Adventures in Geocaching, March 18th, 2015

Dayton Creek flowing toward Flathead Lake

Dayton, Montana

Wednesday, March 18th, I packed my gear in the car and headed to Kalispell.  It was time for a Costco Run, and quite frankly, both Kevin and I prefer the Costco in Kalispell to the one in Missoula.  Since they're both around 85 miles away, the travel itself becomes six of one, etc.   The main difference in the trip is the scenery.  The way we drive to Kalispell, we turn onto US Highway 93 at the Ktunaxa (Kootenai) village of Elmo on the western shore of Flathead Lake, and for the next twenty-six miles, we are driving along the lakeside, or as close to the lakeside as the highway allows.  There are lots of vantage points and I, for one, never get tired of seeing the lake.  Of course, if I'm traveling alone, I always make sure to have my GPS unit along with the intent of grabbing any stray geocaches I have yet to find.  

To get to Elmo, we take Montana Highway 28 north and east from Plains, a distance of forty-eight miles with eighteen caches hidden along the way.  Last year I found all  eighteen, and this year I needed to expand my search radius.  There are some thirty-plus caches hidden along US 93 between Elmo and Kalispell, depending on how close to the highway you want to stay, lots more if you're willing to get off the road, and Geocaching.com lists 391 caches hidden within ten miles of the 59901 (Kalispell) zip code.  If you increase your search parameters to 30 miles, the most allowed these days on the hobby's website, you get 852 caches.  That's enough to keep anyone going for a day or three.

Just a few of the sailboats waiting for summer

Dayton, Montana

I understand there is a way to load a group of caches at once into my Garmin Montana 650t, but I haven't figured that out.  I have to load them one by one, so I usually don't add more than 30 at a time, one by one.  To prepare for today's trip, I loaded all the caches immediately adjacent to US 93 between Elmo and just south of Kalispell.  I also loaded in the caches around a couple of places I wanted to check out in the Kalispell area, namely Foy's Lake and Lonepine State Park, two recreational areas I've never visited.  Finally, I found a trail of ten caches just a couple miles north of Costco, and thought that would be a good chance to get some physical exercise to complement the mental exercise involved in geocaching.

Just north of the town of Elmo is a topographical formation known as Chief Cliff.  Legend says that Chief Eneas, in an effort to remind the Ktunaxa people of the importance of heeding their elders, sacrificed himself by riding his horse off the cliff.  Polson author Maggie Plummer writes about it on the Make It Missoula website.  The first cache on my list for the day was The Legend of Chief Cliff, a traditional cache hidden off the highway just north of Elmo.

Empty slips waiting for the sailboats

Dayton, Montana

The next town north of Elmo is Dayton, home to Mission Mountain Winery, one of western Montana's premier vintners.  I'd never had a reason (as if I needed one) to get off the highway at Dayton, but two geocaches hidden nearby brought me to a stop.  The first, a cache hidden on private property near the banks of Dayton Creek promised a challenge as the gate to the property was closed and a For Sale sign made me wonder if the cache would even be available.  But sure enough, I crawled through the gate and Garmin led me directly to the cache, hidden in a way I had never before seen, and frankly thought was against the rules.  Back at the car, I turned toward the town itself and looked for the cache hidden where Dayton Creek enters the waters of the lake.  This one proved more difficult, and in fact completely stumped me, so I grabbed the camera and got some shots of the creek, the bay, and Dayton itself.  As you can see, the weather wasn't very camera friendly, and the colors were pretty muddy.  You can't have everything, I guess.  As it turned out, of the sixteen photos I took on the trip, all were taken either in Dayton or at the West Shore campground in the state park up the road.

Further north I picked up the caches named "Another Smiley Along the Way" and "Sqelixw," the latter being the Salish word for Salish, and the cache being located at the sign marking the reservation boundary.  I stopped at Rollins to look for "Osprey Nest," and while I found the nest itself--it's hard to miss an osprey nest--the cache itself proved more elusive.  But my body was beginning to let me know that I needed to find a public facility soon, and that made me so uncomfortable that I thought only of getting to Kalispell and finding a restroom and lunch.  I therefore drove right past the next to caches hidden along the way, including the one at my childhood playground, the Flathead Lake United Methodist Campground.

Goose Island

West Shore Unit, Flathead Lake State Park

But north of the church camp you'll find one of the six units of Flathead Lake State Park, and state parks, especially those with campgrounds, always have outhouses, right?  As it turns out, the West Shore unit is the only Flathead Lake State Park campground I hadn't previously visited.  I've even been to the large island park, Wild Horse Island, which is accessible only by boat.  Why I'd never stopped at West Shore is a question I can't answer.  Perhaps because of its proximity to the church camp, or the fact that I've been to Frank Bird Linderman's home just north of the campground.  But nature was calling, and that meant stopping at the park where, coincidentally, there are two geocaches hidden.  Having relieved the tension in my body, I set out to find those two caches, and was successful with both, but I left the car parked and walked first to one, then to the second, and found the hike a bit tiring.  Not sure what that was all about, but let's just say that the trail wasn't flat, and there was some scrambling involved--an activity that my glasses tend to impede.  By the way, should I be concerned that the state's own website for the park, linked above, starts out with a warning of all the things not to do while visiting the park and includes a badly pixellated photo of Goose Island?  At least I think it's Goose Island.  Hard to say from the picture.

Deep Bay 7/15 was an easy find, but Don't Get... was not so easy.  It was another cache that involved a scramble, and as I noted on my posted log, the rocks were both wet and mossy.  My vertigo really was acting up and the GPS unit was going crazy, probably because the rocks were scrambling the signal.  The hint for the cache is "You'll know it when you see it, maybe..." and sure enough, when I saw it, I knew immediately.  One of the secrets of finding geocaches is to look for something out of place.  A wire hanging out of a hole in a rock, for instance, or a piece of wood where there just isn't any other wood.  I won't say what was out of place here, but when I spotted it, I knew.

I also knew that I was getting very hungry.  Geocaching always takes longer than I expect, and lunch was now overdue and I still wasn't in Kalispell.  I had been craving KFC (and don't tell me how bad that is for me), so I was dead set on having a two-piece lunch in town.  That meant driving past several other restaurants but I was determined!

The next cache north of Don't Get... is named "Tarantula."  According to my GPS, finding it would involve a major climb up a rock face, or coming around the back side which still involved quite a climb.  My vertigo, not yet calmed from Don't Get... really kicked in here, and to make matters worse, I couldn't find the cache.  The GPS unit was again acting up--probably because of all the rocks, so I finally gave up, eased my way back down the cliff, and drove off.  I drove through the town of Lakeside, passing up at least three restaurants and at least three geocaches, but stopped at the fruit stand that sells cherries in season and picked up the cache there.  I also grabbed the cache further north, another one named Osprey Nest.  In this case, however, while I found the cache, I didn't see anything like a nest.

