What is Geocaching?
Geocaching is what nerds do when they go outside :-).
It is a worldwide hobby where people equipped
with GPS receivers (or phones) go on high tech treasure hunts
to seek out tupperware hiding in the bushes.
Here's a link to my Zoom exploration of geocaching presented for Saw Mill River Audubon on September 17, 2020:
I also created these signature team mumu fish geotokens to leave behind in found caches. My last name is Salmon, after all.
Favorites // Our Hides // Our Finds // Our Bugs // Links // 30 lbs // 100th // 200th // 300th // 400th // 500th // 600th // 700th // 800th // 900th // 1000th // 1100th // 1200th // 1300th // 1400th // 1500th // 1600th // 1700th // 1800th // 1900th // 2000th // 2100th // 2200th // 2300th // 2400th // 2500th // 2600th // 2700th // 2800th // 2900th // 3000th // 3100th // 3200th // 3300th // 3400th // 3500th // 3600th // 3700th // 3800th // 4000th // 4600th // 4900th // 5000th
Hidden near where we lived in Altadena, Another Way was our first cache hide located along the El Prieto Trail. We had originally planned to place a cache near the site of Owen Brown's grave, a neat discovery made while dog walking in the area, but we learned that it was private property and settled on a spot with a cool trail sign. Sadly, both the sign and the cache disappeared in the next year.
7/4/2002 
12/1/2002 
While travelling in Tibet, we couldn't resist placing what might have been the highest cache in the world. It's located on the 8km stretch between Everest Base Camp and Rongphu Monastery, a common route taken by tourists. Hidden on October 6, 2002, it was first found on April 4, 2005 by Chris Kletterlemmi. I've learned that Kletterlemmi died on July 16, 2005 in a climbing accident on the mountain Dent D'Herens (4171m) in Italy, 4 days before he reached his 32-nd birthday. He was surprised by a stone avalanche on his way down.
Hidden while working at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on the Pearl River Delta air quality study. This cache was inspired by the existence of several extra tupperware containers not needed by the project, the awesome views at HKUST, and the low density of caches existing in Hong Kong. This was the first cache placed in the New Territories.
9/2/2002 
This is one of our nicest cache hides. Located on a regularly deserted strip of beach in Ventura County, we always find this a relaxing spot to touch the ocean and play with the dogs. It lasted nearly 7 years before disappearing. By this time, other caches had found the beach, so it was time to archive this one.
A month after getting into geocaching, I wanted to place a micro cache on the Caltech campus where I work. I picked out the perfect spot but didn't have a container ready. Work took me to Hong Kong for two months, and by the time I returned, a fellow geocacher had hidden another cache in the exact spot I had chosen for mine. Still wanting a cache I could see almost everyday, I chose a spot in the now defunct Baxter Museum Sculpture garden. I archived the cache when I retired from Caltech in 2004.
Sculpture 
Contents 
Before geocaching, we never made it more than half way up the Mount Wilson Toll road, though we often hiked part way up and turned around. Finally, thanks to geocaching, we got all the way up to Henninger and commemorated the better shape we're in with a cache hide. This is another fairly private spot where deer can sometimes be seen. I replaced the original tupperware with a large ammo box in May, 2004 and it's still in place despite fires that swept through the area in 2009.
John and Mav 
Location 
Contents 
A simple multi-cache, mainly intended to introduce people to the world's first frisbee golf course in Hahamongna watershed park.
Contents 
3 weeks later 
Having spent a few hours puzzling over codes to find other caches, we wanted to make a code-breaker of our own. There were several finders, but few noticed the connection between the cache name and its fake coordinates. The original contents also tied into the cache theme.
After moving to New York, it took nearly a year to get settled in a house in Chappaqua. This simple hide in Hardscrabble Wilderness is about a mile away from where we now live and takes people on a nice walk in the woods.
I planned this one back in California, but had to wait until I found
"the perfect spot." It's near a trail where I run/walk the dogs regularly.
The puzzle isn't really that vexing, unless people make it harder than
it really is.
This cache was hidden on the longest day of the year in a small preserve
in Millwood. It's a short, 1.3 mile loop walk with an easy find.
A bit bittersweet for us, this was Maveric's last cache before he died a week later. We had made some exploratory treks during the winter looking for the perfect spot for a cache, and knowing how much Mav loved the water, chose this spot over looking the pond.
We frequent this wonderful wooded preserve near home and decided it could use a second cache. Our other cache is located near the highest point, this one is a bit lower near a swamp and can be part of a nice loop hike.
