CEDARVILLE

We headed out down Fandago Pass, on our way to explore the wilderness with our family, geocaching style. I had the GPSr tuned into a cache out that direction...but as it turns out, it was more a rugged hiking one, and we had the kids with us. I wish I could figure out how to get to that one, I tried it last year as well. Do we have to go over the stream and uphill 0.90 miles, or is there an easier way?
We passed it up, and kept going. I considered what else was out there. I wish I knew how to put in here what my "geocache map" looks like for this area. Even better, I would like to have a topography map when I get out in that National Forest. I get out there and then I get confused about which tiny forest road takes us closer to the caches, roads unmarked and unpaved.

There was an easy cache back the way that we had to pass up because firefighters were napping and having lunch. They deserved a rest. We could just keep going over the Pass until we got in the right direction for a geocache.
And we finally did.

This one.

GCYTE5

Surprise Valley Hot Springs Cache

The first picture is the view from the top. This is the view from the bottom. Kaleb was resting, and it was too rough for him, so AJ and Ted went up the rock formation looking for a traditional sized cache. They are the blue and white specks on the upper left. I suspected I knew where the cache was hidden, and they were not moving towards that area, but I was watching Kaleb and it was pointless to yell or point from that distance. Eventually, they came down, and I headed up, straight to where my "geosense" was leading me. This would be the rock formation on the top middle-right. Once I got close, I had to climb and shimmy up the rock face, but I found it, the elusive ammo can! It was full of goodies, but no travel bugs. I left a geocoin - one of my personal ones, which then got grabbed by another cacher before I could log it in the cache to record its starting point, which was frustrating to me, but I didn't make an issue of it when I found out later.

After this , we began driving back, and had an amazing encounter with a bald eagle. Below. We got several shots. That was a high point of our summer vacation on our Great Western Road Trip.

VIEWS FROM MY SISTER IN LAW'S HOUSE

Mt Shasta

5000 acres of alfalfa fields.....

ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART

So, I haven't been doing much blogging lately. Kid has been claiming the computer a lot, and I've been going through something, maybe I'll be able to explain later. However, I was listening to my Ipod while working on my computer at work, and this song came on. I wanted to share the lyrics with you, my few friends who read this thing now and then. This is the most beautiful love song I have ever heard, I think that every time I hear it, but I mean that as a contemporary love song, a modern love song. It reminds me of someone really special to me who is not a part of my life anymore. Once, this song was his song, and now I can listen to it and smile thinking about that time when this song said everything I wanted to say, even with the knowing that sometimes you find out that love was just a wish an empty heart makes. Sometimes you meet people later in life and realize the two of you have come too far away from the people you used to be when you loved each other. That's okay. The person I loved was a person who no longer exists, and that makes it easier to let him go, anyway. When I hear this song, though, I remember the feelings I had once, and it's not a bad thing. It makes me smile with the remembering.

Collecting You (by the Indigo Girls...of course)

I could paint you in the dark
Cause I've studied you with hunger like a work of art
These are very secret days
I collect my information then I stowe it all away
Call me when you breeze through to your appointments
The work you do
Call me, I'm collecting you
The pleading prayer and hairshirt sting
My hair-trigger love and faulty spring
Motivation smokes a name, but I don't like that smell applied to me so
Blindly just the same call me
When you breeze through to your appointments the work you do
Call me I'm collecting you
Turning up my collar to an unseasonal chill you ask a favor, you know I will
The rain comes a surprise we fly across the railroad ties
I feel the danger the foolish thrill oh yes I will
What it will or won't be then
The shutter pre development the ink full in the pen
Mind the mind's eye's trickery
You might picture killer beautiful much more than it might be
Call me tell me what you're up to what you'll do
Call me I'm collecting you
I would be foolish to think that I could turn it off and stay alive
The way I live when you switch on hand on the dimmer, give me just a glimmer
Give me just a shadow hope around the edges, agony and rapture forever uncaptured
Take these secrets to your grave
Drug across your landscape and buried in your cave
You're piling up and out of sight
But trying to add it up just feels like counting shades of light
Call me when you breeze through to your appointments what you must do
Call me I'm collecting you
Hang it in my window let it complicate my view
The separation the glass of you
But I can paint this picture any way that I see fit
The art of pain the subject sits unmoved

A SLICE OF HEAVEN

We were driving along a forest road in Northern California, one that started wide and smooth and got continually rougher the deeper we went into the mountain. We were going after a geocache, just the husband and I together on a brief respite from children, who were with their "honey" - his mom. This road was somewhat familiar, we had come up it many times but always got a little lost when the road became more treacherous, and somewhat vague. We luckily caught all the right turns this time, and not too far up or dangerous, the coords led us to a parking spot in a clearing, here. It was so nice here that we spent a little while just resting and absorbing. In some ways, I think I could stay here forever.....or maybe visit often.

GC1J6T5