Every year for the past several years a geocacher by the name of HaZzMaTt places a trail of caches by the bike trail next to the Santa Ana River. This yearly event is known as the Trail of Terror. Jacob and I try to get out and grab some of the caches via bicycles. We were also, or at least I was, trying to wear off some of those calories from thanksgiving. We grabbed several caches today. We started with “Bamboozled 6 HaZzMaTt’s Revenge.” Needless to say, we left bamboozled. This cache is located somewhere in a cut down grove of bamboo. There were too many places to look.
Next it was off to the cache named “Suppository (Home of But Crack Rock).” This rock structure actually looks like someone’s backside protruding out of the surface of the earth. This one was a fairly quick find. The next cache was “Aberrations.” A few more calories just burned off for this one. It seems that burning calories via exercise is more of an aberration for me in the past few years. As for the cache “Carbon Footprint” it really would have been easier to drive the car to this cache. Then again, no cars on the bike trail.
A ways off the bike trail we came to “Godzilla Unleashed.” We looked at Ground Zero (GZ) and could not find anything. He had been on the move towards the North. It is the wrong time of the year for exothermic beings to be headed in a northerly direction. However, hiding in the rocks was a foot tall Godzilla monster, 30 feet to the North of GZ. The next cache threw Jacob. It was not near where it was last year. The cache was named “The Curse of the Tiki.” It was hiding in a tall pole next to the bike trail. Jacob had to use me as a “Tool of The Trade” or TOTT to make the grab. The cache was at about 9 feet above ground level. As for the name of the cache – I do not know about “The Curse of the Tiki.” Cursed may come tomorrow if the Motrin does not work well.
On the Trail of Terror
We were than off to “Scary Monsters.” We had to get off the trail and back into the brush. If you get to far back in the brush after sundown it may get scary. As for the monsters this afternoon, they were fairly tame. From here we rode back to the truck to take a rest. IT was then off in the other direction to “13 Mocking Bird Lane.” This was a quick find. The cache was hidden in a door knob. One could say, we had a handle on the cache without any problems. From there it was off to “In the Hand of Death” which was a gloved hand that looked like it was cut off. When the glove was raised up off the hand, in the palm was a cache container. I surmised that I s where the name, “in the Hand of Death” came from.
We then rode off to “Mark of the Beast.” They have these yellow poles to mark where monitoring wells are along the trail. One of the poles is a fake and is actually a cache container. Why it is the “Mark of the Beast” it is not known to me. Then next cache was “Dying for a Smiley.” If you geocache, you log your finds at Geocaching.com. When you log them, the cache mark becomes a smiley face. As for this cache, I knew I wore a bike helmet for something. I needed the protection form danger and I went in to the middle of a bush for the grab.
The next cache was in some good camouflage. It was called “Serial Killers” and was off the path. Jacob found this one as I was looking around. We were then off to the cache known as “Chopping wood while intoxicated.” The area is full of cut up wood. I was thinking that this cache should have been bloody or have a body part. There was nothing like that. It was just hanging in a tree. Not on the ground where it was last year.
We were then off to the cache named “Sticking your hand down a dark hole” which is aptly named for an old oak tree that has fallen down and has large holes in it. Why does there always have to be a dark hole? This was not as bad as I thought, I brought a flashlight. After a minute or two, Jacob found the cache. As for the cache “The face of fear” it was a funny find. I was within a couple of feet of this cache looking in the wrong place, the ground. Jacob looked at me and laughed at how close I was to the cache and did not even know it. Directly above my head was the cache hanging in the tree. Good thing it could not bite.
We headed off to the next cache, “In Plane View.” I know where the “plane” was because there has been this plane fuselage in the river bottom area for years. Someone actually lived in the plane fuselage for years. They may still live in it, or at least in the trailer next to it. As for the cache, we went to GZ and had to do a little looking. We found it in a cut off telephone pole. There is nothing like those small cache containers hiding in dark places. Jacob raced off to the next cache, “Dead Horse.” He remembered where the sign for “no horses” was. By the time I got there, he had grabbed the cache. I was tired of pedaling my bike. The last find of the day was “Swamp Thing.” It was a fairly quick and easy find for both of us.
Survived the Trail of Terror
