After a rather late start to the day. I set off on my bike and soon arrived in the general area of the first cache. There was a bike rack there (at a "lodge" very reminiscent of the Continuing Education Centre at Rhodes, only without the accommodation), so I locked the bike up and set off caching on foot. The first cache for the day (Mallards Hideaway, GCDE36) was right there and a very easy find, with several eponymous budgies swimming around the area.
From there my quest led me along the South bank of Putah Creek, which I fear I may have badly maligned in an earlier post by comparing it to Rhodes' Cotch Creek! Well, this part of Putah Creek is beautiful, with wider, lake-like areas, and surrounded by the trees of the UC Davis arboretum (cf. Bots!). What was particularly striking was the beautiful red, yellow and orange fall (sic) colours of the trees. It really makes the drab browns of an African autumn look a bit pathetic!
At the end of the path, I reached Erin's Roundabout and, after quite a bit of hunting found the cache and dropped off some travel bugs, including Cabey's Shutterbug, which I thought was appropriate given the picturesque nature of the spot.
From there I returned on the North side of the creek, finding my third cache for the day (The Gaze, GCJQEE) along the way. That was another beautiful spot in the arboretum (more fall trees nearby!) and a fitting spot to drop off a geocoin of my own. That was significant because the coin was made by friends Correen and Renier who cache as eragonSaphira, and I am busy at the moment reading the third of the books in the Eragon (Inheritance) series — a very good series, by the way.After returning to my bike, I set off in search of my fourth cache for the day (Solano House, GCHV72). That is a two-stage multi-cache. The first stage is a very interesting monument giving the history of the first pony express mail service that passed through the area, using a nearby (now ruined) building as a staging post. At the first stage I gathered the necessary clues to find the second stage (the actual cache itself), but was unsuccessful. I think I was in the right area, but there was a profusion of thick rosemary bushes and I could not find the cache (at least I smelled good after my hunting around in the undergrowth!).
After hunting there for sometime, I gave up and set off for the next cache (Yamar's Unusual #6: The ORB, GCQEBQ), which was a very easy find with a most unusual container! The cache was between a parking lot and the railway line, and there were some passing trains and a student learning to drive a bus in the parking lot to provide some additional entertainment.By that time, it was getting on for mid-afternoon and I hadn't had any lunch so I set off home. En route, I realised that I was passing fairly close to the site of a cache (Solano Park, GCZXAZ) that I had not been able to find in August, partly due to some "muggles" (i.e. non-cachers!) hanging around the site. When I got there, I found some other geocachers hunting for the cache too — it's always fun to bump into other cachers on the hunt! They found the cache, in a spot I know I looked in when I visited in August! There was a log on the geocaching website to say that the previous cacher had found the cache lying around and had "replaced" it where they assumed it should be, but I'm not so sure!
All in all, it was a rather fun day out in Davis, enjoying the beautiful, sunny, warm autumn/fall weather.
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