What Are You Waiting For?

We all do it. We repeatedly go right past someplace that we always think we will stop and explore someday. Often that day never comes and we don’t know what we’re missing.

Last year, after 34 years of driving by the Mac Johnson Wildlife Area, on the outskirts of Brockville, we finally ventured in. We went through the main gate that time, but there is another area on the far side of the pond that is right near my oldest son’s home and we drive by that even more often. We had to go pick up his computer for repairs, and, since the weather was nice, we decided it was time to take a walk and go look for another cache while we were in the area. The treasure I found along the trail to the cache was amazing.

There are rocks in there. Flat slabs and blocks of rock. They form natural walls, and steps and it’s a sight I never expected to see that day. This is a place where geese gather, to refuel and rest before continuing their journey southward. I was just hoping to be able to see them through the bull rushes. I was so thrilled with the rock formations, I think I forgot to even look for the geese!

So, what are you waiting for? Were is that place you always think you will someday take a closer look at? Go. Go now. And feel free to tell me about it.

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Mountain Tales

We decided to take in the On Common Ground Studio Tour, which is mostly around Mountain, and South Mountain, Ontario. I thought we might as well kill two birds with one stone, and go geocaching while we were at it. We’ve tried to find certain caches in the South Mountain area before, but it was too wet, and/or the mosquitoes were vicious. But this was a nice fall day, and it seemed a good time to try our luck again.

First, let me say that I have no idea where these places got their names. There are no mountains there, North, South, or otherwise. Actually the land is rather flat in that part of the province, so there weren’t even any decent hills, as far as I could see.

We drove by one cache on our way to see a marvelous woodworker. If ever I was to buy some turned pieces, this would be the guy I’d get them from. The ones I liked best were made of Manitoba Maple, and had streaks of red in them. Manitoba Maple is actually good for something after all! But the man said that it’s a rare thing that happens, when the wood starts to decay. Still, it’s only the Manitoba Maple that does it.

When we were finished checking out his work, and noting that I couldn’t afford it even if I was inclined to buy, we went back down the road to the little trailhead of what is apparently part of the Mountain Memorial Park, and prepared to search for our first cache of the day. What a lovely little trail. There were some really tall, really straight trees in there. Some were iron wood, others were not, but they were all amazingly straight.

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After that, we carried on to South Mountain and explored a cemetery, where we found our second cache of the day. This one was hidden as part of a Geocaching For

Families teaching seminar. It was meant to be an easy cache to find, and it was. I’m always thankful for that. Sometimes you walk a fair distance to hunt down the area where something is supposed to be hidden, and some supposedly clever person has hidden the cache in a way that makes it most difficult to be found. Some may enjoy such challenges. I just enjoy being lured to someplace I haven’t been before, and finding a little reward for my participation.

As we headed towards the next cache....one of those I mentioned earlier as the ones we gave up on....we realized we were near the home of a nephew and decided to drop in for a wee visit. After a delightful chat, and a bit of a nibble, we carried on to, once again, give up on the cache in that location. It was still wet there, and was getting too late in the day to be prowling unknown territory. Oh well, it’s an excuse to go back for another visit someday, eh.

Headed back towards home, we stopped in Mountain again, to check out the famous Mountain Pizza. It sure smelled good, but they don’t have eat in facilities, and we didn’t want to attempt to eat it in the car. We discovered, however, that we were very close to two other caches.

These were not the regular kind. These were what is known as micro caches.....being only big enough for the log book. Well, in this case, they were more like nano caches as they were very tiny and could only hold a thin strip of rolled up paper to write your name and date on. Each of them was hidden near a historical item. One was near an old broken bell, and the other was near an old gun in a park setting.

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I hadn’t originally planned to look for these as, like I said, they were tiny, and I thought they would be hard to find. But they were quite easy to locate, actually. Rolling up the scroll and inserting it back into these tiny containers was the hard part. They are about the size of a ball bearing....half the size of a standard marble. I do prefer to find trinkets than to simply sign a log, but I’m still glad we took the time to locate these

two little guys.

Thanksgiving Treasure Trails

Thanksgiving arrived, and I have to say I was very thankful for the beautiful weather and to finally feel well enough to get out and enjoy it.

We did another of our famous loops on Sunday. This time, towards Carleton Place. The first stop along the way was in Franktown, the Lilac Capital of Ontario. Of course, no lilacs were blooming at this time of year but there was a cache under the cedars that we had attempted in July. We were driven off by the mosquitoes on that occasion, so we stopped to quickly pick it up this time. We discovered a trail made out of an old, overgrown roadway. I might like to follow that sometime, just to see where it goes. Maybe next time we go to enjoy the lilacs.....

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When we got to Carleton Place, we found a nice boardwalk through a wooded area near the river. I was glad that I had read the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff to my children when they were little as it helped us find the cache. With all that lovely weather there were lots of people out walking that trail that day.

