Patricia and I made a return trip to the waterfall-rich Umpqua National Forest east of Roseburg this weekend hoping for more fall color development than we saw two weeks ago there. In addition, we chose a different set of waterfalls to explore – the Little River waterfalls. Little River drains into the North Umpqua at Glide.

We hiked five total miles into four falls. Wolf Creek, Yakso, Hemlock and Grotto. In addition, on Sunday before packing up the trailer, we made a fun morning excursion to Susan Creek Falls just up the road from where we were staying (Elk Haven RV Resort).

Spent the weekend seeking fall color up the North Umpqua River east of Roseburg. Had decent weather as Patricia and I made our way to several falls.

We were a little early for good fall color – plan to return in two weeks.

Caches Found:

Falling Waters
Oh yeah rock challenge!
Stump Lake

Good caching friends ST13PILOT (Butch), norway sprint (Beckie) and Bad Duck (Darren) invited me to tag along with them for a day of caching around Roseburg before the GOT CACHE? pizza event hosted by local cachers. As I’ve noted in previous posts, geocaching is more fun when done with others…..so I said yes, of course!

First order of business was FTF honors on Butch and Beckie’s newly placed cache at the Sandy Creek covered bridge rest area. Darren had already made a nighttime visit last night but couldn’t find it…..until he got home and downloaded some pictures he took of the possible hidey holes in hard-to-reach and difficult-to-see places. One picture caught the tell-tale sign of a cache! So this morning he’s anxious to make the stop and check out his hunch! True to form, he went right to it and pulled it out just like he had placed it there himself!

None of us had any unfound caches to hunt until we got to Camas Valley where we started with a nice cemetery hunt called Those Pesky Critters. We noted a frosty 33 degrees and a temperature inversion in this pretty little valley. Headed into Winston then onto Roseburg after Butch-n-Beckie picked up a couple more in the area that Darren and I previously found.

Once in Roseburg, we adopted the “Next Closest Cache” strategy….with a couple of diversions. Started with a series of five “De Mayo” caches – one, of which, involved avoiding the direct view of a homeless “Vet” panhandling 5 feet from the cache container! Beckie volunteered to go engage the guy in conversation to divert his stare but we settled on a Butch-n-Beckie body blockade giving me a window to jump in and put the cache back! Teamwork! Funny thing about the guy’s sign….said he was a veteran with duty in Iraq but looked WAY too old to be believable! It gave us a chuckle anyway.

One highlight of the day was going for the Boys of Summer cache in the Gaddis City Park. This cache wasn’t the highlight, though we had to maneuver around a muggle dog-walker taking a rest nearby to snag it. No, the highlight was signing a log for a cache we were ill-prepared to hunt – Slaney’s Return – a mystery cache with a Sherlock Holmes theme. Thanks to Darren’s super-sharp memory from many months ago trying to solve this one, we poked around the logical hiding spots and finally made the discovery! Love it when you find a cache you weren’t expecting!

Finally it was time to get to the pizza parlor for the event – which was a lot of fun. Met many new cachers and saw old cacher friends as well. Great job on the event, TheKinneyKrew!

After the event we had a small convoy running around town picking off some caches we couldn’t find earlier but got valuable hints about at the event. Good to get a couple of pesky DNF’s off the list…..like Jose and BubbaJ!

Group signing a log......

Quite the contrast to yesterday’s soggy excursion…..today my feet stayed toasty warm as Bad Duck, emeljay and I decided to make a numbers run to Grants Pass – a welcome change up!

Started off the day by picking off a new cache along Highway 42. Another new one just off I-5 south of Roseburg caught our attention as well since it was advertised as a TB hotel cache – Safe House. Three of us found the “safe” just fine but couldn’t find the key to open it. We gave up after about 30 minutes but did manage to pick up a little poison oak that would later show itself!

Stopped for a few more along I-5 as we made our way south until stopping for some breakfast at Heaven on Earth in Azalea. Turns out a regular part of this restaurant’s Sunday menu is a guest singer of hymns. Today’s performance was really irritating a man at the table next to us and was getting rather rude! Too bad some people are so easily upset! Darren picked up one of their famous “Giant Cinnamon Rolls” to bring back to Lisa – that thing was HUGE!

Bellies full, we head directly to Grants Pass to begin a day of caching fun.

Highlights from the day include:

* Bruises from emeljay’s elbows in the ‘race’ to each cache!

* Regular application of hand cleanser – especially after seeing the nasty latex gloves Bad Duck found tucked in a rock wall!

* The always interesting sites of the obligatory cemetery caches.

* The security alarms going off as Darren drove onto an apparently closed museum driveway. Lights! Sirens! Dogs! Oh My!

* Caught by a muggle lady who knew where the cache was but WOULD NOT help us one little bit!

* Personal single day records for both Bad Duck and emeljay.

* Guided by local cacher – Duck – for the final hour of caching

Duck joined the three of us for some dinner at Applebee’s then we headed back to the coast. Fun day and soooooo much better than slogging through sand dune puddles!