This cache began as an introductory example of of multi-cache for a Sawmill Audubon Program on May 20, 2007. It's meant to be family friendly, and I enjoyed placing it enough to turn it into an official geocache.
We became aware of a small park near home and decided to share with the geocaching community. Being "the salmons" we naturally like fishy themed items, and started this cache off with plenty of fish related goodies. Near the cache site is a a dam over the Pocantico River and the remains of an old pump works and what was probably a house for the dam worker. Inside the pump house were a lot of abandoned data sheets from 1963 carefully detailing flow rates and other details of the river/dam.
This seed pod escaped from GC14KW0 Little Green Men: The Mother Ship (visit link). Communications from the Little Green Men were intercepted by Dr. Jocelyn Bell in 1967 originating in the constellation Vulpecula. Using sophisticated mind control methods, the LGM convinced astronomers that they had discovered neutron stars, and the true nature of the LGM has remained covert.
When our original Winona Code cache went missing, I decided to make a similar puzzle cache on the opposite side of the country closer to our current home coordinates. As luck would have it, a new nature preserve was inaugerated in our town in mid-October so we had a brand spanking new set of trails to explore at the Burden Preserve. A field of what might be bamboo (or at least looks like bamboo to me) inspired adding panda to the name.
After exploring all the trails in the new Burden Preserve in New Castle, I couldn't decide between a couple of spots for a cache placement, so decided to just put out two.
My mother lived in Las Vegas, and I was caching there on visits a few times a year. I regularly ran shopping errands while visiting and I was told to get something at Smiths on Jones and the old TV show title popped into my head, and I thought of Alias Smith and Jones for the rest of the week. Thus this cache. Alas, the cache went missing after my mother passed away and I opted not to replace it.
I'd been wanting to name a cache this for some time and was looking for a nice spot. This cache can be found after a short walk along the North County Trailway. We saw ducks in the river and the frogs were very vocal on our way to the cache.
I was asked to come up with a difficult puzzle for the 2nd installment of the Puzzle Masters Challenge. I hope this is hard enough. It's in one of our favorite nearby preserves.
Time for more traditional hides - the good ol' ammo box in the woods for the cache a-fish-ianados.
The 11th installment of the Small World country cache series started by Foxx1090 at the end of 2008.
When the Salmons are not caching, you may find them sweeping on the ice at the Ardsley Curling Club.
The first of the GO FISH Series.
Back to one of our favorite preserves near home. We live on Hardscrabble Road and after discovering magnetic paint made a large playable scrabble game on a wall in our family room. We walked all the trails in Hardscrabble Wilderness while scouting potential spots for the GO FISH cache series, but decided it called out for a scrabble themed cache instead. Thus this puzzle cache.
The second installment of the GO FISH Series. Placed on the red trail in the Rose Preserve.
Hidden on John's birthday, this is a two part multi in the GO FISH series.
One more in the GO FISH series. Blue Fish is in Blue Mountain Reservation.
The final installment of the GO FISH series, though it was the first one placed. Find the other four and get the coordinates for this one.
We love walking in Graham Hills Park and get lost in there on a regular basis. There are a few wrecked cars of various vintages scattered throughout the park - all a long long way from a road. I like the creative way some people arrange the rocks to create sculpture, like the one that looks like a guy in hat driving the car backwards.
Fisherman A: Have you ever seen a cat fish?
Fisherman B: No, how does it hold the rod?
Continuing a great series of small hides on the wonderful North County Trailway. This started as a cute little fish shaped container, but morphed into a cammoed pill container after that went missing.
This was placed in Brownell Preserve, a small tract of open space in Lewisboro. The cache was hidden to help celebrate taxman417's birthday, and he was the FTF.
I have trouble saying no to a geocaching challenge, and after completing my own fizzy grid I traipsed off to New Jersey to find the nearest fizzy challenge cache to log and celebrate the endeavor. Afterwards, I put out this fizzy challenge in Westchester County for others to enjoy or curse, as the case may be.
The day after placing a hard challenge cache, here comes an easy puzzle. Variety is the spice of life.
A curling friend pointed out these salmon sculptures recently, and my first thought was "There needs to be a cache there!" Now there is.
For Coho 
BSA 100th Anniversary 
GC4D19
GC1A8F on 2/14/2003.
GC7A1
More information about the Leatherman can be found at
this link and
more info here.
This was his 365 mile route.
