Over the hills and through the woods.......

Geocaching friends Chuck and Charlie invited me to join them for a caching run through the Elliott State Forest and up nearby Camp Creek. Sounded fun to me. This would be my first drive through the forest in which I spent over 32 years working.

It was a fairly uneventful drive through the Elliot but it was fun watching Dr. Charlie hunt for all my caches. Despite the drizzle, we continued through Ash Valley and Loon Lake recreation area picking up several more caches.

Finally, we turned up Camp Creek and started hunting a new group of geocaches extending east to Camp Creeks Falls and just a bit beyond. Today, however, we stopped at Camp Creek Falls vowing to return for the rest another day.

I had a great time. As I’ve stated many times, group caching efforts are more fun than going solo. There is never a dull moment when caching with these two!

Twenty-one geocache finds for me today.

Patricia and I spent the day up the coast in the Cape Perpetua area. She has been wanting to photograph Thor’s Well again – not happy with images from our previous visit.

She met up with two other photographers to shoot Thor’s Well:

Later, while Patricia ran up to check out the photo ops in nearby

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Patricia and I went for a nice drive to Brookings today.

The plan was to get sunrise shots in Bandon then just recon this southern stretch of Highway 101 for future photo shoots the rest of the day and hopefully catch a nice sunset somewhere along the return leg.

Sunrise in Bandon…..a bust! Sky was dull grey,,,,blah!

Gold Beach turned out to be the area where Patricia took most of her pictures and where I picked up some geocaches.

Wreck of the Mary D. Hume - Gold Beach

Photograph by Patricia Davidson using Instagram iPhone app.

Geocaches found:

Otters and Agates Revived   At the Driftwood Inn   Gold Beach – Red Wood

After many recon stops and making itinerary notes, we arrive in Brookings and discover the sixth annual Winter Art and Chocolate Festival in full swing! Sweet! No…Really!…. Sweet! Took our fill of chocolatey goodness then started back up the coast.

Found a great place to have early dinner in Gold Beach. The Cape Cafe is only open on weekends and we have always come through town after they close…..until today! Pretty decent food, I must say.

We shall return soon for more focused photo shoots…..and geocaches, of course!

Eel Lake

After several years of buying cheap department store hiking boots, I decided to treat myself to a high quality pair. Enter the Vasque Breeze GTX. Having ordered them online I was a little concerned about picking the right size. Thankfully, in this instance, I got it right the first time!

Today I struck out on the Eel Lake trail at Tugman State Park for an initial break-in hike. No surprise – geocaching was involved as well! There were two caches along the early part of the trail I needed to find and I brought one along to place at the very end of the trail – three miles one way.

My gps track mileage read seven miles at the conclusion of the trek but that’s because I double-backed a few portions of the trail plus bushwhacked off-trail a couple times to retrieve abandoned & archived geocache containers.