Father's Day 6/17

Oh man! I have been soooooo busy with work and traveling that I have barely had any time to relax or update blogness! But Here we go! Happy Father’s Day to Dads! We went on a hike up above Mt. Tam!

The hike started with trouble as we locked the keys in the car, it was hot out and the parents were a little under the weather so I won’t blame them, lol. We hiked down the hill to find a few Geocaches. One was by a bridge and another across a fallen tree bridge. Both my mom and dad got pretty excited about the whole Geocache thing, which was pretty cool. The first was located near an old corsair engine!

This inspired us to search for the rest of the wreckage, which was rumored to still be lying around. So, we scaled hills in the blistering heat, brushed against spiky scrubs and tumbled down valleys until we eventually found this neat little meditation spot. It was this old windblown tree surrounded by a rock wall and covered in all sorts of weird little trinkets.Anyway, we pressed on until we found our final Geocache... No wreckage tho... I wanted to bushwack to get home, but that made my mom very unhappy as she got a little beat up. They are getting old, but not old to the point that I can drive them through rough terrain for several hours! I hope to be as active when I am 50. After a lot of arguing we eventually got back to the car! Twas a great hike! Happy Pappys Day!

Right click here (or option click) to download the KML file for Google Earth!
Click here to open Google Maps in New Window!

Jedi Cache 6/4

OK, My bad. I am 9 days late on this blog. Working 5 days a week is just so damn difficult sometimes! I am so tired when I get home, its dinner, TV, bed, then up again at 6 AM. I am even so low on time I’m not playing wow. Holy cow! And so, I am very sorry for my tardiness. So you, whoever you are, validate my entries and feel free to comment. woo. NOW onto the caches!

Sean and I decided we were going to go on a Jedi Geocache mission, and try to get find as many caches as we could with the few hours of daylight we had left. So I threw a bunch on the GPS and we charged fourth! We were lead up above St. Ritas where a very cleverly hidden cache was placed at the trailhead. Then it was on to D-Hill above Drake where we found a cache where we met our newest friend, Rinocotron! He is, as I type, on his way to Australia with Kristin. Exciting!

On the way down the hill, we ran into Sally, an old friend from Drake. She brought us over to Tracy’s house, where we talked caching with her parents. The three of us then ran over to Memorial Park and snagged a multi-cache! While we were heading back, we ran into Robin and her boyfriend, Daniel. We threw them in the car and kept going, picking up 2 more caches along the miracle mile.

We eventually wound up in Ross hunting around the police yard for a cache when we decided to give up, realizing it was pretty sketchy to be snooping around the police yard at midnight. Oops!

Anyway, check out the map, lets see if I can get another entry out tonight.

Right click here (or option click) to download the KML file for Google Earth!
Click here to open Google Maps in New Window!

The Frog Tree 6/3

So late last night I finished the coding to get this blog working and was dying to go do something after staring at a screen for 5 hours not playing wow. So I fired up the interwebs and lo and behold! A Geocache right in my back yard. At the Frog Tree no less! The Frog Tree is a tiny wind blown tree on the ridge between Kristin's house and mine. I have spent many an hour hanging out with people under that tree and was stoked to know about the geocache!

SO, Sean and I threw on our shoes and charged up the overgrown path I used to use in my days of a Middle Schooler. Did i mention it was around 9:00 PM and dark? I get slapped in the face with a tree and press on only to be stopped by Sean, "uhhh... wasn't that poison oak you just stuck your face in?" Thank God for Technu! We plowed straight up the hill to Frog Tree and realized the error of not bringing a flash light. We could not find the cache for the life of us. Luckily we were able to call Kristin, who looked up the exact location online, officially making this a TEAM INFERNO (WOO!) event! Sean eventually found the Altoid tin, just in time for me to stick my face in another poison oak bush looking for the stupid thing. I dropped in an Iris pin from work and took a cool coin.. i think it is chinese? Funny that this is only cache number 8 for me... Expect the number to double by the end of the week!

Right click here (or option click) to download the KML file for Google Earth!
Click here to open Google Maps in New Window!

Roy's to White Hill

Sean and I have been aching to go on a truly EPIC hike. Right now our goal is to hike from his house to Stinson Beach. Woo. But because I'm fat, we have been working our way up to it. So, we decided to depart from Roy's Redwoods and hike east back toward town. We aren't much for trails, so once we hit open space, we took off into gullies and up ridges. Moral of the story, it was the longest 5 mile hike I have ever been on. I honestly would have taken more pictures were it not for Kristin's 32 MB flash card. 32 MB?! I thought you were a photographer! I'll bring my 1gb from now on! :P

We first stopped off at the Roy's Redwood's Geocache to see how it was doing. Ammo boxes are awesome, and one day I will replace all my GladWare with them. We then continued up the trail and through a barbed wire fence. Being the outdoors-men we are, we decided to take a shortcut through a fun looking little valley. This was instantly a bad decision as we realized that the only pleasant thing in this valley was Sticky Monkey Cock(the name Brendan calls Sticky Monkey Plant). By this, I mean we were completely surrounded by poison oak. Sean, because of his dirty redskin blood is immune, that jerk! Im not, so he would step on vines while I vaulted over the deadly shrubs. Once we cleared the valley, we named it, The Poisonous Valley of Oaks!