Hidden on 11/19/2000, this is one of the oldest nearby caches
that we hadn't yet found. We found a couple of other caches from the
early years while marking this milestone.
One of a number of creative puzzles caches hidden by Lostboy1966.
One of the oldest caches around, still going strong after six years.
A cute puzzle with a blaa final location in a parking lot. This makes 100 finds in 101 days, or
200 finds in 197 days so I seem to have a cache a day pace lately.
It's always nice to mix things up, so I chose this earth cache for #1400.
This multi cache covers almost every section of Central Park and is well worth the
effort it takes. I spent a couple hours on this in June, then returned for a final
marathon session to celebrate my birthday with a milestone cache find.
This cache in the Hemlock Hill preserve of Ridgefield, CT can be a short walk in the
woods, or one can spend hours walking the extensive trails in this area.
I've seen Jamm's cachemas series caches pop up every year and they look like
they'd be a lot of fun. So, I decided this would be an excellent choice
to mark another milestone and set off on a quest to find 6 caches ending at
this one today. I picked number 4 in the series because it was closest to home
and looked the most challenging. A challenge it was, but I luckily found yoda dog
and master + mistress in the act and we searched all the possible hiding spots,
talked to a neighbor, and used phone-a-friend before finally finding the ammo box.
We were then joined by wuster2 and happyhelpr making it a very sociable find.
I really got on a roll while spending 2 weeks in Las Vegas. The cache density is
so high, that it's easy to do 5-6 caches at a pop without driving more than a couple of
miles. So, I did just that everytime I went out and found myself with 89 finds. I did push
myself on the last day to reach this milestone, and chose a nice stretch of Pittman Wash to
go for a long walk (in contrast to most of the drive-up Vegas caching). Pittman Wash has
at least 27 caches stretched over a few miles. I've done some sections in the past, but a
new series of caches that filled in the gaps were placed a week earlier, so it was an obvious
target area on a day when I wanted to have 13 finds. Most of the caches along the way were easy, a couple
harder ones were helped by running into other cachers, Witter and Purple Lady, who have a lot
of determination when it comes to searching an area, and they came up with 2 caches that I probably would
have had DNF on.
I spent 3 weeks in Las Vegas organizing my mother's stuff and generally saying goodbye to the
place we've been visiting for the last 15 years. While there, I found exactly 100 caches
including milestone #1900.
We were originally planning on heading out for a long hike on the weekend, but the weather forecast
was uncooperative. Instead, I decided to come into the city on a beautiful Friday afternoon and
picked one of EVFs puzzle caches as a worthy 2000th milestone followed by a pre-anniversay (#26
is on Sunday) dinner. It turned out to be a little tricky
and I spent some time searching on the wrong street corner before getting John involved on the phone.
He actually located Stuyvesant's pear tree plaque on google street view before I found it across the
street. Today would have been my mother's 80th birthday.
We found 3 caches in Irvington Woods on a warm summer afternoon. Two were micros that we expected
to be difficult finds, but we had great caching luck today and found everything we looked far quickly.
Looks like it's been 100 days since milestone 2000 making it an average of a cache a day.
It was a rainy day, but I decided that would be a good choice for caching in some muggle prone areas.
Worked like a charm, and I had some pleasant spots all to myself.
A few days ago I figured out a clever puzzle cache, Lostboy's
Google This and was close to making it this milestone, but didn't have enough daylight. I skipped
Cache-Astrophe and a couple others and completed Google This rather than saving it. With snow storm
forecast for tomorrow, I decided to get back out and clean-up those other few caches while I had
a beautiful sunny winter day and complete the 2300th milestone with this simple puzzle cache.
While the puzzle was simple. The actual cache retrieval turned out to be a completely unexpected
physical challenge. The find was in a lovely, small nature preserve, and I had the place to myself.
I was at the highpoint and the GPS was reading in the single digits but I just wasn't finding anything.
Turns out I was sitting under the cache. There was a tree with metal spiked footholds going up,
and sure enough, way up there was the cache suspended from a nail in the side of the tree. Yikes!
I climbed up and found myself about a foot short when I ran out of hand holds. No problem. I got
a handy stick and knocked the container down. The real adventure came when I had to put it back.
I exhausted my engineering talents rigging up a makeshift gripper from sticks, but succeeded in
getting the container back hanging from its nail. A truly thrilling cache to have as a milestone.