It was really hard not to be caught while finding the cache. One guy on a bike appeared out of nowhere and asked if we had lost something. He probably thought we had dropped something on the boardwalk and it had fallen between the slats. I explained that we were just geocaching, and he grinned and said he had heard of that and went on his way. Just after we dug the cache from it’s hiding place, and were opening it to see what was in there and sign the log, we looked up to see a boy of about 8 standing staring at us, while his family stood back near the bend in the trail. Caught again! Not a good thing. Hopefully they didn’t see where we got it from.....but even then, they may come back to search for themselves, if they think we found it nearby. They hung around for quite a while, first on one side of us, then they went past and waited on the other side, as if waiting to see what we would do with the cache container. I doubt they were geocachers, themselves, or they would have either introduced themselves, or pulled back around a bend so they wouldn’t see exactly where to find it. (after all, what’s the point of a treasure hunt if you see where someone puts the treasure). We simply out waited them before putting it away, and I actually went and stood by the bend to make sure nobody else snuck up on us until it was safely stashed again.

We found a travel bug at this site, so we took that. I’ll drop it somewhere else, next time we are out geocaching for someone else to find. These are tracked, online, as they travel from place to place. I’ve only started picking them up this year, and when the ones I’ve found get moved again, I get e-mail about where they are, and how far they have traveled. The one I picked up this time came all the way from British Columbia to Ontario.

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The third cache of the day was, to me, the most interesting and fun of the bunch. It was along a woodland trail. The website said it would be a kilometer for the round trip, to and from the cache. And it likely would have been, if we had taken the right trail the first time. I’m just as glad we didn’t though, as I like the pictures I got along the wrong trail. Most of the time, my photos are my main treasure on these adventures anyway. The hubby spotted a grouse right by where the cache was hidden though, so he felt like he also got an extra treasure out of this one.

It was a fun walk, all up and down hill, over rocks and roots. My kind of forest trail, for sure. This cache was a bit different in that the things left there were to be things recycled from previous caches. I left some Dora Explorer shoelaces that we found in Kemptville last year. I’m pretty sure people recycle their previous finds all the time, but mostly, I’ve kept them in a treasure box. When the box gets full, I’ll likely recycle them more often.

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The 4th trail was much easier, but not as much fun. We followed an old railway bed, that is now a hiking and biking trail. We past a few farms and found the cache very easily. I must have been psychic as there were trees all along the trail, but I suddenly decided we should look for the cache amoung one particular grouping, and that’s exactly where it was. Okay, so a GPS that isn’t under trees is much better at pointing out where to look. I’ll have to admit that.

There are several other caches hidden along other sections of this railbed trail. While I think it was probably a good way to rest after the previous cache, I'm no longer sure I would care to bother looking for them. I've never been one for flat land, or being able to see where you are going. I like to go over hills and around bends to find new sights, if not caches.

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The 5th trail was obviously created by a homeowner who wanted to be able to access a nearby golf course without going to the clubhouse. He had basically cleared a path through the brush, straight to a secluded corner of the golf course. Once we found out how to access that trail without trespassing, the rest was easy.

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Our final stop of the day was in Appleton. Now, this is a place I would have loved to have explored more. There is a dam, with the ruins of an old mill in the middle of the river. I wanted to take lots of pictures but everywhere you looked, there was a "No Parking" sign. It was as if the local folk didn’t want outsiders to even stop in their village. The cache there had us parking by the mailboxes, but that wasn’t a place where you could leave the car and walk over to the sights either. The other side of the river was all private property, and though it was a much better view of the ruins from that side, there was no way to get close enough to take pictures from over there either. I will be wanting to go back someday, even if I have to hike in from the countryside somewhere.
All in all, it was a great day. Not only was the weather great, so were the leaves, and we found every cache we looked for. That’s not something that always happens.....at least, for us.

Answering the Call

I wondered how long it would take.

I have not posted anything on here since August 16th and last night I had someone ask me about that. So here I am....trying to keep people happy ;)

The past two weekends I have been really sick with the worst cold I’ve had in a very long time. Waking up with your eye glued shut can’t be a good sign. The cold is so bad, in fact, I actually went to the doctor this week and got some antibiotics. This is the third day I’ve been on those, and I sure hope they kick in soon!

The weekend before I became ill, I was busy one day, and it rained the next. I would deserve this cold if I’d been out geocaching in that, but I wasn’t.

The weekend before that one we had a couple of birthday parties to go to. We were up around Apple Hill, celebrating the 75th birthday of one of the hubby’s many, many aunts. There were well over a hundred people there, and thankfully, the weather was perfect, as the gathering was a surprise, and held in the farm yard. The party was supposed to be over at 4pm and we had planned on hitting a few geocaches on the way home. However, like many others, we stayed until after 6 pm. It was so nice to see all these people someplace other than a funeral palour for a change.After driving down the road a bit, we decided the sun would go down soon, so it was best to skip the cache at St. Elmo’s and head for the other. We went to Moose Creek, which is a lovely little village I wouldn’t mind exploring further someday. The race was on though, as the sun was getting lower. We got to the posted coordinates, which were near the watertower, but even though we stood on the exact spot, we found nothing. We beat around the bushes, stirring up the mosquitoes. Remember, they are hungry at that time of night! Whereever that cache is, it’s well hidden, and probably cleverly, but we ran out of time, light and blood, and had to leave without success. Unfortunately I have no pictures of this place, as the light was low and the time was short.

