Archive for the 'Pictures' Category

This one was quite interesting. This was the first geocache of the morning. This was also Christopher’s first geocache. My family had only three tickets for the Saturday morning session of General Conference so it was decided that Christopher and I would go geocaching in the vicinity of Temple Square while Dawn and my grandparents attended the conference. This was probably my favorite cache of the day. This cache is located behind some apartments just to the east of the Conference Center.

On our way there Christopher asked me if it was fun being a missionary. I told him that it was a lot of work, but that you get to do a lot of things you would never have a chance to do otherwise. Just as I was saying this we came upon a group of about twenty Elders standing in front of one of the apartment buildings. I walked up to them and asked if I might ask them all a question. I told them that this young man here would like to know if it’s fun being a missionary. All together they started cheering that it was great! There was one senior Elder who said that it is fun, “even at my age!”

We walked past the missionaries and into the parking lot they were standing in front of. The GPS pointed right up a steep embankment with a fence at the top. Christopher was considering climbing it, but I convinced him that there was probably a much better way. We walked back out of the parking lot and a little further up the street found a walkway between two buildings. behind the northern building we found what looked to be a small fenced-off park. This was the Kimball cemetary. Heber C. Kimball is buried there along with many of his family members and descendants.

When we arrived there were a few muggles looking at the monument in the center of the tiny plot. While we were waiting Christopher pointed out the “No Dogs Allowed” sign. I wondered aloud if anyone had realized that dogs can’t read. In the back corner we found the cache. Christopher got a kick out of the old rusty Altoids container that the loot was hidden in. The logbook was a little damp, but still signable. I took out of it a Yankee Stadium keychain and put in the Keeping An Eye On You travel bug that I got at the meetup on the last Wednesday in March. It was tough getting all the things back in the container, but Christopher got them all in. It still wanted to pop back open, so he wedged a couple of rocks in on top of the container when he hid it again.

My brother, Christopher, just turned twelve and was ordained a Deacon in the Aaronic Priesthood. He lives within 10 minutes of the Conference Center in Salt Lake City, so we, his family, felt it appropriate that he actually attend the first Priesthood Session of conference that he will hear. As it turns out, my Grandfather has never attended General Conference in person. We, his family, have decided that he should attend General Conference in person at least once in his lifetime. To both of these ends I took a flight from Palomar Airport in Carlsbad to LAX and then another flight from LAX to Las Vegas. Tomorrow we will drive up to Salt Lake City.

The terminal at Palomar is incredibly tiny. It made for a somewhat different experience than what I am used to in pre-flight passenger screening and boarding. There was only one metal detector, and it was at the end of a narrow hallway. It all seemed somewhat strange in that everything felt less formal than at larger airports, but some of the proceedures felt oddly out of place. My favorite instruction was not to go near the outer fence surrounding the runway or else you’d have to go through the metal detector again.

Each flight was very short. The first was only in the air twenty-five minutes, and the second was around forty. They served drinks on the flight from LAX to Las Vegas, but the stewardesses were still cleaning up when the Captain anounced that we were beginning out descent and he instructed the crew to be seated.

After I arrived in Las Vegas my Grandfather took me directly to the Bishop’s Storehouse where he and Grandmother volunteer twice a week helping people fill food orders and restocking as necessary. It really is a lot of work, but it was fun to work with my Grandfather again. I stayed there for three or four hours until Grandmother arrived and drove me back to their house. I’ve only had about two and a half hours of sleep, and I feel as though I may fall out of my chair, I’m so tired.

I took Grandfather geocaching in the afternoon. Then after Grandmother got back from getting her hair done we ate at In-N-Out Burger for dinner. Finally, we came home and I collapsed from exhaustion went to bed.

Third time’s the charm. This is the third cache I tried to take Krissy to find. The first two we couldn’t ever find for one reason or another. I was happy to finally find one with her and let her get the gist of what geocaching is all about. This was also our third try to find this particular cache. I guess we just weren’t thinking creatively enough the first two times.

This cache is in the parking lot of the San Marcos Home Depot, right next to where we were going for Family Home Evening. We went looking once at around 6:30pm, right before FHE. Afterwards we went back again and had to use a flashlight. The only clue we had was “Genesis 1:3” and the light pole was in a planter with groundcover and shrubery. I just assumed it would be in the bushes. It turns out it’s not in the bushes, but we figured it out and were on our way.

Krissy couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten at Long John Silvers so we ate there tonight. She just recently discovered that she likes fish, so she was pretty excited. I joked that this was our mini date night since I won’t be here on Friday to go out.

When our piano was tuned Krissy asked about what we could do to restore the finish and beautify it. Ever since then Krissy has wanted to fix it up. Tonight we finally bought the product and Krissy was so excited that, even though it was ten o’clock at night she started in on her project.

It didn’t take very long until we were seeing results. This stuff is amazing. Krissy was able to make the exposed portions of the piano look almost exactly like the unexposed portions under the lid.

Here is a side by side comparison of what part of the piano looked like. On the left, the upper two inches had already been done. On the right the whole side is finished. It’s not perfect, but for the price and the amount of effort involved the results speak for themselves.