A new series of caches debued about a week ago which led me back to a large nature preserve that we hadn't
visited for 3.5 years. This led me to rediscover a wonderful multi stage puzzle cache that I had overlooked
for the last two years. I was a little daunted by a walk of 8 miles with a puzzle or two that would need to
be figured out on the fly, but while in the park for other caches I included the search for stage 1 in
my plans for the day. It's a great park and I was enjoying walking so much that I headed on to stage 2.
I wanted to keep going to stage 3, but it was getting late in the day so I decided to save the rest
for a new outing and bring John along. A few days later, we lost Coho,
his arthritis had spread to the spine and he wasn't able to move around very much anymore. Instead of
moping around the house, we set out to do this cache in his memory. Coho wasn't very good at
finding caches, but he loved long walks in the woods. It took two more visits to find all the stages
and solve the puzzle leading to the final, but we persevered and were rewarded with the pot of gold
at the end of the rainbow.
I was so busy puzzling away working on solving caches in the
dastardly Manhattan puzzle series, that I lost track of my numbers and made find 2500 on a
day outing in Central Park. It was a great day, and any number of the puzzle caches would have
been a worthy #2500, but I was slightly unprepared and didn't have my camera with me.
I had three more finds to go and 4
dastardly Manhattan puzzle caches solved. This time around I intentially set out to
kill two birds with stone and find milestone #2600 and achieve onyx level status (30 finds) with
this 31st find in the dastardly puzzle series.
We set off to find a good ole ammo can in the woods by one our favorite local hiders
to mark this milestone on a sunny but chilly December day. The walk was a bit longer
than expected, but took us through a lovely fern gully and open woods up to a high point
in a little used corner of Fahnestock State Park. The log book even matched my outfit!
I don't know who Grace K. Salmon is, but a find by this Salmon in Salmon Park seemed like
a good choice for a milestone find. I had looked for this difficult hide once before in
2006 without success, so there was definitely some backup caches to look for if I scored
love on this one. Much to my surprise I came up with a find aided a bit by recent freezing weather
which caused the previous finder to be unable to get the cache back in its hidey-hole.
I initially thought I was picking up a bit of litter having been actively collecting recyclables today,
and did a double take when I looked in my hand and saw it was a cache container. A find is a find,
so we can count this one a success!
Today's outing felt much like a classic caching trip of years gone by - a long delightful walk,
some elevation, and an hour our so before reaching the first cache.
Not that I'm complaining about the explosion in cache numbers over the years that give me
plenty of excuses to get outside, but some times it's nice to just walk for a
while in the woods to far destination.
We completed the scenic loop up and around Rattlesnake Hill with a welcome
break taking in the views near the cache location.
After almost a year with no finders, the cache was in great shape, secure in its resting spot.
A couple of caches commemorating other peoples milestones were placed in Blue Mountain
Reservation in the month leading up to our 3000th milestone. Thus, we decided it would
be a good spot to find our own milestone at either this cache or the nearby
BriGuyNY 3K Milestone Cache. We entered from the south and passed the golden ammo
can stash first. It was a peaceful spot and no one was around so we decided it would be
the perfect stop for our 3000th find. We continued on and found the other cache as #3001.
This cache popped up less than 2 miles from home last week, a rare thing! I initially saved
it planning to use it for a calendar day find in case the weather was crappy, I wouldn't need to
drive far. Turned out to be a beautiful day, and another milestone had arrived. This was
the perfect cache to combine the two hobbies, geocaching and stamp collecting. I went through
my collection this morning in search of duplicates so I could leave a set of stamps in the cache
for a future finder.
I stared at this puzzle for some time when it was first published and just
didn't see anything. It was located somewhat near John's office in the
city, so I would return to it from time to time. Suddenly, it clicked
and dastardly Manhattan puzzle number 34 has been
solved and located!
Earlier this year I noticed that geocaching had added a new statistics chart filling out finds for
each day of the year. With nearly nine years of caching under my belt, most of the grid was already
filled in but there were a dozen or so days left before it would be solid green. Today I killed
two birds with one stone by filling in the last calendar day on the grid and making it a milestone
find.
Another puzzle cache for a minor milestone find.
I've been enjoying the many caches in Paugussett State Forest and it didn't really
matter which one ended up as the milestone since they were all great.
This was a great and perfectly timed cache. Having completed the calendar day grid five months ago,
see our 3300th find, I was in position to swoop in and make this
find as soon as it was published and only waited a couple days so that it could be a milestone find.
I also did a few nearby caches and completed the Yorktown Parks cache round-up card.
