Small-Fry took the customary two 'cache ants' left by SC, and I left a nickle.---Ha. ErSamin is on to us! Rich has wanted us to leave ants in every cache, though sometimes I forget. We haven't told anyone, though.

Since we babysat Alex, every time we've seen her has been vaguely disappointing... not enough time, or something we did stupid, always something, and I really wanted to get some time with her today. We set up a visit, and so in the morning and early afternoon we planned a caching trip to Petaluma, where there are lots together so maybe we could beat the 18-cache-day record.

We started, though, with one of the two new ones in Davis, right at the Gharlane exit. After we left it, apparently, someone came along with three travel bugs! Life is timing.

In Fairfield we stopped at Linear Park and took a picture for the locationless cache of Trails from Rails. It doesn't seem to have a sign that explains it, though, so I had to put in a web page.

OK, then we got to the Sears Point road, stopping at the information booth for Sonoma Valley. Sonoma is having an Olive Festival these two months, so we must go back. We got stickers to wear to get discounts if we do. Across the way is a sign for a mission, which was started but later moved.

It was tempting to head for Sonoma instead, but I had all the information for Petaluma, so we went there. The next one was an interesting sculpture on the Lakeville Road, a virtual history of the town of Lakeville and Donahue Landing. On into town, close to the information center. There's one behind the Sheraton on the wetlands (there are quite a few on the wetlands to come back for, but we were on a mission this time). We discovered a condom in this one, which seems inappropriate. In fact, we have since found out that indeed it is wrong, and should just be removed.

Back to the Information Center. You're supposed to count the vowels and consonants on a sign, manipulate it, take the number and use its square and square root in the coordinates for the second part. We mumbled and figured it all out. We were about to start off, when I realized that one of the names on the sign had two "l"s instead of one. Oh, well, THAT made a difference. Suddenly the number with the square and square root was "0". The second part was there at the first part! Tricky.

We went on north to the Marin-Sonoma Fairgrounds. There is a big chicken (Petaluma used to be the poultry capitol of California, though I haven't heard about that for a few years) and questions to answer. The cache name is "Baulk, Baulk." Another one was along a creekside, a real cache for a change.

So far, the day was really successful, so it was time to get frustrated. The next one, somewhere under an overpass, is called "Made in the Shade" and we poked around there for twenty minutes or so. Grumble. Time for lunch, so we went downtown. We parked in a lot near a park which honors a Congressional Medal of Honor winner. Across the street, in a wall, is a film canister behind a loose stone, which Rich found right away.

There's a cache IN New York Subs, and you don't have to buy anything to look at it, but we decided to have lunch there, too. Friendly people! After lunch, though, the GPSr went a little mad, which didn't help. We found the virtual of the guy who promoted wrist-wrestling as a sport, then walked up and down the street near the River (no wonderful birds there today as there were a few years ago) looking for one. There were movers, so we went to the one in the parking garage, which we thought might be something like ours downtown. No luck there either. Back to the other one, and we found the landing that was described, but not the cache. Finally we tried another, and again completely failed, though we saw something that might have been its location. I wrote the owner, then read the cache page and realized that it wasn't on the tree but on the wall. Argh. But the problems Rich was having with the GPSr (we should never have turned it off for lunch, apparently) were just defeating us left and right.

We went back to the car and started to drive out of town. However, there was one closeby which depended on the tide, so might as well try it. It turned out to be close to the street along the River where we were before, so we could have walked to it earlier. Rich bopped on down the dock while I lagged behind, and sure enough, I reached into the top of a pier and there was the cache! Mojo's back.

There's a park a little to the south, with a harder cache than the ones we couldn't find downtown. Rich zeroed in on the sprinkler head right away, and there it was! Another on a newspaper box, and then we went to Novato.

I wanted to go to the one honoring Stephen Rucker, the firefighter who died in the San Diego fire last summer. This is near an empty building in a mall. I reached into a utility hole, and there it was! I got another Novato FD heart pin, and this one I'm keeping! We left some of the Sonoma stickers.

We still had a few minutes, so we went over to the renovated Scottsdale Pond for the last cache of the day. This makes 16. If we hadn't been so lame in the downtown, we might have beat our record, but the did-not-finds take too much time! As we left, apparently Roni was at the intersection, flashing her lights and trying to get our attention. It didn't work. We followed her home, but didn't know it.

Alex is a charmer, and we played at the park, and got a good chance to talk to Roni and R.J., and had a great dinner (spaghetti) and a wonderful end to the day. Nice! I like their new shutter blinds, and their new range. Alex likes dinosaurs, and has long conversations with all her toys. I also admired her art. Roni has an easel set up in the garage and we'd brought a roll of paper, which will fit nicely.

We got home about 10:30. We're halfway through the month with our ISP and still 27 minutes over time, but today should help.