My faithful GeoSaab at West Shore State Park

Flathead Lake, Montana

Driving through Somers, and passing the caches there, I did stop at the overlook just north of town, but was completely unsuccessful at finding the cache hidden there.  Lunch was definitely overdue, and my system was telling me EAT!  NOW!  So I drove on into town and pulled into the KFC parking lot.  Of my two piece lunch, one piece was so small it was barely larger than my thumb, and the larger piece, a breast, tasted as if it had been fried in months old oil.  I couldn't finish it.  The mashed potatoes, or what they call mashed potatoes, were tasteless and the biscuit was old and stale.  The iced tea tasted stale as well.  The cole slaw was good, but did I really just pay $10 for three sporks of cole slaw?  If the Kalispell KFC was my only exposure to the franchise, I'd never go back.

The weather was getting worse by the minute, so I did my shopping and avoided the area caches I'd planned to find.  Save them for a sunnier day.  And since I bought frozen goods at Costco, that meant driving home directly to keep things from thawing out along the way.  Yes, I'd brought my camera, my camera bag with extra lenses, my tripod, my GPS, my Montana Atlas.  But no, I had not brought a cooler for the frozen food.  Oh well, you can't have everything.

Adventures in Geocaching, March 12th, 2015

The Thompson River

Taken March 12th, 2015

Sanders County, Montana

As my regular readers know, I've been geocaching on and off since 2006 when I bought my first Garmin eTrex Legend in Crescent City, California with the idea of it letting me know how far I was walking when hiking on the trails in the various components of Redwood National and State Parks.  Of course I quickly learned that the redwood canopy was too thick for satellite signals to penetrate.  Oh well.  Let's try something different, so remembering that Mr. Grubstake had displayed geocaching items at his restaurant high above Hamilton, Montana, I looked into a new (to me) activity.  At the time, there were over 1500 caches hidden within a 100 mile radius of my house in Smith River, California. When you consider that the house sits three miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, you have to figure that most of those caches are going to be hidden somewhere on land, that is in half that radius.  That was back in 2006.  Today, the geocaching web site doesn't allow you to search more than 30 miles from any given zip code, and there are 563 caches within 30 miles of Smith River.  Back in 2006, I was able to find 37 caches, 20 of them in October alone.  In 2007, I expanded my range outside of California and Oregon, and found 121 caches throughout the Northwest.  I took my eTrex Legend with me on the 6,000 Sunday Drive, and found caches in South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee as well.

Old Structure on the Little Thompson River Road

Sanders County, Montana

From 2008 through 2013, I found a grand total of 18, although four of those were in Florida, the furthest east and south I have been with my passtime.  But while I was not out geocaching, lots of other folk were.  Where there were barely 100 caches within 100 miles of my Missoula, Montana home, now there are thousands.  There are thousands within 100 miles of our home in Plains, and one way to get to know the area, is to go out hunting for them.  In 2014, I set myself the goal of reaching 300 lifetime finds before the end of the year.  By December 31st, I was well past that number, having found 149 caches during the course of the year, and I set a new goal:  500 total by year end 2015.

Winter weather is generally not conducive to searching for things in the woods, but I went out nonetheless and found 10 caches in January and 16 in February.  Then Winter left here in the Northwest, and March was very spring-like.  On March 12th, I set out with the idea of finding caches along a road I'd never traveled, the upper end of the ACM road  where Sanders, Flathead and Lincoln Counties meet.  A group of local geocachers going by the name Clark Fork Valley GeoCachers have placed a series of caches along the ACM road at roughly every 1/10 mile from where the road starts at MT 200 east of Thompson Falls to where it ends at US 2 east of Libby.  We're talking a 40 mile stretch of dirt road with almost 400 geocaches hidden along the way.  This has been my go-to path when I want to add a quick 10 or so finds to my list.

The ACM road was built by the Anaconda Mining Company back in the days when they were logging this area to supply support timbers for the mines in Butte.  There is a county road that parallels the ACM road just a few hundred feet away.  BUT, and it's a big but, there is a river that flows between the two:  the Thompson River.  Both roads run from MT 200 to US 2, and both are heavily salted with geocaches.  I've looked for only a few of the county road caches, but have hit the ACM road more heavily, and today I thought I'd go to the end.  The map made it look as if the ACM road skirted the southern bank of the Thompson Lakes, and I'd never been there, so why not.

Old Barn on the upper Thompson River

Flathead County, Montana

From our house, as the crow flies, it's just a couple miles to the Little Thompson River Pass Road, but it's a bit further by car.  Once on that road, it's an eighteen mile drive up and over the pass on a road that is mostly dirt, although this trip there were patches of snow and ice, and once I started down the western slope, there was a lot of rock that had fallen into the road bed.  I found myself twisting the steering wheel right, then left, then right, just to avoid the rocks.

Once down to the confluence of the Little Thompson and the Thompson, I turned north and headed toward my first cache of the day.  Kevin had bought me a new Garmin Montana 650t GPS unit for Christmas, and I was making the most of it.  For today's trip, I had programmed in some 70 caches along the last seven miles of the road.  The first was an easy find, as were the second, third, fourth, and so on.  It looked like it was going to be a great day, but then I got to number ten.  Nothing.  Couldn't find anything that looked right.  OK.  Spend some time, but then move on.  There are plenty more.  Number eleven started out elusive, but, ah, there it is!  Having found eleven, I walked back to where number ten was supposed to be, thinking that maybe approaching from a different angle would improve my chances.  Nope.  Still nothing at site ten.  And it started snowing.

Middle Thompson Lake looking North

Lincoln County, Montana

I decided to drive on to the end of the road, try to find a new cache hidden along US 2, then turn around and see what I could find on my way home.  The road dumped me out onto Highway 2 much sooner than I expected, but I turned left toward the West, and was quickly up to highway speed.  After fifty miles of dirt road, it felt good to be able to drive faster than 25 mph.  I passed Middle Thompson Lake and looked at my Garmin to find that the new cache I was seeking was still several miles ahead of me.  No, this was not what I was wanting.  I still had to get back home, and the fastest way meant backtracking on the dirt ACM road.  Otherwise, I would have to go all the way to Troy (63 miles), then south to Noxon (43 more miles), where I would still be 70 miles from home.  As an alternative, I could drive east to Kalispell (47 miles), which would put me 85 miles from home.  No, the 50 miles of dirt road seemed like a better option.

