OCTOBER 22, 2010 – Hemet, 116 cache day

Until last weekend my most-caches-found-in-1-day counts were 46 alone and 89 with a group. When EMC mentioned the “100 caches in a day” series by Team Stevecat in Hemet I said “Yes!!” Our 3 cacher expedition assembled at EMC’s house and 2 hours and a McDonald’s breakfast later we were finding caches. There was one at the site below. Albackore wanted to incubate a giant frog egg but we convinced him to keep caching instead.

Many of the series caches were literally 1 step away from parking. The easy, mostly roadside caches allowed us to maintain a steady rate of 19 finds per hour.

We had one setback. Albackore led the way to the non-series cache at the sign and then turned around and ran back. “Bees!!” Fortunately, EMC hadn’t locked the doors. Safely inside without a single sting, we drove away as the most determined of the bees dived bombed the windows. We didn’t count this cache as a DNF because we had no chance to search for it.

Another cache was uncomfortably close to an abandoned RV. We stickered the log extra quickly and were on our way.

The longest “hike” of the day was about 100’ up this dirt path for another fast find.

There was no danger of overheating in the cool and cloudy weather. It was nice to cache without sunglasses and sunscreen for once. Occasional fog reduced visibility. We were less likely to attract muggles but zooming cars were scarey when we stopped along narrow roads. Just before lunch we passed a rock strewn area.

EMC and Albackore had a delicious (I’m told) barbecued meal while I laid out in the Prius to recover from carsickness. Here’s Ursula the Bear and her friend outside the market/restaurant.

We found a cache at this 1950’s style sign just as the cloud cover broke up.

Just about every large official sign in the area had a cache next to it. That’s me and the word “moderate” in the same picture.

The best scenery was on the last leg of our trip, at Fobes Ranch on the Pines to Palms Hwy 74. A cache is clearly visible in the picture.

An official trailhead is near here. The area is now on my “must hike” list.

We saw a UFO! A fuzzy object moved across the sky. It was too tightly packed to be a flock of birds and too fast for an insect swarm.

After 2 hours of sunshine, the fog rolled back in quickly. We drove through it and light rain on the way back to the freeway.
In 6 hours of caching, we found all 100 caches of Team Stevecat’s series and 16 others. We had no DNFs and 2 “did not looks,” which were the bee swarm cache and one that was behind 2 “no trespassing” signs. Thanks Team Stevecat for the easy and scenic series. And thanks to the hiders of the 16 non-series caches that we also found.