Randy has been talking about getting to the top of this mountain for over a year. Once we even drove around trying to find a way to the top. When I discovered there was a geocache hidden near the summit, I started to really get motivated as well.

Randy had the idea that we could go straight up the construction at the end of San Elijo Road then north to connect with the trail leading up to the top. On the way there was another cache, Twin Oaks To Be. We found that without much trouble. Randy figured we just needed to head north from there and we’d hit the trail up to the summit for sure. I couldn’t see anything and couldn’t really tell where we were exactly, so I was sceptical. I had nothing better, so I figured if he wasn’t right we’d probably find a way anyway.

Not more than 400 feet later we found ourselves at the sign pointing the way up to the top!

The trail was no sissy switchback trail, it went straight up to the top at quite a steep grade. I was trying to keep up with Randy and pushed myself a little too hard. I started to feel light-headed and a little queasy. I sat and rested for a while, and we continued on. From the top we could see almost all of San Marcos. On the one side is San Elijo Hills and all of the earth moving going on there, and on the other is Lake San Marcos and the rest.

There is quite a bit of trash up at the top including a bathtub and an old rusted refridgerator. There is evidence that there may have been a house or a cabin at the top at one point.

The cache was well hidden under some rocks at the base of a bush. I moved the rocks on a whim. They didn’t look like they were anything special, until the top rock was removed and the old World War II relic was revealed.

We returned the cache as best we could to its hiding place and started considering our descent. Once we reached the top the “hard way” we realized that there were some construction roads that went almost all the way to the top. We were going to take one of those down until Randy heard construction traffic down below. I didn’t really want to go back down the way we had come, but what goes up must come down, and so it was with us.

After we got back to the car we went and got Slurpees at the 7-Eleven on Rancho Santa Fe and San Marcos Blvd. Randy thought it would be cool to get a picture of the peak we had just been on from the vantage point of the 7-Eleven parking lot. It was pretty hazy. I’ll never look at that peak the same way again.

Before getting my GPS, Krissy and I tried to find this. I don’t know what I was thinking. Now that I’ve acually gone geocaching I know that it’s virtually impossible to do. Randy and I found this cache this morning on our way to San Diego Ocean View (GC140). The cache is hidden just off of a trail. The only thing is that the trail it is hidden next to has almost completely been destroyed by construction related to connecting Twin Oaks Valley Road all the way over the hill. It’s amazing that this cache has survived this long.

On our way in and back out we passed huge towers of tires. I never know how quickly these tires get used up.

Tonight we had dinner with family. My neice was given mint and chip flavored ice cream for dessert and, capsule well… you can imagine what happened.

My brand new GPS arrived earlier than expected, so I was really excited to have it for today. I wanted to make my first cache a big one. Randy and I have wanted to conquer Double Peak, the oldest geocache in San Diego County. It’s also the second highest peak in San Marcos. It rained yesterday, and the forecast called for rain today as well. That didn’t matter becasue he couldn’t clear his day on such short notice. I really wanted to use the GPS and I had no transportation, so I searched for the closest cache to where I live that looked like I could reach on foot. I really had no idea what to expect.

Even though it rained yesterday the ground wasn’t very muddy. The trails I was on were pretty sandy, so it didn’t make much of a difference. It was a pretty steep climb, but not too bad. It was steeper than I expected though, and this trail is a lot less casual than most of the other trails in San Elijo Hills. There were about 3 or 4 switchbacks. After the first one I was wondering how many there might be. The cache was about 130 feet off of the trail up the hill. I wasn’t quite sure if I should look for another switchback or not, but I found an area that looked like others might have pushed down the bushes before. It looked pretty difficult from the trail looking up, but the climb wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

The cache was hidden under a bush and I found it almost immediately. The GPS was very accurate and lead me right to the cache.

I really wanted to do some more, but I couldn’t find any more that were within walking distance. Distances can be very deceiving, and if you try approaching a cache from the wrong direction you may find the terrain completely impassable. I walked for about a mile toward where I thought a cache might be hidden according to the coordinates for it, but reached a ravine that was fenced off when I was still a half a mile away from it. It turns out that one was over a hill and really needs to be approached from the other side of the hill.

I can hardly wait for the next opportunity I get to go find some more caches. Randy and I are planning on tackling Double Peak next Saturday.

The missionaries were invited to a JAE Tagung (Young Single Adult Activity Day) in the Nürnberg Stake. We had a missionary activity where we drove to different areas and had the young adults for our companions. It was a lot of fun, and we had an opportunity to proselyte where missionaries rarely get a chance to go because no missionaries live in the area.

After the areas had all been visited, we were brought back to the place where the activity day was being held. We couldn’t really do very much because were were in the middle of nowhere with no public transportation, so we had to wait for someone to give us a ride back to civilization. During this downtime some Elders played volleyball or did other activities. Elder Adams and I decided to give the giant chess board a go. There’s something very satisfying about throwing the opponent’s captured pieces off the board.

Just two days after heavy rain and hail there is a beautiful moonrise just opposite the golden sunset.