Realizing that somehow I had taken a turn off the ACM road, which is why I got to US 2 so quickly, I started looking for my original objective.  And sure enough, just between Middle Thompson Lake and Upper Thompson Lake was my road, and a geocache.  Found that one quickly (ACME 372 was its name), and just as quickly found ACME 371 and 370.  In fact, I found every cache through 364 and stopped along the way to take some pictures of the lake.  By this time it was getting late and I hadn't brought along any lunch.  It was time to stop looking for caches and head on home.

Middle Thompson Lake looking West

Lincoln County, Montana

No problems with the drive, and as I climbed the Little Thompson River Road, I met a road grader moving the rocks I had dodged earlier off the roadbed.  Didn't have to bob and weave so much, just inch my way past the grader, and from there on it was smooth sailing the rest of the way home.  All told I found twenty caches and had a great day out enjoying our beautiful northwestern Montana home.

Caches found:  ACME 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 311 (NOT 310), 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372.

Even more adventures in HDR and other work

It's so nice when all the kids fit in the frame and look at the camera

Out the front door

February 13th, 2015

In anticipation of the arrival of my new Nikon D7100, I've gone back to working on my own skills, trying to make myself worthy of my new toy/tool.  Primarily, I'm getting out almost every day, camera in hand, hoping to learn from my own mistakes, and then using the advice of others to improve my work.  The shot above, for example, came as a result of lots of photos I've taken of deer in the yard, usually when it's too early to get a good light on the scene.  To get this photo, I used a tripod, increased the ISO to 400 (when I normally use 125), and put on a telephoto lens (my old Sigma 70-300 lens) set at 170mm.  I posted this photo in the Expert Photography Action Takers group on Facebook, and got several very positive comments, but one suggestion that I should use the "Pet Eye Removal Tool" to get rid of the unnatural shine in the eyes.  Well, the version of Photoshop I have (CS5) does not have a "Pet Eye Removal Tool," but using Google, I found several ways to "fix" the eyes, and the version above shows the image after I "doctored" the eyes in Photoshop.  It's not an easy fix when you have 8 eyes looking at you, but it can be done.  If I wanted to take the time, there's more work I could do here, but I'm happy with the result as is.  Especially at this resolution.  Blow it up and let me know what you think.

Yesterday, Kevin had an Emergency Services meeting in Thompson Falls, so I rode along, then took the truck up Blue Slide Road to take some pictures and find some geocaches while he was in his meeting.  Turning off Montana Highway 200 just west of town, I drove up Blue Slide Road then took the cross road to the bridge at Birdland Bay.  There's a geocache hidden on the bridge, or so they say, but I didn't find it.  Due mostly to my own vertigo, I found standing at the side of the bridge, looking down into the water while feeling along the bridge supports for a hidden magnetic key holder, just upset my system no end.  That plus the fear of dropping my new Garmin 650t into the water, and I gave up.  It wasn't worth it.  But the area is very photogenic, so I grabbed the camera and tripod and starting snapping away.  The picture below shows the bridge in all its glory, as a composite three bracketed shots merged together using Photoshop's HDR merge feature.

Birdland Bay Road Bridge over the Clark Fork River

West of Thompson Falls, Montana

February 12th, 2015

Once I had my fill of photography, I set off to find caches along Blue Slide Road.  This is the original U.S. Highway 10 Alternate which runs on the north side of the river from Thompson Falls to just past Trout Creek.  I was on a time schedule, as I needed to get back to pick up Kevin without making him wait, so rather than drive all the way to Trout Creek, I went as far as Cougar Peak Road, near where our friends Mike and Norm lived when they first moved to Montana from Memphis.  My GPS was not cooperating well, refusing to go into portrait mode, and in landscape mode, the last word on the cache description was partially hidden.  It told me that the cache was hidden in the "sign..." which I read as signal, even though there was nothing remotely like a signal around.  When I was finally able to get the orientation changed to landscape, I learned that the hidden word was "signage," which made a lot more sense, and sure enough there was the cache.  Score one No, one Yes and on to the next.

The next actually meant turning back toward Thompson Falls and stopping at Graves Creek Road.  That cache was very easily found, as was the one just a few hundred feet on down the road at Steep River Ranch Road.   The last cache I looked for was titled "Squaw Creek," but in all the times I've driven Blue Slide Road, I've never seen a Squaw Creek.  I know it's not politically correct to use the word Squaw, and I'm sure that's why the highway sign no longer calls the stream that.  Instead there is a sign I've always wondered at, telling all that cross the bridge that they are at "Squaylth-Kwum."  I leave it to my Salish speaking friends to tell me what that means, if anything.

Pat's Knob at Twilight in HDR

Plains, Montana

February 11th, 2015

On Wednesday I stayed home all day, fighting a head ache and mild nausea, but did take advantage of our beautiful location to go out on the deck and shoot some pixels.  The scene above is an HDR composite shot of Pat's Knob, the second highest peak in the Coeur d'Alene range, across the valley from us.  I feel the need to point out that the Coeur d'Alene range is the group of mountains, part of the Bitterroot Mountains, that separates our part of Montana from northern Idaho.  The mountains behind us, and in whose foothills we live, are the Cabinet Mountains.  The highest peak in our area is Baldy (and the road from which our driveway leads is Baldy View), but Baldy is in the Cabinets, not the Coeur d'Alenes.   To get that vintage post card look, I used a program called Photomatix to merge the three exposures and then "tone-map" the image.  I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, even though it's not at all in keeping with modern photographic standards.  But it does look like a post card from the 40s or 50s, wouldn't you say?

Tuesday Kevin was in Missoula all day for a meeting sponsored by the Montana Department of Public Instruction on how to keep your schools safe from terrorist attack.  I can't quite picture Al Qaeda operating a cell in Sanders County, but you never know.  Kevin said that every school in Sanders County was represented at the meeting.  I took advantage of him going into town to spend the day sight seeing, eating good bread from Le Petit Outre bakery and good raw fish at Asahi, and trying not to fall asleep in the comfy chair at Barnes and Noble.  I did pick up a couple of books while at the latter, one a very readable guide to the Nikon D7100 written by a photographer who spends part of the year in Montana, and also  The HDR Book by Rafael "RC" Concepcion.  Kevin was a bit taken aback when I told him that latter book cost $45, but that's what happens in the arts--and believe me, this kind of photography is definitely an art form.  I'm working my way through the book and its accompanying website, which is what led to the two HDR images above (and the one immediately below).

