Overnight I wondered if the cache behind the locked gate was being reached from the beach side. I drove back to Marina and tried to find where the trail presumably exited to the water. The beginning wasn’t promising. Cables with signs stretched down the beach. Finally, there was a small unblocked gap. The climb up was steeper than it looks in the picture. This was the view inland from the top. If ever there was ever a sensitive area where people shouldn’t walk, this was it. It probably would’ve been possible to reach the cache and the wrong side of the locked gate. Instead I enjoyed the vi ..read more

After almost 3 months of mostly vegetating indoors I took a much needed 5 day trip back to the Monterey area. The first main activity was hiking in Point Lobos State Reserve. I started with an inland leg, skipped for time last year. The sounds of Hwy 1 traffic faded as the trail led toward the ocean. When turning to face a large movement in the bushes (Ewoks?) I walked into a hanging branch of poison oak. Of course, the only person I saw on this part of the hike rounded the corner at that moment. A know-it-all, apparently seeing me as a foreign tourist, he tried to explain poison oak and Tec ..read more

Last month on my way home from Primm, Nevada, I pulled off of the I-15 multiple times to find freeway-close caches. About half way from Baker to Yermo I took the Field Road offramp and looked for 3 caches on the south side. The first one was Road Not Maintained (GC4QEX). At all 3 caches I noticed that the ground was strewn with interesting rocks, many of which I knew would tumble well. But after a week of rock hounding and geocaching I was too tired to collect anything and hurried home instead. During the next 2 weeks I read that “Field Road Siding” is a famous rock hounding site picked over ..read more

I spent the final week of the year back in the desert. Barstow again and then the Nevada border. From my usual Barstow base motel my first excursion was to Route 66. This was a rare trip where caching wasn’t the primary activity. I made an effort to see the sights. Here’s a fading sign from another era. The Bagdad Café occupied the other end of the lot. My Garmin Oregon’s compass arrow pointed to a cache, apparently inside the building. Nope, not for me. I kept going. Next was Pisgah Crater where I found a cache that was unreachable in November due to muggles. This time no one was around and ..read more

As sometimes happens at my Barstow motel, I awoke at dawn to the sound of motorcycle engines revving and their riders shouting greetings to each other. Some people just don’t care. The commotion stopped me from going back to sleep and I was soon on the 15 fwy. At the nearby Fort Irwin Road offramp I drove toward the fort on the ultra well maintained 1 lane non-freeway. The lack of traffic going my way made it easy to stop and look for roadside caches. The one here Cave to Nowhere (GCHFG7) was different. It was 400’ off road and reached via a side road. The GPS compass stubbornly pointed direct ..read more

After Thanksgiving dinner I drove to my standby motel in Barstow eager for an early start in the morning to rock hound at the world famous Lavic Siding jasper fields. Most newbie rock hounds would’ve been out of their element. But as a desert geocacher the 45 mile drive on Route 66 felt comfortably familiar. The turnout for Lavic Siding is at geocache 155-Route 66 (GC2JXWB).I parked only .25 miles in, planning to hike a circle while looking for jaspers for my rock tumblers.Immediately I saw that no hike was needed. The ground was COVERED with red, yellow and red-yellow jaspers. This is the vie ..read more

Nine years ago I placed 7 caches on the North/South trail in the area formerly known as Ahmanson Ranch, beginning at the North terminus of Las Virgenes Road. One was archived later because bees made a hive inside the attachment structure. The remaining 6 stayed active for 9 full years with only 1 muggling until I retrieved and archived them this weekend. That’s (6 x 9)= 54 cache years! Why archived? 9 years is a long time and new find logs were increasingly few and far between. And the containers needed to be retrieved while I’m still physically able to hike (slowly) and not left as geo-trash ..read more

Dweeb’s Diatribe is approaching its 10th anniversary. In those 10 years I wrote 222 posts about almost as many geocaching expeditions. But all things must end. Changes to how the game is played and the general deterioration of the socio-political climate make caching far less enjoyable. My caching has slowed to a trickle. I no longer attend events and I’m well on my way to archiving or adopting-out all of my caches. But I still enjoy being outdoors and know that it’s essential to maintaining good health. Taking full advantage of navigation and outdoor skills honed by geocaching, I now particip ..read more

Last weekend I combined geocaching with my new rock tumbling hobby. I drove 55 miles N, mostly on the 14, to Gem Hill in Rosamond. It’s a famous location for rock hounds because it’s public land and collecting rocks is completely legal. Familiarity with Google Earth from geocaching was a huge help. Not only did it lead me to a wide open parking spot, it showed me an easy mostly flat ½ mile hiking trail around the back side of the hill. The hike led here, where I’d seen the green ground cover on the satellite map. There was much evidence of previous digging. Inexplicably there were no geocache ..read more

When I vacation in Monterey I try to expand my knowledge of the area by taking day trips farther afield. This time, only a mile beyond my previous southernmost excursion I reached Point Lobos. The geocaching map showed multiple earth caches and multis in the State Reserve. Page comments indicated that no physical caches are allowed. The multis had numerous (too many for me) stops to gather clues for cache containers hidden outside the reserve. I don’t like to spend outdoor time, especially on vacations, compiling clues/data for earth caches and multi caches. It was especially true for this vi ..read more