This is courtesy of Pagan.

Today we thought we'd pick up some of the caches in the towns near here and clear them out. It almost worked. However, the very first one in Woodland, which we've failed at before (a cocoa jar, easy find, no one else ever misses it) buffaloed us again. Rich didn't hear my "muggle!" warning and was still burrowing in the undergrowth when she parked near us, so she kept her eye on us. We waited till she went into the building, but soon enough someone else came out to look around. We gave it up, again, and went to the other Woodland cache we hadn't found. I was annoyed because on Sunday I had a pack of balloons for this one, but for some unknown reason I left it home. (I also left the maps home, but in the end it didn't matter.) We took a rubber snake and a Where's George and left a ball.

Hmmm. There's the Yolo County Historical Museum which, of course, wasn't open, not that we'd have gone anyway. Not today, we're on a mission! There's also the Satiety Winery. I'm always happy when we go to Woodland that I don't have to go to court about Gerhard's estate any more!

Next, we drove down to Dixon. We found one in a little park, one in a cemetery, and then went to a big park (in fact, we have been at the other edge of this park before, we found out later) for one called Burning Bush. It's in a pyrocantha. Ouch! I left a travel bug in it, but unfortunately logged the bug in the cemetery cache and haven't yet learned to take down their numbers so I could correct it. Oops. The cache hunter put it in the s.e. corner but said it was the s.w. corner, and Rich then ignored the evidence of the map and his own eyes and asserted it was the n.e. corner. Loudly. Apparently his Lent isn't going that well, either.

But never mind, that finishes off Dixon. Onwards to Davis. The first one is a Pony Express marker on campus leading to a cache just south of the highway (which would have been simpler and easier to walk to.) Next we went to a rusty generator along the Putah Creek parkway. We walked past the Sharps and Flats apartments, which I think is funny.

Lunch, then back along the frontage road to a Very Strange Building. There're all sorts of "visitors must register" signs. We quickly grabbed the cache and got out of there.

Next came "the eyes have it" which is darn cute (though he's moved the second stage out of the little parklet now.) What I said was:

STF! [second to find] This was pretty much our favorite cache of the day, and took the longest, as well.

Of course, we love anything to do with fossils, so the first stage was a must. [This was a virtual from a sign about fossil dragonflies on a bridge over this cut-off leg of Putah Creek] Then we walked to the second stage. There was a mom-muggle there. After we stood and stared, waited till the kids moved to check out one area we thought maybe the riddle referred to [the riddle said "my eyes are red with fury. You look for me, but cannot see me, but I can see you." We thought maybe it was on the binoculars at the (red) play area], and paced back and forth, we told her what we were looking for and showed her the riddle. (We thought it was either that or have her call the cops on us. The neighbors had been a little jumpy at some people lurking in the park earlier today.) Well, she pointed out some features that might fit the riddle [owl houses, and later light sensors], and that took some time, as well. We finally gave up and went back to the car.

Mr. Codger is persistent, or maybe stubborn, so we drove around and came with binoculars to see if that helped. It didn't, but we persisted and Mr. C. found the stage! [magnetic, on the bottom of the bike rack] Mama Muggle was enthralled. The children didn't see it. We gave them some cache goodies. Then we drove to the third stage. We left a magic 8(eye)ball and took nothing. TFTC ![Thanks for the cache]

That took a lot of time, so we went over the freeway to the bike bridge one and the one in the park near Gerhard's old house. Then we went back south to one, but decided to bag it, since it involves walking through a farmer's field. We're the only people to complain, but c'est la vie.

There's one on the Yolo Causeway now, but the nearest parking is a mile away, and it was getting too late and we were getting too tired. There's one in the industrial area of West Sacramento that was nice, and then we drove south along the ship canal (they're going to end up closing the port, which is a real shame) and along Babel Slough for our last find of the day.

This gets us to #890. If we're going to have Halley's Comet be #1000, we have to start being careful, since we will have to first find 3 more planets (Saturn is out of commission, too, right now) and work it into the various trips we're making in the next month.