I’m on the 78 freeway making my way East to HOSP HIGH POINT cache in Carlsbad wondering to myself if I’m engaging in puppy abuse. You see I’ve got a bit of a hearing problem to contend with and so when I’m on the road in the car I tend to turn up the music pretty loud. It drives my beautiful wife Whistlestick crazy when I do that at home so its pretty much of a pleasure that I reserve for times in the car. Currently I’m blasting out Rush’s 2112 album out over the speakers and I just noticed that when I look in the rearview mirror and Neil Peart goes into furious drum thumping mode that the image in the mirror is vibrating. Sorta like the cup of water in Jurassic Park when the T-Rex is coming. Now you know Gromit loves Frank Zappa and Buck-O-Nine so I don’t worry about whether or not he’s being abused by that music cuz he just sits there grinning as it plays. But Rush has a tendency to lull you to sleep with long stretches of quite mild music till SUDDENLY they jump from 20 decibels to a 100 in a quite startling way. I swear Gromit almost did a back flip he was so startled. So am I engaging in puppy abuse? Or am I just introducing my best friend to a wider range of musical tastes? I don’t know, but I do know that if he can’t handle 2112 I don’t want to be around when he hears the intro to A FAREWELL TO KINGS for the first time.

We pull off the freeway at Jefferson Street off ramp and cross over the bridge on our way to park the car at the side of the road by the ducks. Hey! When did they build this park here? Its been a long time since I’ve been by this way but the last time I was here you had to be sure to drive real slow because chances are there might be a duck or a swan taking a stroll from one side of the road to the other. Now they have it all fenced in so all the water fowl must feel like they’re in little wetland stalags. But I guess that beats walking out in front of an oncoming car and becoming Duck Pâté.

There are three caches in the area and I’m in the mood for the hardest one. Looking at the cache descriptions earlier I had my pick between caches rated at 1.5, 2, and 2.5 for terrain difficulty. I should have picked the 2.5 and gone with that but for some reason the words HIGH POINT to me sounded like they meant I’d have to climb to the highest point in the area. Even though it was rated the easiest at 1.5 stars that’s the one I set my GPS to. After I walk a few feet and the GPS arrow starts doing its duty, I’m confirmed in my decision because the arrow is pointing straight up the hillside. Time to get going. I grab a water bottle and my camera and me and the wonderdog set out. Should we stick on the trail or make our way straight up the side? At first I figured that the trail was the way to go but after I’d taken the one trail quite a ways past the point where it looked like it should have switched back if it was going to take me to the cache I gave in and started walking on the spongy leafy mulch ground covering. How many years of leaves dropping does it take to make such a thick covering? It is certainly soft on the feet but it is so giving that it seems to me to take more effort to walk on. It reminds me of walking on the sand at the beach. Gromit and I take a zig zag path upwards so we don’t create an erosion problem. I have to stop and rest every 30 feet or so but its nice and cool and Gromit is appreciating the stops because I occasionally give him a slurp from my water bottle. I need to look into getting a dog sized hampster bottle. You know, the type with the little ball bearing at the end of the spout so the hampster can nudge the ball bearing and they get a couple of water drops for their effort. If I had a dog sized version, I could strap it on his back and he could help himself, but Knowing Gromit’s appetite for water he’d probably drink it all before we left the parking lot and I’d still get stuck carrying his water. I’m sure when he’s not calling me FOOD GUY in his mind he instead uses GUNGA DIN.

Okay we’ve made it to the top, time to sit down and rest a while. Usually when I sit down on a trail the most interesting thing to happen is some wise-guy ant will think I’m his personal K-2 and start to climb up my body before being finger flicked back to the ground. Today something quite surprising happened. I was sitting there minding my own business when suddenly a hand appeared at the lip of a ravine about 10 feet away. It was totally unexpected so I must admit it gave me quite a start. A Second later another hand appeared and then a head belonging to a guy who might have been around 35 to 45 years old. I said hi to him and he was just as flummoxed as I was. Luckily he maintained his grip on the edge of the cleft and gave me a quick smile before climbing out. Then the situation got weird… Best I can describe it would be comparing it to the old circus trick where a whole mess of clowns climb out of a tiny car and you can’t believe how many of them there are. This guy turned around and helped a woman his age out of the ravine. Then he put his hand down and helped a teenage girl up and out of the hole. Then he stood away and I figured there were just the three of them but No… The teenage girl then leaned down and offered her hand to yet another teenage girl, followed by a six or seven year old boy, followed by yet another six or seven year old boy. So there were seven people and my pal Gromit on this little trail and I’m sitting there just marveling at how surreal it all is when yet another hand clutches the ravine rim and one more person pulled themself up this time with no help from anyone else. This last person was a woman, the same age as the first two, and I was kinda surprised that no one offered to help her up. She didn’t have any upper body strength so she came over the lip of the ravine by using a seal like stomach ripple. Effective but not very flattering, I was a bit embarrassed by witnessing her being ostracized by her fellows, But I guess incognito circus clowns have their cliques too.

I would have talked with them but we didn’t seem to have a language in common as they were all talking Spanish and the first guy never responded to my initial hello so me and Gromit just sat there while they surveyed the little area and then without bidding us adieu or giving us a by your leave they left going down the same trail that I came up. Last weekend I met the Japanese peanut gallery at SOLEDAD SPLENDOR this week the Mexican clown posse… can’t wait for next weekend!

After I’m sure I’m alone I get up and travel the last 15 feet to where the cache is hidden. There is a stick nearby that I guess is being used to wipe away tracks. I look around and quickly find the cache. I think the trash bag is probably a good idea as it is much less conspicuous in that area than the Tupperware by itself would be. Opening the cache I see the first official ‘RITE IN THE RAIN’ geocaching logbook that I’ve seen and I’m envious. All my cache log books have ‘MEAD’ or plain ‘MEMO BOOK’ written on them. This logbook is pretty impressive. I almost feel like pouring some water on it to see if it is actually waterproof but I restrain myself. I’ll do some experiments when I’ve ordered my own. Looking thru the geoswag I decide that the little yellow glazed falcon is coming home with me. In its place I leave a Mark71Mark georged dollar bill and five #7 Yrium’s Pals geocaching trading cards featuring Monteverde.

My thanks to HawkeyePathfinder, GoGo Girl and EagleEye for the cache. I’ll look back on this one fondly I’m sure.