Maclay Bridge over the Bitterroot River

Missoula, Montana

February 10th, 2015

After my sashimi bento box at Asahi, I stopped at Goodwill and found a small, but serviceable, covered clay baking dish, and then I headed out to Blue Mountain to try for some good scenery shots.  The road up Blue Mountain was ice covered, so I turned around and went to Maclay Flats instead.  I got some interesting shots there, but I was most pleased with the shots I took at Maclay Bridge, the one-lane bridge crossing the Bitterroot River on the western edge of Missoula.  The image above is, once more, a composite of six exposures merged and tone-mapped in Photomatix.  Not realistic at all, but I really like the way it turned out.  By all means click on the image and view it full screen and see if you don't find it intriguing.  Looks like something a painter from the Impressionist School would come up with, should Monet have visited Missoula.  At least that's what it looks like to me.

And that clay baking dish I bought?  Well yesterday, I took some sweet pizza dough I had in the fridge, formed it into a round loaf, and let it rise a bit before baking it in the new dish.  Here's how it turned out.  Not bad for a first attempt, but I'm going to have to try with fresh dough and see what happens then.  The "oven spring" was so successful with this dough that the bread actually reached the clay lid and stuck to it in one place.  Unfortunately, the bread didn't bake all the way through and there was a dough pocket in the center.  Guess 1 hour at 400 degrees just wasn't enough inside that little baking dish.  What did bake tasted pretty good though.

Sweet Pizza Dough baked as a loaf in a covered clay baking dish

Plains, Montana

February 12th, 2015

Thompson River Blues

The Clark Fork River and Coeur d'Alene Mountains

Sanders County, Montana

December 31st, 2014

Wednesday, December 31st, was a beautiful day, clear and cold, and much too pretty to spend indoors.  Accordingly, having finished a few chores, I spent several minutes working to get the snow off my car and the ice off the windshield.  Once I could see out, I made sure I had my camera and GPS unit, and hit the road heading for Thompson Falls.  I love taking pictures of the scenery in this area, and when I saw a wide spot on the side of the road with a clear view of the river and mountains, I stopped the car and caught the scene above.  This is where I live, people.  Eat your hearts out.

Back in 2006, when I bought my first GPS unit, I managed to find 37 caches, mostly in Del Norte County California and Curry and Josephine Counties, Oregon.  My best year was 2007, when I took my GPS with me on my 6,000 Mile Sunday Drive and found 121 caches as far away as West Virginia and Tennessee.  Between May 2, 2010 and February 2, 2012, I put my GPS away and spent no time out looking for caches.  In Geocaching terms, this is called a "slump," and that period was my longest slump to date, 641 consecutive days.  At the beginning of 2014, I had found a total of 176 caches in seventeen states, but none outside the U.S.  All that changed in the year just ended.

Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep

(Ovis canadensis)

Just beyond the Watch for Bighorn Sheep Ahead sign

Montana Highway 200, Sanders County

December 31st, 2014

When I pulled out my GPS on April 1, I went for a drive and found four caches hidden along MT Highway 28, all less than ten miles from home, as the crow flies.  I spent three more days during April searching for those Tupperware containers in the woods, found 27, and vowed that by the end of 2014, I would have found a total of 300 caches.  On a trip to Cranbrook, British Columbia, I got my first non-US caches, and I logged my 300th cache on December 18.  As I approached my goal, I decided that in 2015, I would find an additional 200, to bring my total life finds to 500.  With my Christmas present in hand, I set out to see what more I could find before the New Year, getting a start on my 2015 goal, as it were.

The Clark Fork Valley Geocachers, a group I really have to spend more time with, have been very active in this area.  They have hidden at least 54 caches alongside MT Highway 200 in a series they call Montana's Own Scenic Byway, or MOSBY, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.  They have also hidden a series of caches along the Thompson River, by the side of the road the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM) built when they were logging in this area getting timbers for their mine shafts.  The ACM Road parallels the river for the most part on its east side, while the county road follows the river on the west side.  As a result, there are two roads running parallel to each other, roughly 100 yards apart, but separated by a river.  In Montana, this is highly unusual.  The two roads are roughly 40 miles in length, stretching from MT 200 in the south to US Highway 2 in the north.  And no, it's not a short cut to Libby as neither road is well maintained and under the best of conditions, you're going to be driving at 25-30 mph.

My Turn-Around Point

ACM Road by the Thompson River

December 31st, 2014

The cache chain on the ACM Road is called, appropriately enough the ACM Express, or ACME for short.  To date there are 372 ACME caches in place, roughly one every tenth of a mile.  If I were to spend all my geocaching time on the Thompson River, I would easily reach my 500 for 2015, and have a few left over.  Determined to get a head start on that goal, I loaded my GPS with some of the ACME caches, and set off to end the year with 325 finds.

I had already found a few of the ACME caches nearest the southern end, and roughly ten more in the middle where the cross road comes through the mountains from my home, so on this beautiful, if very cold day, I headed up the road about four miles before I turned around to work my way back.  I was wearing jeans, sneakers, a polo shirt, sweatshirt, and jacket.  I had a cap, but no gloves.  There was snow on the ground.  Am a I fool or what?  I've lived in Montana most of my life.  I know that when you go outside and the day's high is around 10 degrees Fahrenheit, you should have all extremities covered.  But I don't think I've worn winter gloves since we moved to Plains over two years ago--except for my abortive attempts at cross-country skiing around the property, and I'm not sure where my winter gloves are.  Mittens won't work when you're trying to press small buttons on a GPS unit and need to open pill bottles and write on rolled up pieces of paper.  (That's what you do to let the cache owner know that yes, you did find the thing.  You're not lying about it on line.)

They're Called The Rocky Mountains

Cabinet Mountain Range

December 31st, 2014

Most of the ACME caches are fairly easy to find.  Most of the ones I've found are hidden in something called "preforms" and are hanging from a branch on a tree.  This way they are usually above the snow line, and theoretically at least, can be found any time of the year.  The first cache I sought was ACME #24, and sure enough, there it was hanging from a branch hidden behind a tree just off the eastern edge of the road.  I found ACME #23 easily enough and began to feel that this would be a very successful day.

ACME #22 eluded me though, and after spending enough time looking that I was beginning to notice the cold, I said "Enough," and moved on down the road.  Number 21 was there, but try as I might, I couldn't find #20.  I was beginning to wonder if I would be finding every other cache, when #19 jumped out at me from the road.  I'm not used to being able to see the hanging "preform" without scrambling around a bit, so I was quite surprised to find this one perfectly visible.  All I had to do was wade through the snow and lift it off its branch.  I saw #18 from the roadbed as well, but for #17, I had to scramble a bit.  Actually I had to get down on my hands and knees and crawl up the bank to get behind the trees.  My hands were really hurting by now--or perhaps they were numb.  It was hard to uncap the container, and even harder to make my long entry legible.  I decided that if I were to not lose my hands to frostbite, I'd better call it a day.

