Mike's Geocaching Blog

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Hike on the Coast Horse Trails

After placing my new cache - Threemile Lake, I drove up north of Florence to pick up a couple of hiking caches that I didn’t have time for last week while caching with knightcb.

Blue Horizon - the newest cache on the Coast Horse Trail system and the only one I haven’t got yet.  Great four mile roundtrip hike.

Lilly McGee - a puzzle cache in the area of Baker Beach.

Picked up Twilight in Florence on my way home.

As I’m approaching North Bend I decided to run out towards the North Jetty and hunt for Bad Duck’s new cache - Whoo flew so Whoo two….......

Hiding a New Cache - Threemile Lake

I have been meaning to place a cache at the south end of Threemile Lake just north of Reedsport accessed from Sparrow Park Road.  Today was the day to get it done.

It’s a fairly short hike in - less than a mile.  The trail is essentially flat and wanders through a pine and spruce forest ending at a small sandy beach at the south end of the lake.

There used to be a cache in this vicinity a few years ago - I poked around the coords a bit then headed back to the pickup to finish my day up north doing some caching.

Threemile Lake - beach at south end

Friday, January 30, 2009

Abducted by a GPSr-toting DUCK!

Ok, it was more like playing hooky from work but that doesn’t make for a very exciting journal entry now does it?

Bad Duck and I decided to make an afternoon trip east on Highway 42 to the Camas Valley area to see what we could find.  I call Pat to tell her what I’m up to saying “I’ve been kidnapped by a duck” !!  Not sure she believed me…......

First on the list was summer wild flowers cache just east of Camas Valley up a forest road.  We took the wrong way in the first time (a common mistake if you look through all the logs) driving to within 400 feet or so - why didn’t we just get out of the vehicle and walk, you say?  Well, the cache was a good steep 500 feet above us on the hill, that’s why!  Found the right road in and located the cache but not until spending several minutes struggling with the hint.  Great view from up there.

Made a short side-trip up to Berry Creek Reservoir so Darrin could pick up Rock My World! (I had found it prior).  In the “Wouldn’t You Know it” category, we found out there was a brand new cache published today within a mile of this spot!!  Indeed we will return!!

Next was a fairly typical rural cemetary cache - GRANDMA GRANDMA.  It would have been an easy cache-n-dash but shortly after signing the log and replacing the cache the caretaker showed up and we had to initiate the “just checking out the charming old cemetary” routine.  After about 15 minutes of wandering aimlessly around the lots pausing and pointing etc, we departed.

After a quick stop at the Tenmile store to satisfy the munchies, we headed north to look for the way into kaceys lookout cache.  A couple of wrong turns at first but we finally got the right road and then had trouble locating the container.  After about a 20 minute search we decided to give a previous finder (familyexplorer) a lifeline call and found it within inches of where we had already looked!  D ‘oh!!  BTW, an awesome view from up there as well!

These were time consuming caches so we headed back to Coos Bay happy to have a few more caches off the list and some great scenery to enjoy.  Now why can’t we do this every day?  Oh yeah, there are bills to pay!  Uuugghhh!

View from kaceys lookout cache east to Winston.