Geocaching day out! Gilroy

We took the afternoon off (I could well get used to this newly retired husband who's all, "Let's play!") in order to fulfill a Geocaching HQ "challenge." These challenges usually involve something simple, like finding a cache on a particular day—the anniversary of the first geocache (May 3, 2000), say, or the last or first day of the year. The reward being, a virtual "souvenir." 

The current challenge, called Reach the Peak, is a bit more complicated: it involves finding a number of caches of various sorts, with arbitrarily assigned points for each type (ranging from 325, for a regular cache, to 750, for a cache with 10+ favorite points or an Earthcache, a puzzle cache or a multi), which must add up, month by month, to the heights (in meters) of the tallest mountains on all the continents: starting last August with Puncak Jaya in Oceania, and culminating with Everest in March. Yeah. How silly is that? But today, indeed, we succeeded in summiting Mt. Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe! And it only involved a half-hour drive and a few hours of wandering around! So much easier than actually plodding up an 18,510-foot (5,642 m) peak!

Our destination was Gilroy in southern Santa Clara County, a town we drive past all the time on our way to the Bay Area, but one we've never stopped in. Turns out, it has a lovely downtown area with some nice old buildings. And there's plenty of surrounding farmland. Gilroy calls itself the Garlic Capital of the World: over 50 percent of the garlic grown in the US is grown right there, mostly by Christopher Ranch, established in 1890 by Danish immigrants. 

Here are some pictures I took:

The old city hall, built in 1905;
now a restaurant

One of the first caches of the day: you press on
the perch, and the cache (the white circle is the
bottom of the container) flies out!

We spotted numerous lovely murals

One cache brought us to this amazing
Tiny Library in downtown

This cache is called Hang 'Em High

Here it is lowered

We enjoyed a meandering drive through ag fields

Walnut trees behind

Corn across the road—and purple mountains
(not Mt. Elbrus) in the distance

It was fun. Next up: Kilimanjaro (19,341 feet; 5,895 meters). I'm inspecting my ropes and crampons. We've got all of November to complete the climb.