Christina's Cup of Tea: Geocaching at the "P" Mountain

For as long as I've lived in San Marcos (which is basically my whole life minus 5 months) I've NEVER hiked the P Mountain! ....until today! Mae and I hiked up, around, and down the P Mountain which took about 3 1/2 hours...which would've been a lot shorter had we not geocached. We unfortunately forgot to track our hike so we have no idea how far we hiked, but we're going to guess around 5 miles?

WARNING: Because of the fact that we had a long hike with 9 geocaches, this is going to be a VERY long post with lots of pics! Be prepared! Be sure to at least read our stories about geocaches #5 and #6 though for some good entertainment!

We borrowed a parking permit from other best friend, Jamie, so we could park on campus. If you plan on hiking the P Mountain in the future, the closest parking will be at the back parking lot of Palomar College off of Borden Road, although you need to have a parking permit. Otherwise you could probably park either east or west from the mountain on Borden Rd. Both sides have neighborhoods where you can park.

We left around 7:40am and took about 15-20mins to get to the "P". It was pretty steep! Here we are at the very bottom of the mountain right by the stoplight! ....our before-P Mountain pic.

Geocache #1 Along the way to the P, we stopped at the 1st geocache of the day called I Gotta "P". A lot of the geocaches in this area kept the theme of having some sort of "P" in the name. This one was a tiny pill bottle that Mae found.

Not that far up from the geocache and we reached the P! We couldn't really get a picture of the entire P since the mountain is VERY steep so we couldn't reach the bottom of the P.

We started walking to the very top of the mountain and stopped to take a few pics of the view! Here you can see Palomar College where Mae is gesturing to.

Here is a view of the west side of San Marcos towards Escondido.

Geocache #2 of the day is called "P" is for Pain. Mae spotted this one too! This is the first of several large ammo boxes we found today.

The pen died out on the last person. But they got creative in signing the log! Good thing we brought a pen with us!

Here was a little note in the box for those who found the geocache....intentionally and unintentionally!

Geocache #3 Mae was on a roll today...she also found this geocache! I think it was when we started the search for this geocache that we started getting attacked by these huge flying bugs! I'm not sure what kind of bugs they were since we had never seen these before but they were bigger than bumblebees. We were constantly screaming and running whenever we saw one or heard loud buzzing. Hopefully we didn't alarm any other hikers from our screams! We can get pretty loud haha.

Geocache #4 This one was a very special one. It was placed in remembrance of someone named Robby on his birthday. This was found by Mae as well. This hiding place was pretty tricky but a good one on the original geocacher's part! It was hidden in a way that you couldn't see it from the trail.

I wish I had recorded this but Mae starting singing and swinging her stick around like a sword on our way to geocache #5 lol.

Geocache #5 The hunt for #5 was a seriously hilarious but terrifying one! Mae saw underneath a pile of rocks what looked like something that could be the geocache. She started moving the rocks around with her stick and she didn't have her glasses on so she couldn't see very well. I looked at what was underneath the rock she moved and I FREAKED OUT. I screamed, "SNAAAAKE!!" and we both started screaming and running away from it. Nothing was moving from the spot and we didn't hear any rustling or anything. So I crept back to check and it was indeed the geocache, but the original geocacher who placed it wrapped it in this camouflaged fabric that had a snake-looking pattern! I told Mae and we started cracking up. You had to be there to understand the extreme fear instilled in us. Even though we knew it wasn't a real snake, we were still afraid to touch it so Mae tried picking it up with her stick haha.
ANOTHER scare we had in this spot, before Mae was able to pick up the geocache....we spotted a giant colorful bug walking by. So us being the scaredy-cats we are, we freaked out once again and ran away. I went back to see and it looked like a beetle. Fortunately it didn't have wings so I played look-out and watched the bug while Mae grabbed the geocache. As Mae started to put the geocache back where we found it, we heard some more rustling so we didn't properly hide the geocache the way we found it...Mae just threw it in the bush haha.
Here's Mae looking terrified lol. I wish we had taken a close up picture of the fabric so you can see exactly what I was talking about.

We saw lots of "car carcasses" during our hike. We spotted maybe 3? Here's the 2nd one we spotted. I have no idea why or how these cars even got here.

Geocache #6 This next cache was my favorite, and not just because it was my 1st find of the day lol. This one was the tiniest one we've ever found! AND it was actually hidden really well! The hint for this geocache was "one of these things is not like the other."

Can you figure it out?

Here it is! It's the tiny rock! And attached to it is the tiny geocache!

While we were here, we enjoyed more of the view!

Geocache #7 We started making our way down the hill to go back to the car and grabbed #7 on the way down! This one was super easy to find. It wasn't hidden underneath anything, just in the bushes.

Mae liked this streamer we found in the box lol.

Check out Mae's bum! Since a lot of the hike was on steep hills & mountain biking trails, we had to squat-slide down the trails to avoid tumbling down the mountain. And at one point we also sat down for a quick snack. Mae didn't bother brushing the dirt off her pants haha.

Geocache #8 This was the last geocache on the mountain. We liked this box since it had an official geocaching sticker on it!

We made our way to the street to walk back to the car. Here, Mae had trouble trying to get up lol.

The tree near the center of the photo is where we found geocache #8. Can you spot it at the base of the tree? It's a small spot in the picture but it's big enough to see from afar!

Our after-P Mountain shot!

Just being silly while crossing the street & showing off our "warrior" side (warriors...yeah right....we get scared of bugs haha) of the WanderlustWarriors (our geocaching name) before we abandoned the stick.

Geocache #9 Since we were parked by the soccer field, we decided to check out the only geocache at Palomar which was at the end of the parking lot right next to the soccer field.