Postcard Collector

Hey, WE copied the idea a little. Our postcard TB went all of 201 miles and disappeared. Idea's too cool though, so we may try again.

Found postcard and sent one to the postcard owner. Thanks for the great idea for a TB. I may have to copy this and use it myself. Will move it along.

Glad I came back and grabbed it from the cache . . . I had picked it up with the wrong geocacher name! Now I have it logged and ready to move to Utah.

Thank you
Alisha

Were we glad to get out of that Sacramento heat! As soon as we neared the coast the temperatures became more reasonable again. We spent the weekend in San Francisco, a city that the Lionhouse75 tour guides have visited many times, but most of the tour group had not. The main attractions on this trip were two that we had never visited. The Island of Alcatraz, the mysterious prison island that housed many nefarious characters in its short history, was the main goal. The tour group spent most of the day on the island, visiting the cell blocks, listening to a fascinating audio tour as we walked around, and surprisingly, abundant gardens and sea bird life on the outside. There was an elaborate virtual cache there too which we completed. The second attraction was not on our planned list of things to see, but as usual a virtual cache took us there. We walked almost a mile from sea level at the wharf to one of the highest points in the city, the Coit Tower on top of Telegraph Hill. This tower was erected during the Great Depression, and inside, again thanks to a virtual cache, were the most beautiful and insightful wall murals painted by artists hired during the WPA program, to put people, in this case artists, back to work during the depression. We had no idea these murals were all around inside the tower, but they depicted many of the key historical aspects of California life industry in the 1930’s.

Of course, this was also a little bit of a sad time. We were jubilant that we could help Shark complete his mission of getting to San Francisco. We also struggled to find a suitable landing place for him. In the city most caches are virtuals or micros, but we managed to find the perfect spot! Early on Sunday morning we visited a beautiful community garden very close to the wharves and bay. Shark was really happy with this place so he decided to stay. Surprisingly, because the gardens were so lush and obviously tended with care, it reminded Postcard Collector of his native Netherlands so he decided to stay too! Zach, Turtle and Lil Hockey Dude, the last remaining tour members, sadly said goodbye to them. But we know they will be happy in his very roomy house near the bay in this beautiful garden.

After the tour dropped off Shark, we continued down the California coast. It is wild and beautiful! We’ve seen parts of the coast before but it is always beautiful at any time of year. The tour group was really taken by the various lighthouses we’ve seen along the way both in California and Oregon. We stopped at another famous historic lighthouse, the PIgeon Point Light House, overlooking gorgeous blue and wild waters and surrounded by all kinds of wildflowers. We found another cache at this site, and surprisingly, Turtle decided it was time for him to leave the tour too. He was really missing Shark as they had become good friends throughout the trip. So again, we said goodbye to Turtle and continued down the coast to our main goal, to hike out and see the elephant seals at Ano Nuevo State Reserve. What crazy and noisy animals they are! After a gorgeous hike through the dunes covered with bright golden and red flowers, we continued on to our stopping place for the night, Santa Cruz.

The Tour Group itinerary moves into its final phase as we start the urban and coastal phase of the trip. We drove yesterday from Lake Tahoe to the capitol city of the state of California, Sacramento. We definitely thought that since we are residents of California, even though none of the tour group are, we had a duty to visit our state capitol and try to pay the “Gubernator” a visit. He wasn’t home, but we had a nice tour none the less. The coolest part of our stay here is that we are sleeping on a river boat right on the Sacramento River. It’s called the Delta King. Another cool fact is that some time back when we were driving past Mt. Shasta farther north, another virtual cache that we stopped at was the headwaters of the Sacramento River. It was clear glacial water from the source and we filled up and drank it. Now we are much farther down river where it is big and wide and floods every now and then and we wouldn’t even think of drinking it! What isn’t so cool is how hot it is here. After spending so much time farther north at higher elevations with moderate temperatures, Sacramento today was over 100 degrees fahrenheit! We are not used to that and we all wilted as we walked around the city. It didn’t stop us, but we were sticky and happy to return to our air conditioned (barely) room at the end of the day that brought it down to a cool 82! But at least we did our civic duty and now can easily envision our government at work every time we hear another one of those “they aren’t getting anything done” stories on the news.