On Thursday, I had a rare day off from work in which I had a large chunk of time for my geo-addictions. I was primarily interested in hitting some Munzees, as I was recruited by an Australian Clan to join them this month. The clan wars for July have three levels: Baby Chuck, Chuck, and Super-Chuck. The requirements for the Super-Chuck, although do-able, are beyond what I can commit to in an average month. However, the number of Munzees in San Diego have grown rapidly in the last six months, and so I do have the ability to get the Chuck without having to make too many trips to LA (where the Munzee density is very high). Anyhow, there were a group of Munzees in Temecula that I wanted to get in order to make a jump start on the month's requirements. I was also hoping to hit some geocaches in the area. So, I sent a text to Unknown_2_You, one of the few people in San Diego that are active in both Geo-games, and asked if he was up for a quest.
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| Lake Harveston |
The first stop was a group of munzees at Harveston Lake in Temecula. There were a number of mysteries here, as well as some virtual caches and a couple of motels. My experience with Munzee so far has not taken me to many extraordinary places (mainly parking lots) but this was a really beautiful lake. We parked on one end and followed the trail of munzees the whole way around. It was early morning, so the weather was still cool and there were a LOT of people out enjoying the area. Unfortunately, U2U and I had numerous technical problems. My phone kept re-booting (about every other munzee) and each reboot took 3-5 minutes to get back to the map. Not cool. The phone was lucky it didn't wind up in the lake!! U2U had problems with the sun. It was hard to see what he was scanning and so it took numerous tries to finally get a scan. These issues, coupled with our leisurely pace, made the round trip take much longer than I had planned. On the bright side, I did win a Blast Cap (as part of Munzee's third birthday celebration) and I also leveled up to Level 63, so it was worth it. I also got a First-to-Cap on one of the virtuals (U2U got the others as it seemed every time we got near one, my phone wigged out).
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| Mission San Luis Rey |
My phone battery was shot after all the scanning and re-booting, so we decided to move on to geocaching. In our haste, I forgot to use one of my Blast Caps to get the large group of regular munzees nearby. There is a rumor of a 3X point weekend this month... perhaps I'll come back then. We headed back to 76 and crossed over towards Oceanside and hit a few caches and then had lunch at In-N-Out. During lunch, we eyed a group of caches near an old Mission and decided we would work our way there. This turned out to be a fantastic choice, as the Mission was very cool! Mission San Luis Rey is a beautiful building, along with the remains of what was once the original Mission. The two caches here took us to some cool spots with great views of the Mission. It was the third cache in this group and was my favorite of the day (as well as cache #1700 for me... woot!). I have a soft spot for cemetery hides, and this one was at a cool pioneer cemetery across the street from the Mission. Reading about who was buried here and the history behind the cemetery was really cool, and the place itself was spooky enough in the daytime, I can't imagine what it must be like at night! I recently capped a quiz munzee in El Campo Santo in Old Town at around midnight. Yeah, you want creepy, go cap that one when the spirits are restless.
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| The cemetery across the street from the Mission |
U2U and I ended up with about 400 points on Munzee and about a dozen caches. The adventure took us to the lake and the Mission, but also to an abandoned drive-in movie theater and part of the SLURRT (the San Luis Rey River Trail). We DNF'd a couple of caches, chatted with a couple of homeless muggles, and got lost roaming around shopping center parking lots. All in all, it was a fantastic day off!
