senoritafish: (Al runs)
[personal profile] senoritafish

(Posted first at Gather.com)


I'll tell you right now I'm not a hugely experienced geocacher.  I only started in January; I've been aware of it for several years (I think I first read about it in Wil Wheaton's blog), but it was only after getting an email newsletter from Sparkpeople, a fitness website, suggesting as a good way to get out for a walk, that I actually jumped in and started doing it.  My family and I have only found about a dozen so far.  The fry often tag along, and sometimes get a bit impatient with me, between the stopping to look for a cache when we're on our way somewhere else, or my constant pausing to take pictures.

Most of the caches we've found so far have been urban, and either close to my home or my work.  I'm a little sad I've found nearly all the ones within walking distance, although there are a few whose clues are a mathematical puzzle that I haven't figured out yet.  As a matter of fact, the first one I looked up has its symbol right on the roof of my house on the map, although that's not it's real location - I'm still working on trying to solve this one.

A cache in my neighorhood intrigued me as it was a multi-cache - one with several stops with clues along the way to finding the real cache. Well, it's sort of in my neighborhood - most is about a mile away downtown, but the final parts were very close to home.  It was called Huntington Beach Historical Walk by geocachers Oldtechies, and thank you to them for all the hard work putting it together. The fry and I set off a sunny June afternoon and walked downtown to the first waypoint. 

Warning - if you live in the Huntington Beach Area and  might like to attempt this one, you'd best stop reading right now and navigate away from this page.

Thing is, having grown up in this area, I was familiar with all of these spots.  There was not an actual cache at each point, but what made it fun was looking for the clue associated with each one.  You could also look at this as a little travelogue of the downtown area of my hometown.  I'm posting a picture of each spot, but leaving out the clues.  ;)

Waypoint 1: This building is now a police substation, but it was originally built by a doctor in 1902, and has served several other purposes and been moved once as well.  The clue was to find a plaque on the front and record the year it was dedicated.  By the way, I know folks back East or in other parts of world may not find a building a hundred years old that historical, but this is Southern California.  It's ancient for here!  And I love this style of architecture.


Waypoint 2 was half a block to the north, a building that now houses an antique shop. Two years younger than the previous building but still over a hundred years old.  , which has an attached home, I like to think this building was the setting for Winter Tides, a ghost story by James Blaylock,  that was set in Huntington Beach. In that incarnation, it was a theater props company.

 

The clue here was to count the number of these rings mounted in the sidewalk, where customers used to tie up their horses.  It's hard to imagine horses ever being in regular use here, although I know they must have been once.  I have walked down this sidewalk numerous times, and never noticed these rings before.

 

The building has an attached house, currently undergoing renovation.  However, they are taking great care not to damage this large hydrangea bush, which the signs say is over 80 years old.  There are ladies in my garden club who swear it's also over a hundred years old.

On the way to the next waypoint, we had to look in the antique store window.  Unfortunately, I have never been down here when it is open.  Looks like there's a lot of interesting stuff in there... Pirates, anyone?

Waypoint 3 pointed us to the Surfing Walk of Fame.  Huntington Beach is home to some world class surfing competitions, and of course many of those champions are locals, some of whom have the honor of having their names mounted on these granite tiles in the sidewalk. 

Next, across the street to Waypoint 4 - the foot of the Huntington Beach pier (this has shown up before in my photos), to find a bit of information from the big plaque street performers sometimes use as a backdrop.  We go for walks here fairly often.  This is not the orginal pier - the old one was damaged in an El Niño storm in the early 80's and repaired with nifty two story restaurant on the end of it.  Two years later, an even stronger storm destroyed the end of the pier (along with the nifty new restaurant).  So this newer, stronger one, made of concrete instead wood, replaced it.

 Walking up the beachwalk to the next stop, we passed the showers on the beach.  I was sorely tempted to try to photograph some the surfers rinsing off under them, but aimed for another view of the pier instead.  Sorry.

 

There's a small plaza and amphitheater just to the north of the pier, where a farmer's market is held on Fridays, and occasionally bands perform free concerts.  At the far side near the parking lot was Waypoint 5.  The clue was part of this muralof historical activities around the pier, which probably would have been better lit in the morning.  Oh well.

Next, back across the street to Waypoint 6.  Duke Kohanamoku was an Olympic swimming champion, who later moved from his native Hawaii to Southern California to perform in movies.  He is credited with getting surfing started here.  A restaurant at the foot of the pier is named for him, and this statue of him as a young man tells a bit about his history.  There is a bust of him as an older man in the International Surfing Museum a couple of blocks away up Main Street.