I had set as my goal finding seven caches.  I was prepared to find more, if conditions warranted, but with fingers so numb I couldn't even attach my seat belt, I needed to quit.  There were a couple of easy grabs near Thompson Falls, so I drove back to the highway and headed west a few more miles.  At the turnoff for the High School, I turned right, then left and parked in the school's parking lot.  No one was around on New Year's Eve, except for a few families sledding down the hill on the east of the school.  I was headed for the fitness track on the west, looking for the fourth in a series of caches hidden to teach students how to use GPS units.  The hint for this cache was "Under a log," and I found it right away.  Unfortunately, the log and the associated bits of wood and bark hiding the cache were all frozen to the ground.  Even so, I was able to extract the cache, sign the log, and put the whole thing back together so that the only clue to its existence would be my tracks through the snow--easily hidden with the storm that is supposed to come in the next couple of days.

Ice on the Thompson River

December 31st, 2014

With that "Summer Fun" cache notched onto my belt, I finished 2014 with a total of 325 caches, and now have only 175 more to find for 2015.  Or do you think I might even do more?  By the way, with the addition of the caches I found with my new Garmin GPS unit in December, 2014 is now my best year so far, with 149 finds.  2015 will be even better, and I'll be keeping you informed.  Thanks for reading my posts, and Happy New Year!

2014 In Review, Part I

On this, the 23rd of December 2014, it seems appropriate to write up a review of the preceding year. and since I always intersperse my words with my photos, I'm choosing to write this review on the basis of the photos I've taken over the course of the year--one photo for every month, which means that I'll divide this into two parts, each covering six months.  What follows today then is January through June.  On Friday, Boxing Day as it were, I'll box up the year and put it away.

My kitchen orchid in full bloom

January 5, 2014

January is not normally known for its floral displays, at least not in northwestern Montana.  But one of the big additions to my life this year has been my increased interest in flowers.  My mother always had house plants, and one of the hardest things for her in our move to California was giving up all her African violets which would not have been allowed into the Golden State.  I bought the orchid pictured above three years ago as a decoration for my gallery space on Missoula's First Friday opening night.  I'd never had orchids, but this one bloomed for quite some time, then, as happens, lost its blooms.  January 2014 was the second time it had bloomed in our new home, and I was glad to be able to catch its beauty in pixels.  Since then, my friend Hank gave me his two large orchids and I have great hope that I will see them bloom as well, some time soon.  In addition to the three orchids, I have had great luck with my Christmas Cactus, which bloomed three times during 2014, and I added an Orchid Cactus this spring.  This latter plant has been growing like crazy, its various shoots are now covering my coffee table, and I can't wait to see it bloom this spring.  The ones blooming in the greenhouse where I bought mine looked like a Christmas Cactus on steroids.

Gypsy in the Snow

February 24, 2014

February was a winter wonderland.  With one exception, all the days I spent camera in hand brought back pictures of snow scapes.  Snow on our driveway, snow on the mountains, snow on the trees, snow by the river.  It was like a photographic exposition of Wolfgang Borchert's story Der Viele, Viele Schnee (I cannot find an English translation of this story so I'll call it The Very Great Snowfall) which I read in my early days at Berkeley.  Borchert was writing from his experience on the Eastern (Russian) Front as a soldier in Hitler's Wehrmacht.  Most reviewers comment on the ubiquity of the snow and the silence it engenders, somewhere in Russia.  With five Miniature Pinschers in the house, we never have to worry about silence.  Or perhaps, silence would be a cause for worry.

St. David's Day Cactus

March 1, 2014

March brought more snow, and I have photos a plenty of dogs, deer, mountains, etc. in the snow, but by the 20th of the month, my pictures show bare ground.  I did get a wonderful shot of an Amish buggy at the Mission General Store in St. Ignatius, now one of my favorite photos, but we didn't travel much in March, other than running Kevin's bread route.  My question for the month is "What do you call a Christmas Cactus that blooms on March First?"  Perhaps a St. David's Day Cactus, as the feast day for that Welsh Saint is the first of March.

The Polson Docks on Flathead Lake with the Mission Mountains in the background

April 10, 2014

My photos for April show that grass was turning green, even if there was still considerable snow in the mountains around us.  I have pictures of Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep on the highway, white-tailed deer in the back yard, a herd of elk in a field nearby, cows just down the road, and our first bear (actually the only bear I saw all year) just off Prospect Creek Road leading to Thompson Pass.  But perhaps the most iconic photo I took in April was the one showing the heavy snowpack in the Mission Mountains while Flathead Lake was still too low for boating.  Not sure that anyone would want to be out boating in a Montana April, even if I did see one brave gent driving his convertible down Highway 200 with the top down.

Dahlia After the Rain

May 4, 2014

And what do April Showers bring if not May Flowers?  May was a glorious month.  Kevin had I don't know how many cubic yards of top soil brought in so we could plant a garden.  This was to be a vegetable garden.  My flowers stayed in pots on the deck.  I discovered Dahlias.  Never had them before, but I have them now.  Lots of different sizes, shapes, colors.  What beautiful plants--and they'll bloom all summer long if I remember to dead head them.  May also saw me back out in the wild, GPS in hand, geocaching, beginning with a meeting with other cachers out at Trout Creek.  Mother's Day took us to the Amber Bear Inn in Heron, Montana for Sunday Brunch with Doug Jones and Adar Benjamin, and more geocaching.  Yet another passion of mine, cars, was fed by a visit to Sandpoint, Idaho and their annual classic car show on the 17th.  And still more geocaching.

My 1980 Triumph TR7, Entry 5 in the Plains Day Parade

June 7, 2014

June First took me to the Ross Creek Cedars between Noxon and Troy, Montana.  I have wanted to visit this preserve for many years, and by 2014, the trip was long past due.  That may be why I visited the Cedar Grove three times over the summer.  Or it may be because the grove reminds me of the redwood forests in Northern California. June also saw my hibiscus blooming.  There are now four hibiscus plants in different colors and sizes growing in the den.  Plains Day and the Hot Springs Homesteaders' Day were festive occasions here in Sanders County.  The garden grew well.  Lots more geocaching around the area, and all in all, a good month to be alive.  In fact, I have no regrets for the first half of 2014, and while there are always things we could have done differently, I’m pleased with the way my life is going.  Come back on Friday for the second half of the year.

A Snowy Day on the River

Snowy Day in the Coeur d'Alene Range

12/18/2014

Munson Creek Trailhead, Sanders County, Montana

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

To hear Michael Bublé sing Let it snow, click here.

Wednesday turned out to be a beautiful day, bright, sunlit, not terribly cold.  The kind of day that should get you outside and active.  Especially since the forecast was for rain and/or snow for the next several days.  I debated whether to stay home and work on chores, or go out and enjoy the weather, but ended up staying home.  I know, the chores will always be there, but still...

