It was another one of those weeks where the weekdays are sunny and the weekend was forecasted to be rainy. On Tuesday, I emailed jbgreer about the caches and he was willing to go with me to hunt them on Saturday. On Friday night, the rain began. We had agreed earlier that if it was raining Saturday morning, we'd save the caches for another time. I set my alarm to wake me at 7:15 am Saturday morning. When I woke up, it had just stopped raining. I figured that it would start up again, so I didn't get out of bed. My phone rang at 8am and it was jbgreer waiting for me to come down so we could leave. I quickly got dressed and headed outside.
The first order of the morning was breakfast. We had plenty of time to eat because the Nature Center didn't open until 9. We made it over to the Nature Center by about 9:30. There were few cars in the lot, which meant that few people would be out on the trails.
[ Lichterman Nature Center Visitor's Center ]We paid for admission and picked up a sheet with the coordinates for the six caches. After spending some time putting the coordinates into our GPS units, we began the hunt for the caches. The sky had cleared up nicely even with there still being a 40% chance of rain.
Our first cache of the morning was Seasons In The Forest (GC2VW80). This involved passing through the Backyard Wildlife Center and out onto an elevated boardwalk. The cache was an easy find as it was designed to be.
[ The boardwalk provides an excellent view of the forest below. ]The caches were distributed in a circular fashion, so we were a little confused where to go next. We decided to hunt Stair Steps (GC2VW6N). After we did a cursory search of the area, I pulled up the cache description to read the hint. Unfortunately, I pulled up the wrong page, so we were even more confused. The coordinates were good, though, and jbgreer made the find.
[ Stair steps that we passed on the way to another cache. ]Our third cache was Big Root (GC2VVKH). I knew from looking at the cache page earlier, that this one had a suggested a trail waypoint as where to start. This was due to a bridge being out on one of the trails. "Big Root" might have been the toughest find of the day. This cache was also not far from where a previous cache had been.
[ Spotted shortly after leaving "Big Root". ]The other three caches were across the park from where we were, so we took what we thought was the shortest way over.
[ I think we go this way... ]The fourth cache we hunted was Trail Junction (GC2VW61). It wasn't where I imagined it to be, but the hint, and the fact it was visible from a few feet away meant it was eventually found.
[ One of many trail junctions. ]
[ Spotted near the boardwalk that crosses the lake. ]
[ Ahhh... sunlight! ]
[ The droplets looked cool on the lilypads. ]
[ There were lots of lilypads. ]
[ Beautiful habitat for birds and turtles. ]The fifth cache we found (after taking lots of pictures off of the boardwalk) was Fence Post
by ProntoPup (GC2VW30). The name pretty much describes the landmark we were looking for and the cache was a quick find. At this point we say three men carrying camera equipment down the trail. They were the only people we came across all morning.
[ A nice view from one of the last caches of the day. ]The final cache of the day was Split (GC2VW50). It was a nice easy to get to cache to end the morning on. We decided to head back to the Visitor's Center using a different path than the way we came so we could see a little more of the park before leaving.
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