All around Duke here are surfing champions hand and footprints, after the manner of the Chinese Theater in Hollywood.  I found I have bigger feet than one of the male surfing stars.  ;p

The next clue at Waypoint 7, is actually on a new building, but tells us what used to be there (I remember the old place) and directs us look next door to find out why so many of the old buildings downtown have disappeared (i.e. the building materials).  Which is a little sad.  In spite of all the old stuff pointed out here, most everything along Main Street is new.  To quote my copy of The Lonely Planet Guide to California and Nevada: "One of the least polished and most low key of Orange County beaches, Huntington Beach has recently been bombarded with glitzy chain restaurants and horrendous architecture."

And if all the walking  (which has actually all taken place within about four or five blocks) has gotten you parched, the geocache owners suggest you take a break at Waypoint 8, The Longboard, also housed in a hundred-year-old building.  I haven't eaten here yet, but it sure smelled good.  And the host gave us a funny look as we walked up just to examine the plaque next to the front door - his little podium was right next to it (and wouldn't you know it, I forgot to write the clue down and had to look up the building on the web to find it later). 

Not a waypoint, but of interest just around the corner, is the International Surfing Hall of Fame.  It's rather unassuming, but quite interesting inside, if you're into surfing history.

We about a twenty minute walk to the next waypoint, so we checked another geocache along the way.  It was called Steeker Magnet, which caused me to scratch my head, because I did not know what a Steeker was.  Before we left home, I did a google search on it, and the only commonality to anything I found was pictures of recumbent bicycles.  From the coordinates, I knew there was a bicycle shop nearby, and I wondered if it had something to do with that.  No, it has to do with this; can you guess what steekers are?

 

This was a tiny magnetic one containing only a log. So we sat on the curb, to try to hide ourselves from muggles while we signed it.  There weren't too many.  And there was a nice garden adjacent to it; I liked it, but some muggles walking by described it as a jungle with a tone of disgust.

One the way, we walked by a place that has history for me.  This ice house, which looks out of place now among the new upscale homes recently built close to it, is where we used to get a massive block of ice for our camper's cooler before we would go on camping trips.  There is still a coin-operated vending slot on the side where you can put in your quarters and get a 25-lb block of ice.  It's full of leaves and few June bugs right now, but if you put your hand near the flap you can feel the cool air coming out.

Another block down, and someone had cut down a eucalyptus tree.  Gareth spent a few minutes trying to figure out how old it had been.  It's already trying to grow back.

Walk, walk, walk.  Follow the yellow brick...I mean GPS.

Waypoint 9 was the last clue before the final cache.  This is the Scout Cabin in  park just down the street from my house; my brothers attended Boy Scout meetings here until one of them was an Eagle.  The troop they belonged to, Troop 1, still uses this building and is the oldest troop west of the Mississipppi, I'm told.  The cabin has been declared an official historical building by the county; it was orginally built in the 20's.

To tell the truth, the kids were fed up and hungry by this point, so we figured the final cache could wait for another day, so we went the few blocks home and had dinner.  We also tried to figure out the clues to the final cache.  They involved adding up a number found at each waypoint and add them to one of the coordinates.  I goofed once and we wound up in an alley behind some huge new expensive homes.  I figured out my error, but did not get to look again for another week. 

Finally, we walked back down the park, across the street from the park above.  Gareth and Avalon took the opportunity to go tree climbing as well.

I still occasionally have make use of the encrypted hint, because my GPS isn't all that accurate down to the 10 foot level.  Here, it didn't seem to make a lot of sense - "bird in a bush" - until I got close to these shrubby plants - and I knew immediately what they were and where the cache had to be.

They're bird of paradise shrubs.  We used to have some in our front yard.  They weren't blooming...except for ...what's this?

Wait minute...only one bloom on all of these shrubs?  Seems a bit odd..

And there it is!

Very clever camoflage, oldtechies! Applause and thank you!  I guess this one must be harder to find when the flowers are actually blooming.

 We signed the log, swapped one my little glass sea critters for a 10-sided die and carefully hid it again so the flower was only slightly visible.  And as we were leaving, we were treated to a gorgeous sunset.

 This was a fun one and I actually learned a few things about my own neighborhood.  Thanks for coming along with us!

March 2016

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