Thursday brought snow flurries.  Nothing major, but the skies were not at all conducive to good photography and who knew what the day would bring in terms of temperature.  So of course, I loaded my camera and GPS in the car and headed out toward Thompson Falls with the intent of getting some new smiley faces on my own personal geocaching map.  (A smiley face indicates that you have found a cache.)

My first stop was about ten miles west just off Highway 200 at the trailhead for the Munson Creek trail.  There are two caches hidden here, and I had found one last May.  The second, appropriately named Munson Creek Too (sic), eluded me.  My eTrex Legend had me going in circles and no cache was to be found.  This time, with the 650t at hand, I ended up looking about 30 feet away from where I was last May, and this time there was the cache, almost in plain sight.  I sure do love this new tool.  Now it turns out that the cache owner has changed the co-ordinates, so I can't be sure just how much better the new tool is, since the old one had incorrect information.  But the important thing is that I was able to mark this cache as found.

Back in the parking lot I took a couple of pictures, including the one at the top of this post.  It wasn't a good day for photography, but I had to try.

Down the road a piece was another cache I had been unable to find.  Located at a pull off where there are lots of signs telling about Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep, this cache proved elusive yet again.  Before when I tried, I was using the geocaching app on my iPhone, and my phone ran out of power before I was able to locate the cache.  This time, my 650t led me to the same general area as the iPhone, but no matter where I stood, the arrow pointed me into the center of a very large wild rose bush.  I could not see any cache standing outside the rose, and frankly, didn't care to tear myself to shreds on the thorns.  The last time someone found this cache was on my birthday, October 17th, and several people found it then.  My guess is that they were all together.  I'll try this one again sometime.

The Clark Fork River

12/18/2014

Sanders County, Montana

Equally elusive was the cache on the river side of the road named "I Found This Cache Humerus."  The cache is hidden along a semi-circular pull out that manages to be dangerous to enter and exit.  None-the-less, I pulled in and almost immediately found two piles of deer bones, one of which, I suppose, could have been a leg bone.  No cache, though.  I did get a new view of the river from the site, and, again, while conditions were not ideal, I'm pleased enough with the photo to post it here.

I drove by my next unclaimed cache, Saleesh House, as the most logical place to park, I thought, was in the middle of the construction zone where the Montana Department of Transportation is building a new bridge across the Thompson River.  I see now on the geocaching.com map, that there is probably a better place to park and access the site, so I'll try it one day soon.

A group calling themselves the Clark Fork Valley Geocachers has hidden a series of caches all along highway 200 from the Idaho line to east of Thompson Falls.  They call these the MOSBY caches, an acronym for Montana's Own Scenic BywaY.  To date there are 54 of the MOSBY caches, and yesterday I found five--the five located east of town.  The cache owners have provided very specific hints for these caches, which make them quick park and grab finds.  I did have to notify the owners that the log for number 54 was so wet that it was almost impossible to sign my name, and when I got to number 50, I parked and found the magnetic container at the base of a stop sign in full view of two Sanders County Sheriff's Department vehicles.  I just know that one of these days I will be arrested by Homeland Security officers who will have absolutely no concept of geocaching and no sense of humor.  Fortunately, this time I seem to have escaped unnoticed.

I missed the cache hidden by the grocery store on the east side of Thompson Falls, but found another down the road hidden by the same cachers.  I had never driven down this road before, and thus was able to add to my knowledge of Thompson Falls.  Back on Highway 200, I began searching for another series, this one called Summer Fun, which was placed in an effort to teach young people how to use GPS units.  What a great way to indocrinate, er mentor, young people.  I was able to find caches 1, 5, 8 and 9, but had no luck with 2, 6 or 10, caches others have not been able to find either.  I didn't try for 3, 4, or 7, at least not this time, as 4 would have me crossing the grounds of the high school and I'd rather do that on a Saturday.  Maybe tomorrow.

David Thompson Memorial

12/18/2014

Thompson Falls, Montana

Summer Fun 8 and 9 are near the monument to David Thompson, a location I thought would be perfect for a cache.  Indeed, someone else had that same thought and the cache located there is called Pioneer Geographer.  Unfortunately, I was not able to find this cache, and I heeded the owner's request not to dismantle the memorial in looking for it.  I talk a lot about Thompson so I'll just note that the plaque on the memorial reads:

DAVID THOMPSON

1770-1857

PIONEER GEOGRAPHER

"Koo-Koo-Sint"  The man who looked

at the stars

Built Salish House Near the Mouth

of Thompson River 1808

I missed the next four caches I sought, and my GPS was beginning to act up--probably due to a need to be fed some more electricity--so I called it a day, turned around and headed home.  I did get the cache hidden on the pedestrian bridge leading to the island in the middle of the Clark Fork near the Thompson Falls Dam.  I also got one more picture of swans on the river.  All in all it was a good day, with eleven caches added to my "Found" list, and more than a few that will still be waiting for me on another day.

Swans (yes they're there) on the River

Thompson Falls Dam

12/18/2014

Thompson Falls, Montana

Star Gazer and the Swan

Trumpeter Swans on the Flathead River

12/11/2014

Near Perma, Montana

She'd her apron wrapped around her
And he took her for a swan
But oh and alas
It was she, Polly Von.

To hear Peter, Paul and Mary sing this beautiful Irish ballad, click here.

We seem to have a large population of Trumpeter Swans in our area this fall.  At least I'm assuming they are Trumpeter Swans, the largest bird native to North America.  They are known to live in both Ninepipes and Pablo National Wildlife Refuges, both of which are close to us, just to the east of Sanders County in Lake County.  They could be Tundra Swans, which are slightly smaller.  All the guides I consulted said that it is hard to tell the two species apart.  As a very amateur ornithologist, with at best an 800 mm lens set up on my camera, I was could not get a clear enough shot of the birds to be able to detect whether they have a red spot (Trumpeter) or a yellow spot (Tundra) on their bills--but apparently, even that distinction doesn't always apply.  In any event, I set out yesterday to see what I could find, since I usually see the birds on the river when Kevin is driving and I have no chance of getting a decent shot of them.  In my sightings, they range from the reservoir at Thompson Falls in the west almost to Dixon in the east, and are most commonly seen in the area around Seepay Creek, west of Perma.  That's where I saw these birds yesterday, and I crossed a barbed wire fence, trespassing on someone's land, to get the picture shown above.

