Monday, November 19, 2007

Geocaching Around Diamond Lake

While we're at this campground we thought we would continue our quest of finding more geocaches. As we mentioned in an earlier posting, geocaching is a modern treasure hunt using a GPS device to find interesting caches all over the world. For more information, see the website geocaching.com.
The first two caches took us over some dirt roads not to far from the campground. We're were pleasantly surprised to find a west coast ranch for the famous Budweiser Clydesdale's!
This is a breeding farm with no tours or access. But you can see the horses from the road. They were being fed while we were there so they weren't near the fence by the road. For information about the Clydesdale's, click on this link: http://www.seaworld.org/animal-info/info-books/clydesdale/index.htm

There were two different caches here, at each end of the property. Linda found both of them-good eyes for details. Here she is replacing one in the middle of the pile of boulders.

The other five caches we found were up in Hemet near Matt & Suzanne's new house and Diamond Lake. Matt's house is located in a major development called McSweeny's farm. Here's a link to the website: http://www.mcsweenyfarms.com/. It looks like it's going to be a great area. We visited the lodge, which is the recreation center of the community. It has a great fitness center, pool, meeting rooms, etc. They're even planning a equestrian center. Matt & Suzanne got in at the beginning of the development, so they'll be able to watch it grow over the years. In fact, the area behind their house is going to be an elementary school. The cache by their house was in the hills above the development with a great view down into the valley. John found this cache after a 1/2 mile hike.
The next two caches were on a long dirt road to the south of Hemet where there's a lot of ranches. One of them was located on Rawson Ranch, which dates back to 1860. We passed by a lot of gates, with the highest number being gate 250. There are great views of Diamond Lake, which is across the street from Matt's development. This lake is the newest in the chain of drinking water lakes built by the Metropolitan Water District. A coincidence is that Linda's father worked for the MWD for over 30 years.
The final cache in the Hemet area was in a park dedicated to the CDF Air Attack team that's based at the Hemet Airport. Inside of the display airplane, John found the cache under a wing. We found all of the caches we were looking for, a new record for us!

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