And I Geocached a Bit...

Monday I met another Geocacher, LJGhere. He is 69 years old and cached a lot! We cached around a golf court but it was very exhausting. No shadow at least, long road. We were very dehydrated and decided to spend the rest of the day by driving around. So we drove to the Mount Hamilton. Mount Hamilton is the tallest mountain overlooking Silicon Valley, and is the site of Lick Observatory, the first permanently occupied mountain-top observatory.

There was a free tour which took us with a guard inside the old telescope. I was really impressed how it worked in total and also which technology they had build and how. The road to the observatorium is 32 km long. 

All the stuff they needed were transported by horse trails up to the top of the mountain. It was built in 1875–76 in anticipation of the observatory, and the need to carry materials and equipment up the mountain in horse-drawn wagons, the grade seldom exceeds 6,5 percent. The original telescope is still working, they also have build a few more. 

Yesterday I went with 4 other geocachers to the Almaden Quicksilver Park. So far, I only “met” one of them via Facebook and with the other I had already mailed for 14 days. We started around 8.30 am at a Taco Bell (for meeting) and then drove to the Park. At 3 pm we were home again.

The park takes up 4157 acres of steep hillsides, cool forests, open meadows, and deep valleys. It borders two long reservoirs and contains several small ponds. It is crisscrossed by trails. There are also remnants of mining structures throughout the park. The park is mostly undeveloped, but its history includes intense mercury mining operations that date back to the Gold Rush Era.

All mines and adits have been sealed. Almaden Quicksilver County Park was once the site of extensive quicksilver (mercury) mining. The mercury mined from here was used in gold and silver mines in the Sierras to extract the precious metals from the ore. 

Sediments that contain mercury have been deposited in some of the local reservoirs and streams. The hills here are honeycombed with tunnels that run for thousands of feet, some below sea level. All mining has ceased, and most of the tunnels have been sealed up. The vast majority of the park, though, is undeveloped wildland, filled with wildlife and covered with trees, grasses, and beautiful spring wildflowers.

So I learned lots of the nature. Figured out what wolf spiders are, looked out for rattle snakes, poison oak, cougars and other poison dangerous creatures who are drooling around there. Also what poison oak is doing to other plants. In my opinion it is acting like the “Borg” - by assimilation. 

Unless I wear a sun blocker, I am really burned. Arms and face too, my head was protected with my new shiny sun hat. In the middle of nowhere stands a bath tub on a hill.

 

We also passed an old mine. Lucky us, there just arrived a park ranger who opened the gates for us and made an historical excurse by explaining how it all worked. 

Funny thing, that one of my group members was very familiar with the whole area and had have just explained all of that to me. This was very cool indeed to have him with me, I learned a lot about the area there. Also about the workers, the mines, the cemeteries out there. At this moment, he is the “typical American Man” for me.

The caches are very nice made and hidden. Some are so obvious when you looked at them and others also reflected the name of itself. But in total it was very exhausting for me.