In actuality, I set off yesterday to do two things I dearly love, geocaching and photography.  Last spring, I had the opportunity to use a Garmin Montana GPS unit, and while I found it somewhat frustrating--being handed an expensive and complicated tool with no instructions on how to use the thing--the more research I did, the more I felt that I had to add one of these to my own arsenal.  Accordingly, when Kevin asked what I wanted for Christmas, I had no trouble coming up with a response.  Kevin ordered one on-line and it was delivered Wednesday afternoon.  I debated whether I should open the box, or wrap it and put it under the tree, but in the end, I followed my doctor's orders (I had asked my Facebook friends what I should do and my physician said "Go definitely," so I went.)  Most of the rest of my friends who responded agreed that I should start using the thing immediately.  After all, life is short and we have no promises for tomorrow.  Right?

Pat's Knob as seen from MT Highway 28

12/11/2014

Near Plains, Montana

I got started geocaching back in 2006, while I was in California during the last year of my mother's life.  I bought a Garmin eTrex Legend and thought it would be a good tool for measuring how far I was hiking through the redwoods each week.  Turns out, the overstory in a redwood forest is generally so thick that the satellites can't penetrate the foliage, and the unit was useless for my purposes.  It was, however, ideal for searching out geocaches.  And if you don't know about geocaching, I recommend visiting geocaching.com to learn more about this passtime.  The best description I've seen is "I use multi-million dollar US Government equipment to find Tupperware containers in the woods.   What do you do for fun?"  Geocaching got its start in the Portland, Oregon area, and has grown into a world wide hobby.  At the time I started, there were over 1,500 caches hidden within a 100 mile radius of my California home, and as that home sits three miles from the Pacific Ocean, you have to figure that at least half that circle is under water.  By comparison, there were only about a hundred or so caches within 100 miles of Missoula, Montana in 2006.   To show how much the hobby has grown, there are now 6,178 caches within 100 miles of Plains, Montana.  I don't want to do the math.  You can see the exponential growth for yourself.  Suffice it to say that there are plenty to keep me busy for the rest of my life, and that's without leaving home.  Caches are hidden world-wide from Afghanistan (250) to Zimbabwe (188), and recently a cache was taken into space and placed in the Russian section of the International Space Station.  I don't think I'll be finding that one any time soon.

The Flathead River at Koo-Koo-Sint Fishing Access

12/11/2014

Near Paradise, Montana

I enjoy combining geocaching with photography, and the camera around my neck is a good excuse for me to be out in the open, searching around for something hidden.  Who knows, maybe I just lost my lens cap and that's why I'm down on the ground digging around the base of a tree.  It's handy to have such an excuse because you really want to protect the cache from "muggles," as non-cachers are known--people who might move or even destroy a cache should they become aware of its existence.

Armed with my Christmas present, I set off yesterday morning in search of a couple of caches that had been eluding me.  I figured it would be a good test to see just how much better the Montana 650t is over my old eTrex Legend.  And oh my, I have to say I fell in love with the new toy, er tool.  Workers at the Clark Fork Valley Hospital have placed four caches on the hospital grounds, and I had been unable to find two.  (I hadn't even attempted the other two.)  With my new unit in hand, I drove to the site of the first cache, and walked right to the cache.  I can't explain why I was unable to find it before as it seemed very obvious this time.  What I do know is that using my eTrex Legend, the coordinates appeared to be all over the place, and this time, with the Montana 650t, they stayed fixed in one location--the place where the cache was hidden.

Well now, if that was so easy, what about finding another cache that had successfully resisted my efforts.  Montana Highway 28 runs 47 miles from Plains at the southwest end to Elmo at the northeast.  There are 19 geocaches along that route--all but one right alongside the highway.  I had previously found 16 of the caches, avoiding the one that was two miles off the highway and not attempting one where major construction was being done at the time.  But one cache, appropriately called Spam, had stayed hidden even though I went back three times, and even took Kevin with me to try to find the darned thing.  I used my eTrex Legend.  I used the geocaching app on my iPhone.  I knew I was in the right area, but again, the co-ordinates were all over the place.  I could stand in one spot and be told that I was 4 feet from the cache, but if I circled around and came back to that same location, I would see that I was now 28 feet from the cache.  Frustrating doesn't begin to describe the situation.  Yesterday, with my Montana 650t, I found the cache--if not immediately, then pretty quickly.  And in fact, the new GPS led me directly to the cache.  It's my fault if I didn't see it right away.

The Perma Pictographs

12/11/2014

Near Perma, Montana

Driving back toward Plains, I stopped at the site where construction had stymied me last Spring, and quickly found the diabolically clever cache hidden there.  I also took the first of yesterday's photos, the view of Pat's Knob shown above.  Pat's Knob is the second highest peak in the Coeur d'Alene range of the Bitterroot Mountains, and I have written about it and my trips up the mountain several times in the past.  John W. Patrick was one of the earliest white settlers in the Plains area, and the Plains Chamber of Commerce explains the mountain's name on their website.

After a quick lunch at Subway, I headed east on Montana 200 in an attempt to find more of the caches hidden in this area.  The first place I stopped was at the Koo-koo-sint Fishing Access on the Flathead River.  David Thompson is the most important person in the northwest you've never heard of.  At least that's what I believe.  Thompson is the man the British government sent out to beat Lewis and Clark and thus solidify Great Britain's claims to the Oregon Country.  He didn't succeed, but in the attempt, he did more to map the Northwest than anyone else.  His name lives on in Sanders County through the Thompson River, the Little Thompson River, the Thompson Lakes, and of course the Sanders County Seat, Thompson Falls.  Because of his habit of going out at night, sextant in hand, the Salish people living in this area called him Koo-koo-sint, or Star Gazer.  Two locations in Sanders County bear the Salish name, the other being a hiking trail between Plains and Thompson Falls.  Thompson has become one of my heroes, and I heartily recommend that you learn everything you can about him.

Just east of the fishing access, Highway 200 enters the Flathead Indian Reservation.  This is the only place you can cross into the Reservation without seeing a sign so stating.  According to a friend and former Tribal Chair, James Steele Jr., the tribe got tired of constantly replacing the sign and no longer notes the change in jurisdiction.  I picked up a couple more caches along Highway 200, one of which was at a beautiful spot on the north side of the river, west of Perma.  This is a sacred site for the people of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and one should approach it with reverence.  Unfortunately, that has not always been the response of visitors to the Perma Pictographs, and many of the scenes have been destroyed.  I have to admit, that I was unable to see any writing on the rock walls, but the location itself is so beautiful and so peaceful, that I can see many returns in the future.

All told, I added seven new caches to my list of those found, bringing me to a lifetime total of 295 finds.  My goal for 2014 is to pass 300.  With only five to go, and with this great tool now at my disposal, I don't think that will be a problem.

Camas Creek entering the Flathead River

12/11/2014

Perma, Montana

February 2, 2012 - The Telephone Hour

Jason: Hawker, Waiter, Barback Extraordinaire

If you need to be reminded what life was like before cell phones, check out this video taken from the 1963 movie musical, Bye Bye Birdie.

