I'm two pounds down, which with the weight gain over the trip makes me still one pound up for the year.

Currently, G&V would catch us at 1800 in late August. Today, however, we moved the date along a bit. We took off early to go to Gold Country and explore some different areas.

The day started badly at a bridge, where we couldn't find the logsheet for anything. We wasted about half an hour looking there before huffing off back to the car. Fortunately, the next one was a bit easier. HAL's coordinates seemed a little off all day, but once you made the adjustment, the finds were easier. The next one was a little off the road near another bridge, but easy enough to find. The surprising thing about it was that, even though it's a screw-top peanut butter jar, it was wet inside. Apparently someone didn't screw it back right sometime in the winter.

Next there was a little cemetery near Rancho Murieta. Color us amazed, we had no idea it was there, nevermind how many times we were up and down this road while we drove Bernadette to camp.

Then we were near Sutter Creek, along some back roads, and there was a half-mile walk through a gate that the cache-placer assures us is not trespassing... with the hunters and their shotguns nearby we decided to skip this one. There were two more cemetery caches. Then we went to another premium cache on a bridge over Sutter Creek.

We went on up into the hills toward Volcano and found a little park along the road. There's a cache there placed by the legendary Apollo56. It said a 2.5 hide, 1 terrain, but actually was pretty much the other way around. When Rich spied it, well up in a tree, I said "OK, we've found it, let's not log it" but he was determined. Holy Toledo!

(Dammit! In my eagerness to get my Internet going again, I used Goback and lost the cute picture I had of Rich halfway up a tree. Grumph! Then, as you can see, I was able to rescue just this one picture, again using Goback. The other pictures of the day are gone.) (Note how healthy this cedar is. Vince's one, in our front yard, has a lot of brown needles. I guess it was burned last month when the record heat wave was on. I think (I HOPE!) it will be all right.)

Then it was time to back and to Jackson and visit Play It Again Sports. They had a $100 check prepared for Rich, half for softballs and half for 500 golf balls. They plan to rebag the latter in 100s, so they must sell to a driving range. That was exciting.

We thought we'd go to the Mexican restaurant where we went in, oh, 1998 or so, the one I was going to take B. and Gerhard to only I had an accident instead. Then we couldn't actually find it, though I guess we did. (The one we went to looked really familiar inside, a converted house, but they may have enclosed the porch in the last 5 years and we remembered it as being a little further south and a little more back from the highway. Whatever.) We had a good lunch and then walked, puff, pant, up the hill to the museum to get a virtual. The girls can't work Saturday Night because they're going to (snicker!) the Policeman's Ball. I enjoyed another look round this excellent museum. This time I noticed the fancy soaps collection in the bathroom.

Back to the car and we drove to the Serbian Orthodox church where we found the cache this time. Then we headed up the hill to get one of CCCooperAgny's "HAPPY" caches. She has put one in every state, I think, and this was our second. The Oregon one was a LOT easier! This one involved parking on a side road then walking up a closed one up above a hill of scree (looks like dynamite tailings) and then walking over this ankle-breaking terrain till we find the cache. Since I'd written these directions down but not the hint, it took longer than it should have. The cache contains happy-face items... I took a windup toy and a cute keychain which will become a travel bug to honor CCCooper, and left a coin purse, yoyo, string toy, and something else.

Then we drove back to Highway 49 via Hwy.26 which we've never been on before, alongside the Mokelumne. The next two were a couple of virtuals. Rich doesn't like virtuals, but after the physically hard HAPPY cache it was nice to drive up and answer a few questions. Actually, the owner of the cemetery cache says we have one answer wrong, so I asked what it really was, since I was all over the cemetery. Then we went to a baseball field and couldn't find a cache, mostly because I had written the coordinates down wrong.

Time to head toward home. We turned toward Ione, where there were a couple more cemetery caches. We found one, but at the other cemetery they're working on a sprinkler system and the cache is long gone.

Back to Elk Grove, where there are a couple of caches. The last one of the day was exciting, not so much for the cache as for the money all over the ground. We picked up $1.52 in pennies, nickels, and dimes. Looks like somebody's piggy bank had a fatal accident.

Steven Denbeste says "the party's over." Heh.

Daniel Henniger:

it was the Democratic Party--or at least John Kerry, Howard Dean and John Edwards in pursuit of the presidency--who chose to turn a major American war into a partisan dispute, and therefore a voting issue.

Paul Bremer should get out of the Iraqi's business.