SEMSTIX - Camping and Geocaching Adventures

Friday, March 28, 2025

Vanning New River Boondocking

032725 - 032825 33° 48' 36.9612" N 112° 13' 36.7572" W
Shakedown cruise for the new van. Forgot to bring my hearing aid chargers. The cochlear should be fine, but the small one will run out. Need to pack new eating utensils. The ones I bought are terrible. Woke up to the sight of balloons in the sunrise. AG1 and made coffee using the electric kettle. Everything seems to be working fine. Decided to go geocaching before breakfast. Jump on the 🚲 and road over some rough trails, got chased by dogs and found 3 caches. Skies looking a little dark, so I made my way back to the van to make breakfast

Made more coffee using the electric kettle. Chopped up all the stuff and plugged in the cooktop, but it shut off right away. So I kept trying by resetting the inverter. But after 3 tries the inverter would not come on. So I packed it up and came home to cook breakfast. When I got home I discovered no electricity worked in the van. AC or DC, but the “Go Power” battery monitor still shows 200ah and 100% - This is very confusing. I called CW service, they gave me the number for tech support. Dean walked me through the system and we were both confused why the battery monitor showed 200ah 100% but Dean had me put on a voltage meter to the battery terminal and that is when I found the breakers tripped at the battery posts. I reset them and the inverter came back on as well as the 12v system. Dean walked me through connecting the van to the house 115 outlet to charge the battery. That seems to work fine, but later I discovered that it tripped the breaker on that circuit. Lesson learned. The cooktop and electric kettle will run the battery too low for the inverter. Solution is propane stove. Later, at home, I connected the shore power to the house, 1st circuit tripped TV/Internet system, tried another outside laundry room but it also tripped. Both 15A breakers. I found a 20A circuit in at my bench in the shop. Using an extension cord, this one did not trip right away but the ext. Cord heated up and it did trip. Need to get a 20 Amp extension cord.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Daisy's day out

This is what caching is all about. Nice Tin in a tree!

Monday, January 5, 2015

Geocaching 101 - Finding the cache

So I thought I would post a quick demonstration of finding a cache! This was fun. We on the Red Roost trail. Mt. Laguna

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Waterfall Trail -Ogden Utah

Well I can't make a visit without a caching trip with the Hatches. Today Cammo (Cameron), Chris and I hike up to the "Above the Falls" cache GC1G8CH and was rewarded with a beautiful view of downtown Ogden,

The transit up the ravine south of the falls was kind of dicey, but we made it just fine. Coming down was another adventure!

The view next to the falls was wonderful and it is a long drop down!

We found three other caches on the way up and down.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Garnet Peak - View

Desert View

We started at the Pioneer mail camp ground and got on the PCT from there. About 2.5 mile to the trail that heads up the peak. The cache was placed in 2002 and was rename Phoenix Cache after the fires in late summer 2002. After the peak, we hiked south on the PCT for about 3 more miles finding various caches. It was windy, but nice and warm. We had lunch on a outcropping and headed back. Good Father and Son adventure!

thanks Danny

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Bilbo Baggins Travel Bug

Bilbo Baggins start out his journey at SUDZ in April 2013. It took him a long time to get started. Thought we had lost him because he was not reported leaving the cache, but was no longer there. But all of a sudden he was found and dropped off near San Diego airport!

Tom20125ab grabbed him and took him on an adventure up the coast of California and then dropped him off in Germany.

No more photos have been taken. As of today, Bilbo has gone 7397.5 miles and is in the hands of Diana1963.