We spent last Saturday exploring Sonoma County in the context of the excellent
Cachevenger hunt event organized by Moozer. We had a blast.
We spent the night before in Santa Rosa so it only took us about 15 minutes to reach the meeting point in Cotati. The weather was not so nice but we were confident that the rain would stop (and as a matter of fact, we had a sunny afternoon :-)
At 10 am, after a stop at the donuts place across the street, we were on the parking lot where a crowd was gathering around Moozer for the check-in. I received my instructions sheet and when I got back to the car, I realized how the day were going to be challenging. Lucie had thrown up all over herself... Great...We had no extra clothes so it meant that we would have to quickly go back to the hotel or find a cheap store to buy some something clean for her (and Vero) to wear.
However, we had some time constraints because being FTF on one of the 5 main caches to find would bring extra raffle tickets... Should we try? Of course we should.
Before the official start, we entered the coordinates of the 5 caches in the GPSr. I was surprised to discover how far apart they were (from Santa Rosa to Sonoma, through Cotati and Sebastopol).
We chose to rush and tried to FTF the one up north (beyond Santa Rosa, in Windsor). We figured that after the initial rush, there would be no more time constraint and we would be able to stop by a store to get some new clothes.
So off we went. I thought we were doing pretty good on the road and I was still hoping we could be FTF. But in Windsor, I made a wrong turn. I managed to go around the block but got stuck at a traffic light just before getting back to the main road. I saw other cars going by, hoping that those were not geocachers... And there passed British Invasion in his green pickup truck. My FTF hopes vanished instantly... The light turned green, and we went, following (at least) British Invasion by a minute or two. We arrived close to the cache. There were already a few people searching. Where was British Invasion? Oh well, no tim
e for that. I had serious business to do I needed to FTF the cache. We explored various rocks, and boom, a lady in the group who arrived just before us found the cache... Oh well, STF would not too bad. She opened the cache, took the log out and what...? It was signed already... by British Invasion and the guys with him!!! Man, this guy is really good and quick! I signed the log, took the first list of items to find, and got back to the car. This was the end of the first part of the day, the FTF rush. By then, all the caches were FTFed so there was no incentive to speed up. It was time to take it easy... And find some clothes.
As we drove, we carefully observed the environment to see if anything from the list of items could be obtained quickly... A menu from Quizno's would have brought 10 easy points for example. We drove back through Windsor and this time, we took the time to appreciate this pretty little town in the middle of nowhere. One cache and a department store later, we approached the town hosting the 2nd main cache : Sebastopol. Another interesting little town that we didn't know existed. We grabbed two new caches there, including a very curious "solar powered apple", before grabbing our target cache, containing another list of items to find. The stop at the solar powered apple
proved very useful as it was (as Vero noticed) right next to a Sonoma County library. And we needed a flyer from it for the first list of items. The second list of items contained items that we thought should be easy to get, such as an unopened Kid's Meal Toy (not from Mc Donald's). OK, it was near lunch time, and we had planned to stop by Mc Donald's, so we had lunch at Taco Bell instead. That was an easy 40 points :-) Several of the items in this new list could be obtained by driving to the coast but we decided not to do it. We only had a few hours left, 3 main caches to find, and plenty of items to grab. No need to drive additional miles. That would have been tough on the kids. We drove back through Sebastopol, and more particularily through Florence Avenue. Why? Because two items in the list mentioned this street: "How many turkeys can ride a horse at one time on Florence Avenue?" and "What's the license plate number on the pickup carrying a cow on Florence Avenue?". We thought we had to check this street out. And we were not disapointed. Almost every house in this street has a humorous scu
lpture made of various recycled material. It was like a museum. Probably the highlight of our day. We were very happy to have been driven here.
Next step was "Cotati West" for the third main cache of the hunt. Unfortunately, this cache was muggled by a neighbour who was not happy to see so many people wandering around his property.
