Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Favorite Cache of the Week August (part 2)

The second weekend in August and Tim really had wanted to go to the Mega event West Bend $1000 Cache Ba$h 2011. We had attended in 2009 and it was a lot of fun meeting new people but it wasn't super high on my list of things to do this summer. As it turned out since I still am not contributing to our financial well-being as much as we would like, Tim decided it would be best to go to work this weekend.

He was able to get a long layover in San Francisco and invited me to go with him. I planned the caching / walking route for us as I wanted to go to Little Saigon to get a Bánh Mì.

We started out with The Transamerica Overpass which we didn't find the last time we were here but I was convinced we would find this time. We did! I was misinterpreting the name and it wasn't that difficult once I just read it correctly. Always good to rectify a DNF and it does have a good over'view' of the Transamerica Building from the over'pass'. Raw Sally was a nano in a super busy spot in Chinatown but Tim found it fairly quickly. Nice hide in a historic alley.

S.F. Cable Car Barn was great! The cache is placed right outside the San Francisco Cable Car Museum and shows that you don't need a virtual cache just because it is a museum. Traditionals work fine! We spent at least an hour in the museum where you can see the winding wheels pulling the cables. It was very interesting to see and it's free.

Now to get to Little Saigon from Chinatown, well... you have to walk through the Tenderloin. I let Tim know in advance we would be going through the 'Loin and it was as bad as we anticipated. We looked for one cache kinda and got through the area without incident.

Tim's sister Karen met us at the Saigon Sandwich Shop and had lunch with us. She lives in Oakland and she was so nice to come into the city today to visit. Karen also joined us in finding a couple more caches before she headed back home.

Two more caches I really enjoyed finding on our way back to the hotel were Throw It Out! and Bamboo Alley. Throw It Out! is hidden on a installation named Defenestration. Wonderful! Like the neighborhood the artwork resides in, it is in need of restoration and I'm glad I got to experience it today. Bamboo Alley is a mystery/puzzle cache which I usually ignore but this one was so interesting I added to the route. The cache is a series of watercolors painted by the cache owner which guide you along like a visual multi-cache to a camo'ed Altoids tin. Something that could have been so ordinary transformed into extraordinary.

If you find yourself in downtown San Francisco for any reason and have a few moments to find a cache there are many wonderful ones to find. I hope to return soon.

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