Today we decided to go to Elk Grove and find caches. Rich walked the dog first, since EG is not that far away.

The first was a new one in South Sacramento, a magnetic one on an electric box close to banks, therefore called "deposits." Second, it was back to look at the bridge over a canal in the Pocket area of town. The owners had given me a hint, since we had no luckatall the last time. I reached into the railings (in the expanda-area for weather changes) and sure enough!

OK, down to the new City of Elk Grove. The next one has been there a long time... so long the log is totally soaked and unusable. It's a pill bottle at the far end of a baseball field, essentially under an underpass. The lid no longer shuts down tight.

The next one, in a park, involved lurking in bushes, but we were quick with it. Then to a virtual in a rose garden. The person who left this is an old pal from BBS days. The roses will be lovely in a month or two, but it's not much right now.

In a tree near an adult school for the next one, but we had to wait till one of the classes came by us. It's called "Blarney Bubbles" and is too small for anything but the log, though I did get a dinosaur eraser into it. I have a St. Patrick's day pin which I'd hoped to leave. Then we went to some concrete rubble in a field for a small one.

The next was along a mitigation pond. We talked to a woman walking along the path and she said there used to be beavers there. I remember last night a news story from Lincoln where the beavers have completely removed all the new trees in the new housing. This pond is no longer that vibrant, though we did see a couple of ducks. This was a nice big cache, and I wasn't prepared, darn it.

Next was one in the big field where the Travel Bug Inn (now sadly empty and wet and with lots of bugs) is. Out in the middle of the field there's a car wheel. The cache is in a plastic bag which has bigger stuff in it. We took nothing and left a crab box. Close to it is a lovely park where I may take Casey someday. It's a little magnetic Altoids box on a picnic table. I took nothing and left a tiny dinosaur.

Next one was high on a scoreboard. There's a short guy (who just got his 500th cache) who must have had a hard time with this one. Then we parked in a shopping center to walk along the road to a field. There was a young man sauntering just too slowly ahead of us. I felt like stepping on his heels till he sped up a bit. The GPS was telling Rich the cache was at a palm tree, and he spied a wire around it which distracted him, while I had the hint which led me to the cache at a different palm tree.

The next one was at a dead end, in the thistles! Argh. I left a lion finger puppet and took a wallwalker. Then we were beginning to look for lunch, but first we stopped at a nature area. The neighbors were out washing their cars and cleaning out garages, but they paid no attention to us. However, I did find myself reading one sign (on water pollution and mitigation ponds) a number of times.

Lunch was fish at Carl's Jr. Then we went to a different area of town and tried to get to one, but we kept getting stymied by houses. Hmm. OK, I wanted a travel bug in the next one, so we found parking and walked back to this Very Weird Historical Marker. It's the site of a historic house with drawings and architectural renderings of what the house was like, but not a single bit of the house was left. The cache is off under a tree to the side, and had a gazillion ants in it, and not a few earwigs. Also, the log book had not been bagged, so it was damp. I traded TBs and left a button "Please don't punch the ballots" from the election.

This was the way to the other one we couldn't find a route to. It's a nice little open area. We took a severed hand for Casey and left a frog.

Along that same street is another stuck up on a "no parking anytime" sign. Then there's a little strip park along the electric wires and we found another one in there. (We're busy leaving a lot of caches in our area, BITs (Because It's There). The Lews are doing the same in the south area, which is nice.)

We then tried to get to another Dead End cache. We wound up on a private road over a railroad track, and nearly ran over some quail! We took another direction and finally found the place. If we'd been there earlier in the day, we wouldn't have gotten the travel bug which we traded (I was going to leave one anyway, but this was a nice surprise.)

Then we were off toward the east. First we were interested in one cache in a little park, but there was a car with two teenage girls sneaking a smoke. Hey, girls, not only is that bad for your health and gives you wrinkles, but you're in our way! There was a fire blazing on the play equipment, and Rich put it out with sand. The girls were not budging, so we went off to another.

One guy at Oroville had told us how special this one was, so we thought we'd try it. We slogged through the mud in this field and found a pipe... with a can... with a rat! The (rubber) rat is the cache container!

Next we went to the Elk Grove Water Conservation Garden and found one. If I'd had the coordinates with me for the other one near here, we could have done it, too, but we didn't, so we didn't. Back to the little park, and the incipient cancer chicks were gone.

Rich looked in the cable box (all there were were snails.) I'm looking in the bushes. The neighbor comes out and said "hi" and Rich said "I bet you wonder what we're doing." Yes, he's seen other groups searching these bushes and he's a little concerned, though no one has trespassed on his land. We told him about geocaching and showed him the machine. He was OK with it, and then I luckily found the cache. It's a camouflaged film container hanging on a twig. We showed him, and gave him permission to laugh at future cachers.

We miscounted here and thought that was 24 instead of 23, so we wanted the full 25. We went to a wild area, and walked along Laguna Creek. It was on the other side, and it was getting dark. We got to the right side of the creek, and went all over this log, but no cache. Back at home I discovered I should have read the page more recently. The cache tried to float away and the owner had rescued it to fix up and replace, later. Oh, well. That was the only failure of the day, and it wasn't actually one.

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I feel a little sorry for Martha Stewart, though I know she was stupid. As someone said: "Martha Stewart is convicted of covering up a crime the government couldn't prove she committed."