We then set course to Sonoma, to grab the two last hunt caches before working on our lists of items. The cache by the Eucalyptus trees on the road to Sonoma was a quick stop and go, especially since the group ahead of us (and that we seem to have foll
owed all day long) made the grab for us. We quickly browsed the new items list. Some items seemed easy to get : "name of our favorite cache", "something to add to the raffle", "business card from an auto part store", "a postcard with a cow on it" etc...
Off to the last one... In Sonoma this time. After a few wrong turns, we ended up at the gate of a cemetery and the GPSr indicated that we should enter it. Strange. We parked the car in an empty lot next to the cemetery and I walked into it (the cemetary). I didn't feel I was at the right place so I called a lifeline who I was sure got the cache earlier today and she confirmed that the cache was indeed in the cemetery. After some more searching (the coordinates didn't seem exactly right), I grabbed the cache and the last list of items. Ah... yes, "a souvenir from the mission". My lifeline told me abo
ut it and even gave me the coordinates of the mission. Since we found all the caches we could, we were going to spend the last two hours looking for extra items (we didn't have that many). We parked downtown Sonoma, close to the visitor center where Vero went to grab some of the needed items (flyers). We noticed that the mission was just 100 meters away... So we walked to the mission to get our souvenir. We chatted with the ranger, who, amazingly, spoke French, and bought the official mission patch.
There was not much time left before the begining of the event at 6 pm in Petaluma but we needed to give the kids a break so Vero took them to the playground in the center of the plaza while I went to grab one of the new caches behind the mission. 30 minutes later, we were ready to leave. Vero noticed a movie theatre on the plaza so we did a quick stop to allow her to go inside and beg for an empty cup of popcorn (hey, that's 10 points!). Luck was with us it seems as we then drove past a Kragen store. Again, Vero rushed out of the car to get a business card (50 points). It turns out that they almost gave all of their business cards today. Vero got the very last one! Another great job!
We then left Sonoma, en route for Petaluma where we spent the last 20 minutes desperately looking for a Longs Drug store (to get a postcard featuring a cow - 20 points) and an In&Out Burgers restaurant to grab a paper hat (40 points). Of course, even though we drove by many today, impossible to find what you're looking for when you're really looking for it. At 6 pm, we gave up and called it a day. We headed to the restaurant for the event.
So many people there! There was such a long line to check in all the i
tems that we had enough time to order and eat dinner before actually checking in. Moozer, his wife and son were busy as a moozer validating all the entries from the participants and computing the number of points. I think we got about 470 points, which probably put us in the bottom 5, but it didn't really matter. We had fun.
The event was so successful that the restaurant, booked just for us, didn't have enough tables. Full full full... And yet, the sponsors were so generous that everybody got several prizes, including a goecoin, at the long expected raffle.
Lucie and Emilie (a.k.a. PrincessLulu and PrincessMimi) had a lot of fun playing with their friends LittleChecker and BigChecker (Lucie asked about them
all day long).
This was an incredibly successful event and we are very happy to have participated to it. We have decided to come back to explore more of what this area has to offer.
Finally, Summer arrived. The weather last weekend, was perfect for geocaching. I went with the girls to San Bruno's bayshore on Saturday morning. We were to pick up Vero at SFO so it seemed a very good place to cache while waiting for a plane. Plus, the idea was to get one of the two caches (for this side of the bay) in the "Hunter's Point" quadrangle.
to go back.
n, I went caching solo in Saratoga. My main target was to find a house number that would be used to compute the coordinates for the first stage of The Fellowship of the Ring. I then found a few caches in the area, some of whiched I had DNFed last year. This was a nice revenge on those nemesis caches (Mum's the word, Black Gold, Son of Stumpy).
the creek on this hot day was very pleasant. Unfortunately, while I was washing my hands in the mighty, mercury loaded creek, my cell phone fell right in the water. I managed to grab it quickly and it wouldn't work anymore for a while. But finally, on Sunday night, after it was completely dry, it decided that retirement was not for now and it started working normally again.