On our way to our destination, we found two large green circles. There was no water to be found, but these Emerald Oases were truly a sight to see among the golden hillside. Eventually, we finally got to our "destination," a large out cropping of rock we affectionately call Old Man's Perch due to its resemblance to Sean's mothe... i mean grandpa. Sean, the horticulture expert discovered some Blessed Thistle, a fancy burgundy thistle that is apparently good in food. A rare find indeed. Too bad they were all infested with meal worms!

Now that we were in the middle of no where, I was getting hungry and decided it was time to head back and eat. SO, we decided we would hike up to the ridge and walk along it until we got to the White Hill pass and find a ride into town. By the time we got to the ridge, we realized we were on private property. Every airplane sounded like a truck coming around the next turn on the fire road, causing us to hurl ourselves off the edge of the road and into the bushes. Before long we came to our senses and finally reach the Loma Alta Reserve. Here we hiked down the hill side and discovered and wooded area surrounding a large mound of rock. Against the mound, someone had built walls out of layered stone and attempted to thatch a roof. This shattered den, with a little of work will some day be The Assembly Halls of the Fellowship. The home of Team Inferno! We are going to get a big horn. And call the fellowship. It will be awesome.

Eventually we reached White Hill Middle School. There Sean saw one of his fellow coaches who gave us water! Bonus! Kristin couldn't pick us up because she was hanging out with him who shall not be named. Keeley was working some show and no one else was around. We were walking back along Drake toward Fairfax, calling my dad for a ride, how horrible... WHEN SUDDENLY MIA DROVE BY! She honked her horn and waved. I chased the car waving my arms in the air. When I talked to her about why she didn't pull over, she said she was already on her way to the valley and it would have been too dangerous to pull over. Thats right on Drake in Fairfax, into a parking lane. *sigh* new drivers. We'll get her back. Eventually my dad picked us up (hooray!) and dropped Sean and I off back at my car. Then we got burritos at Mi Pueblo! ¡DELICIOSO!

Hopefully this isn't too boring, future posts will be better, I swear!

Right click here (or option click) to download the KML file for Google Earth!
Click here to open Google Maps in New Window!

Hike to Arch Rock!

FINALLY! I have mastered the Google Maps API and may present to you the first of many map posts for this blog. The first post discusses how to use this blog.

The trip! Kristin, Sean and I (TEAM INFERNO).. oh and Nick :P, hiked out to Arch Rock hearing rumors that part of the arch collapsed. We left from the Bear Valley trail head to the arch. About half way, Kristin removed her boots to expose horrid blisters. She fought through it and removed her boots at the arch and stayed barefoot the rest of the way (OUCH!). The tide was extremely low. Lower than I have ever seen it. We were able to walk under the arch and easily hop over the creek. We then decided to see how far up the beach we could walk. After exploring the cave on the way, we reached the cove and peninsula north of the arch. Sadly, this was the end of the line and we were forced to turn back. I definitely look forward to exploring the hills around the arch sometime soon. We'll have to find Kristin a good pair of boots, haha.

Right click here (or option click) to download the KML file for Google Earth!
Click here to open Google Maps in New Window!

Proper Usage Guidelines

This is the sister blog to http://bentup.blogspot.com It only has outdoors related posts and is therefore more on topic then my super fun journalish site. If you only want to learn about new Geocaches, fun bike rides and beautiful hikes, read on. If you are interesting, read the other blog, you will get all this and more!

Now for the instructions!

Each post has labels depending on what its about. On the right side of the page you can navigate through these tags, or through the sea of archives. Also, be sure to check out the nifty links!

The maps are all made using my Garmin etrex Legend C, uploaded into Google Earth running on OS X, then exported to KML. The Google Maps API can work the KML files to embed the map data into the blog.

The maps themselves have the tracks that we followed for that particular adventure. Each marker, when clicked on, will show fun tidbits and pictures. NEATO! Click away clickers!

If you are hardcore, you will download the KML files and put them in your own Google Earth App and really enjoy the huge amount of work I have put into this blog... even if only 3 or 4 people are ever going to look at it... Get it here.

Everything else... well enjoy it. If you don't... find a sense of humor and get back to me.