We had a great vacation in Norway, Finland and Sweden including some time
spent north of the arctic circle. Some caches were found, and this milestone
was done in the World Hertiage City of Roros.
See
Midnight Sun 2012: Warming the Arctic Chill
for the whole travel log.
Noticing I was 11 caches away from this milestone, and Team MSG had 11 caches I hadn't
found, it seemed a perfect pairing to go after them. As a bonus, I had a gorgeous
afternoon to take a walk on the South County Trailway (SCT).
One of 13 great puzzle caches that made of the Lost Cities series.
We were accompanied on the adventure by the cache owner along with
Team MSG and Taxman for a great outing in the swamp.
A fantastic puzzle that took a couple of days to solve while delving into the
well crafted story set out by the cache owners. An intermediate stage took me
to an interesting new city, and the final with its 4 star terrain made me work
to get to that final ammo box. Great all around.
No foolin', made the 4900th find on April Fool's Day.
We bought a tandem kayak in April, and have been enjoying pleasant paddles while tackling
some of the long ignored caches requiring water transport. A set of 3 hides in the
Cedar Pond Brook/Minisceongo Creek area attracted us to jointly celebrate find #5000 with our
31st wedding anniversary.
Last Updated: July 27, 2024
GC6435 
GC646E 
Our 100th find on Mt. Lowe:
Our 200th find
at
Vasquez Rocks:
on 6/21/2003
What a difference a year makes (30 lbs less):
June 2002
June 2003 
Feb 2003 
Our 300th find:
Las Flores on 12/13/2003.
Our 400th find:
Angel's View of the City of Angels on 3/27/2004.
Our 500th find:
Bug Eyed on 8/27/2004.
Our 600th find:
Leave it... 'cause you can't take it on 4/16/2005.
Our 700th find:
The falls at Amawalk River on 12/31/2005.
Our 800th find:
Leatherman's Circuit - Helicker's Cave on 5/10/2006.
Our 900th find:
Rested Here on 10/9/2006.
Our 1,000th find:
Boston Cache on 1/21/2007.
Our 1,100th find:
Indiana Geones and the Horde of Odin on 5/29/2007.
Our 1,200th find:
Ninham Mountain MUA on 9/2/2007.
Our 1,300th find:
Koala Kache Redux on 12/12/2007.
Our 1,400th find:
Monsey Glen on 4/16/2008.
Our 1,500th find:
Bridges and Arches of Central Park on 7/16/2008.
Our 1,600th find:
Interstellar Overdrive on 9/30/2008.
Our 1,700th find:
Four Sock Puppets, Cachemas 2008 on 12/29/2008.
Our 1,800th find:
Round the Bend on 1/24/2009.
Our 1,900th find:
Sunrise Mtn Trailhead on 4/16/2009.
Our 2,000th find:
Stuyvesant's Orchard on 5/15/09.
Our 2,100th find:
Microphobia 2-Security on 8/23/09.
Our 2,200th find:
It's a Small World 8 - Belgium on 11/12/09.
Our 2,300th find:
A CACHE-ASTROPHE on 2/09/10.
Our 2,400th find:
Rainbow on 5/16/10.
Our 2,500th find:
It Begins At The Mariners' Gate on 8/26/10.
Our 2,600th find:
SPOUT on 10/22/10.
Our 2,700th find:
Upland Paradise on 12/4/10.
Our 2,800th find:
Game, Set & Micro on 3/9/11.
Our 2,900th find:
Shake, Rattle & Roll on 5/8/11.
Our 3,000th find:
Paladin8's Golden Ammo Can on 6/26/11.
Our 3,100th find:
Stamps or not on 8/2/11.
Our 3,200th find:
Deacon's Challenge on 10/5/11.
Our 3,300th find:
American Renaissance on 12/9/11.
Our 3,400th find:
Cafe Racer on 1/24/12.
Our 3,500th find:
50 - Al's Trail: Upper Paugussett on 3/21/12.
Our 3,600th find:
24/7/365(6) Challenge on 5/11/12.
Our 3,700th find:
Ziiren pa Roros (Norway) on 7/25/12.
Our 3,800th find:
SCT: Chauncey Station on 9/19/12.
Our 4,000th find:
Lost City of Babylon on 10/20/12.
Our 4,600th find:
Smith's Identity on 10/1/13.
Our 4,900th find:
Howling at the Moon on 4/1/14.
Our 5,000 find:
Trestle on May 17, 2014.
OUR COMPLETE LIST OF FINDS
MILESTONES
Geocaching Related Links