After the exhausting bus ride back from Key West, I slept well for a change. When I did get up, I really didn't feel like doing much other than getting some writing done. Kevin and I stopped at Jerry's Diner for breakfast, then headed on up Collins so he could get to the Convention Center for his conference while I stopped at Walgreen's to pick up some supplies. Alas, I had forgotten to take my ID and credit cards out of my backpack when I got in the night before, and found myself completely strapped for cash. No purchases at Walgreen's this trip.

Heading back to the hotel, I passed a motel called Aqua which had a young man out on the sidewalk hawking a restaurant named Tapas Del Mundo. He was cute, and very friendly, so I told him that I'd already eaten breakfast, but would be needing lunch soon. Then I continued on back to the Island House.

Once I finished writing up Tuesday's events, I found I was, indeed, ready for lunch, so making sure I had money in my pocket, I walked back to Tapas where Jason (the young man) seated me at an upstairs balcony table. Scanning the menu, I chose a salade niçoise (listed on the menu as a Nicoise salad) and asked Jason to bring me a "knee-swahze salad." He looked at me in confusion, consulted the menu, and when I pointed my choice out to him, he said, "Oh, I call that the 'Nigh-koyze' salad." I explained the origin of the name (a salad originating in the French city of Nice) and he explained that he'd only heard the Spanish speaking chef talk about it. Whatever you want to call it, it was delicious and as part of the lunch special, it came with a bowl of butternut squash soup and a glass of juice--in my case, pineapple juice.

Salade Niçoise and Butternut Squash Soup

Sitting above the street, I felt somewhat akin to a spy or private dick, taking pictures of people walking by below without their awareness. I grabbed a couple of shots of Jason on the street, but when he delivered my lunch, I asked if I could take his picture and saying "sure," he immediately struck a pose. I wish he hadn't. He's quite cute enough to carry off any random shot, and the pose looked a bit forced, don't you think. Still, he was gracious enough to get in front of my camera, and I didn't want to direct him at all. My friend, Richard Rothman, a New York City based photographer whom I met when he was in Crescent City working on his Redwood Saw collection, always told his subjects not to smile. I'm not sure if any of them ever actually struck a pose. At least none did when I accompanied Richard around the area in 2007. There's a discussion currently on-going among the deviantArtists (a web-based gallery where I post many of my photos) as to the honesty and artistic value of a posed portrait as opposed to a spontaneous street photo. I don't care to get into that particular argument. I will say that it's a bit easier for me to take street shots here in Miami Beach than at home in Missoula. Or maybe I'm just getting bolder.

I'm not sure what it was that moved me to check into the possibility of geocaching.com having an app for my iPhone, but I did, and sure enough, three different apps showed up. I actually purchased one (something I'm loathe to do) and decided to see what caches there might be in my area. In so doing, I started exploring parts of the city I had hitherto avoided. Walgreen's, for instance, is on the corner of Lincoln Road and Collins Avenue, but if you head west on Lincoln, when you cross Washington, the next street west and parallel to Collins, Lincoln becomes a five-block long pedestrian mall full of boutique-type shops and outdoor restaurants. I know this because according to the app on my phone, the nearest cache to me was at the corner of Lincoln and Alton, where the pedestrian mall ends. When I reached the western end of the mall, I remembered what I do not like about urban geocaching--especially in these post 9/11 days. When I'm lurking around, checking my phone (or GPS unit) every few seconds, and stooping to look under benches, around telephone poles or fire hydrants, I always wonder if those passing by figure I'm some sort of terrorist. In this case, the GPS unit in my phone directed me first to a garbage can, then to the middle of a reflecting pool, and finally to a concrete bench next to the pool. As there were people all around, many just sitting and observing the passing crowd, I gave up and moved on to my next target.

There is a geocache hidden on this corner

The second cache was 3/10 of a mile away, and on the corner of two side-streets. By waiting long enough for the mailman to move on, I was able to sit down on the sidewalk and easily find the cache without making anyone suspicious. That simple act earned me a Florida souvenir badge from Geocaching.com. Now I'm assuming that anyone who has been reading my blog for any length of time knows what geocaching is. But in case you're a newby, the best description I've read of geocaching is "I use multi-million dollar US government equipment to find tupperware containers in the woods. What do you do for fun?" In other words, someone hides something, posts the GPS co-ordinates on line, and I go out looking to find the hidden object. Think of it as a high-tech version of hide and seek, except that you're seeking an inanimate object rather than a person. The best part of the game for me is that it gives me a chance to check out places I might not otherwise visit--like the Lincoln Road Mall, for instance. All my previous walks had been toward the beach, and Lincoln Road is in the opposite direction. Since my friend Carl and I found our first cache in O'Brien, Oregon on July 10, 2006, I've logged some 170 caches in sixteen states. That's nothing compared to the fellow who hid the cache at the Lincoln Road Mall. HurricaneJuan (his screen name) has found 1146 caches since he began in March, 2010. His goal is to reach 1500 by the end of this year (2012). The game can be addicting, believe me.

Fresh from my success, I headed back to the Lincoln Road Mall, and this time I noticed something I hadn't see up close and personal. There was a seven-story parking garage right at the edge of the mall. Now people who hide the caches sometimes (not always) give you a coded hint. Juan had done that, saying that the cache was at the "SW corner...magnificent 7." I had an AHA moment, and decided to find a way into that parking garage. In his write up of the cache, Juan had mentioned watching both sunrises and sunsets from the location, and that would be much easier from the 7th floor than from ground level. Alas, even at a higher elevation I could find no cache, and reluctantly called it a day.

View from the seventh floor

Back on the ground, I started walking back to the Island House, passing this magnificent hibiscus along the way. It turned out to be my favorite photo of the day.

Kevin and I arrived back at the hotel within minutes of each other, and he informed me that we would be going out to dinner with some representatives of Nokia later on. That meant that I had to change clothes, as I'd been wearing a tank top and shorts. Jeans and a polo shirt just felt too dressy. We met the guys (Mark and Frank) at a Cuban restaurant on Ocean Drive. I didn't bring my camera along as it was now after dark, and I felt there wouldn't be much opportunity. Once again, I had to learn the lesson--always carry your camera. On the way home after dinner, we passed a beautiful '59 pink Cadillac and an equally gorgeous maroon '54 Ford. Oh well.

My Favorite Shot Taken Today (2/2/12)

So between using my cell phone for geocaching, and having dinner with the Nokia guys, it was definitely a telephone day. That's what made me think of Bye Bye Birdie in the first place, but when I did a Google search for a telephone song, I found a truly bizarre video by Lady Gaga. Not at all what I had in mind.