, indicatig the cache to be about 150 feet from shore. WHAT?????!!!! We were prepared for this and jumped right in! SUCCESS!!!! We signed the log, left some Costa Rican money and swam back to the shore to enjoy a tasty lunch of salami, cheese and bread.

Last week my sister-in-law posted on her blog LoveYourMotherEarth an entry regarding the vicious and wild world of suburban California. Namely, squirrels. I guess when you live in So-Cal (as the cool kids call it) squirrels in your backyard is about all you can expect, apart from and occasional mountain lion who has so much mercury in his brain from pollution that he wanders into a retirement community, causing mass hysteria from the walking dead and eliciting a hunting party to kill off one of three wild animals left down there..... but I digress. As we were coming down the mountain, and incidentally as I was thinking bringing a bear box wasn't really necessary when hiking around there, what should bound across the road, but a bear! He stopped not too far into the woods to take a good look at us, and we stopped to check him out. Talk about cool. Take that Mistress of the Squirrels!



All in all, another wonderful day to be alive! We're planning some overnight trips with all the great gear our family and friends got us for the wedding and will be sure to document that whole circus too!