Up Up and Away

Geocaching has given us many moments of new and exciting adventures. Yesterday was no exception.

Larry is out of town, but I didn’t let that stop me. I teamed up with Geo-Jeeper (Cynthia & Mike), dstoye (Don) and imawahl (Ann) and headed for the Oroville area. The weather was nice, the traffic was pretty light, and the whole day was loads of fun.

We started caching just a little ways north of Marysville. We wanted to pick up some of the caches in the outlying area that we had missed on previous trips! We found the caches and made good time the rest of the way. To our surprise, this was the first time Ann had ever been to Oroville. We introduced her to a lot of it! We were in town and out of town. We were crossing water ways and climbing rocks. We even climbed a slope to get a cache and then slid our way back down. It is always easier climbing up than down!

We saw some beautiful sights and I did take some pictures. The pictures were mostly of the rest of the group. At one point, I turned the camera on myself and got a self portrait! It wasn’t great, but at least I can prove I was there.

Lunch was particularly interesting. We arrived at the Thermalito South Forebay and discovered two helicopters and a whole slew of men in all the appropriate garb for making water rescues. Two men would stand on the “feet” on the outside of the helicopter and it would head out over the water. In the meantime, a boat was dropping off another man in the water--he was the “victim”. The chopper would fly in low and one of the men on the outside would drop off into the water near the “victim”. The man still on the chopper was there for backup. The chopper lowered a harness and the man in the water put it around the victim. The chopper would then haul the two men in the water to the shore. They did this several times while we ate our lunch and watched. We talked to them briefly and got the skinny on this annual rescue practice session. The things you get to experience while geocaching--amazing.

The afternoon was uneventful, but we ended the day with lots of caches. It was a blitz sort of day and we accomplished our mission.