17 November 2011 Mount Robidoux

My conference ended in the early afternoon so we had a little time to visit a bike trail in Riverside and climb to the top of Mount Robidoux. The view towards the mountains was decreasing as the afternoon wore on, but was still really nice from the top. We went one for three with caches on the top, but had a great time.

16 November 2011 Night Caching the Pacific Electric Trail

Some nights are better not cached. Thankfully this one turned out well. When we arrived at our hotel the evening before, my e-mail had a copy of a supplier agreement from one of our bigger customers. There's a small team of us who work through these when they enter the system. I needed to start this one and have it out of my hands before the end of the week so I stayed up after Ali went to bed and worked a good part of the night. I spent my day in a conference discussing workplace fatalities and specific ways to help prevent them so it had been a full 24 hours.

Ali had been to the Pacific Electric Trail earlier in the day and knew one of the access areas with nearby parking. I was surprised at how many people were out in the dark using the trail. We found everything we attempted except one. I was falling asleep during dinner and had another very long contract night ahead, but it was great to relax for a couple of hours.

This is one seriously ugly and big bug.

15 November 2011 Crystal Cove

We missed a chance to visit Crystal Cove on the previous Saturday. The trails were closed due to the rains. Today was perfect and the trails were open. It was an amazing hike. We had a great time and found a lot of caches.

The trail rises quickly from the nature center.

A hide here could hurt.

These melons were a surprise. The cucurbita are known as both stink melons and coyote melons. One person made the observation the crushed leaves of a stink melon smell worse than the worst b.o. the person had ever smelled. I didn't try to confirm either half of that observation.

There are many tafoni here. We were able to explore a couple and there was a cache in a group of them. As I expected, they are also friendly habitat for rattlesnakes. I had been checking for rattlers before getting too close to any of these and was about 25 feet above Ali when she asked me if I had been checking. "Yes," I said. "Why?" Because there is a really big rattlesnake below you. Oops... It wasn't quite below, but it was huge. We have luckily not seen many rattlesnakes, but this was certainly the biggest. I really wanted to get closer for a better picture, but self-preservation won.

After a good hike, we made a return trip to Ruby's for another shake and malt. We enjoyed the sunset and were treated to a late show by a handful of dolphins along the shore. It was time to move on and time to return to work the next day.

14 November 2011 Le Brea and Santa Monica

We both had great memories of visiting La Brea so we were excited at the chance to return. It was a lot of fun walking through the museum a second time. I noticed a lot more on this visit than the last. After the museum visit, we spent more time on the grounds visiting the many remaining open tar pits. The methane gas bubbles and the tar bubbles are quite a sight.

Buffalo

Those are really strangely shaped teeth.

Too bad there was no work taking place in the lab today.

Mommy.....

Methane bubbles from the surface.

Unlike the vigorous gas bubbling from the methane, the tar bubbles are a much slower proces. They rise up like a viscous balloon, then plop and look like collapsed dough.

Neither of us seemed too worried about the short faced bear behind us.

We both spotted the food trucks across the street from the museum and park and wanted to try the fare. Food trucks may be the rage in many other places, but they have been rare creatures on the landscape of northeast Ohio. There is certainly nowhere else in our normal travels where this level of food variety was waiting. We saw lots of trucks setting up in Portland during the spring, but were too early for food. Today was just right.

Yum

A completely unexpected surprise was an art exhibit in display near where we ate. The piece was a ten-panel section of the Berlin Wall including four panels with the original cold-war graffiti from when the wall was torn down. It's a bit strange to think that soon the Berlin Wall will be a few paragraphs in history as those of us who remember depart. As a youth, I remember the evening news stories of some poor soul being shot to death as he tried to cross the wall and reach freedom. It was important for me to touch this symbol of people who cared so much they were willing to die.

Are they following me? I tried to talk Ali into stopping by the booth and getting interviewed for the archives. She said no. I'm not so sure I want to hear what she had to say. I know what I would say. I just have no idea how I would say it (or any idea of how to fix this html).

This is a nice piece of outdoor work at the museum. It has the twelve Chinese Zodial sculptures arranged in a circle. Ali is posing by the Rat which is the year for both of us. It's a bit interesting. Ali mirrors the positive traits of someone born in a rat year while I unfortunately am a near perfect match for the negatives. Hmmmm....

Our walk around Santa Monica was amazing. We were here soon enough to see the sunset and take a long walk before meeting Ali's aunt and cousin for dinner. It was great to see Ali's family again, and the dinner was super and probably the best of the trip.

13 November 2011 Caching a Busy Day

For non-cachers, a busy day is a caching day where multiple cache types are found. We've never really tried for a busy day since we have so many finds in areas where we usually cache. Today was different. We have only a few finds in California. Ali was able to set a course for us to potentially grab as many as eight cache types (traditional, multi, puzzle, letterbox, whereigo, webcam, virtual, and an earthcache). We got seven. The webcam was at a ferry along the water. The wonderful weekend weather had brought a ton of tourists to the narrow streets and alleys. We got into the traffic mess and realized there was no way to accomplish our mission. Too bad, the place looked a great area to spend some time and explore.

Our journey was hectic and ended late. The whereigo, like so many whereigo's seemed and endless process of walking constantly in circles hoping the cartridge would engage. If whereigo's worked well, the cache owner's idea would have been a lot of fun, but it turned out to be tedious and too much of an afternoon. We ended with seven. Not bad for a busy day. I think I'll pass on any chances to repeat, but it's one more challenge completed.

This nice tree was the perfect place to hide a micro. Ali finally spotted the container.

This was one of many spotted on the trail today. Later, we were in a location where I had left the camera behind because of the terrain. On that trail we spotted a lizard living in a piece of cloth stuck about four feet up in a bush. That lizard was completely unfazed by us and would have been an nice model. Oh well...

Flames? On an Audi?

At least we had a great view of the mountains as we walked back and forth like a bunch of chickens completing the whereigo.