I do hope to get out again soon. Does anyone know when hunting season starts? Poking around in the woods is not recommended at that time.

We Did Enjoy Greek Fest....

Before I start getting e-mails asking why I haven’t been out geocaching, I better get a new installment of some sort in here, whether I’ve found any treasures or not. Last week I was busy with the fair, and company, so I didn't get out at all.

We went to the Greek Fest in Ottawa today, and had a great time. Wonderful food, wonderful music, and lots of friendly, helpful people. After that we went looking for a nearby cache.

You may remember my saying, when we went to Kingston, that city geocaching just isn’t the same. Well, I thought it would be okay today since we went to someplace I’ve been to many times over the years, even as a child, and later with my own children. We went to Hog’s Back.

The first waypoint was fine. It took us to a sign that had several pictures and information about the area on it, and we had to find the right numbers to fill in and create a new waypoint. We found that too, and worked out a clue that pointed us at an old maple tree. The problem was, we couldn’t see any maple trees, old or not, from the place we stood. We finally found a trail that led into the woods, and we did seem to be going generally in the right direction. We found another path that led off of this one, which definitely sent us toward our goal, though by now we were well into the trees and couldn’t see if there was a maple ahead or not.

I want to point out that this was not a "tourist" type of trail, and I’m not sure where it was going. It was just a narrow trail through dense brush. Then we saw it. Not the cache, but a blue tarp. A tent or a lean to. We didn’t go close enough to find out for sure.

In our normal woodland environments, we are on the look out for bears and coyotes, and things like that. In the city jungle, it’s the people who worry me. Had we happened upon a place where some homeless person had set up a shelter, or had we come across some place where drug dealers do their business? Either way, I didn't think it was a good place to be. We quickly, and quietly, backtracked and got ourselves out of there. I consulted the tracks on the GPS later, and saw that we had circled the cache, and were probably narrowing in on it when we spotted the tarps.

Nope. City caching isn’t for me. I’ll take my chances with the bears!

Holiday Monday

Long weekends are a good time to do chores, but there have been so few nice days that when we get one, we can't get ourselves to stay home all day long. I found a loop close to home, but most of the stops would have been long hikes through the woods. After feeding the bugs yesterday, we decided to avoid such situations......except for one.

It seems there are old circus wagons and cages abandoned in the woods not too far from here, so we couldn't resist trying to find that. After a good dose of bug spray, we took a little walk up a section of the Rideau Trail, off Dwyer Hill Road. There is some interesting areas back there. The woods have a different look about them. There are rocks breaking the ground in some spots and fine green grass growing between the trees in others. There is also a great number of empty beer and liquor bottles amoung the bushes....not to mention tires. I think there must have been some good bush parties back there recently.

As it turns out, we were in error, looking for the cache at the way point we had. We should have been looking for a tag on a tree to redirect us. The bug spray wore off, or washed off from the sweat, and the nasty little critters found us, so we hightailed it back to the car. We will try this one again though, as it's a nice walk. I just have to figure out just when that day is, between when the bugs die down, and the hunters come out.

Since we had eliminated so many other stops from the loop I had designed, we backtracked and took a road across country to Malakoff Road where we were able to pick up two quick grabs before heading into Kemptville for ice cream. The Red Barn still has the cheapest ice cream around. You can have two small cones for $5. I must warn you not to make the mistake of ordering anything larger. Small has 3 scoops.

Between the Rain Drops

Okay, so me and my big mouth!

I had to go and gloat about not being rained on last week, and then on Sunday, August 3rd, we scurried for shelter three times, to keep from getting wet.

Our first stop was a dry one though. A nice man had gone all out to welcome geocachers. He built a trail, back into his woodlands, along country road 44. He will even have picnic tables back there eventually. He says the bugs have been too bad, with all the rain, to even bother with that this year though.. He came out to meet us when we arrived. He has prepared a lovely parking spot, and the hydro crews drop off the wood chips they make getting trees out of the way of the wires. He uses them to line the parking area and the trails. His wife, apparently makes soldiers of one sort or another, and there’s one there to greet the visitors too.

The bugs were out in full force, and I’m sure they were well fed by the time we left, even though we did use the bug spray the minute we left the car. The cache owner even told us we were welcome to take home as many flying things as we wanted when we left. We declined. In fact, we almost gave up on this cache because the bugs were so bad, and the GPS was having a hard time getting a good signal under all those trees. But we’re stubborn and we did finally find the treasure.

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After that, we headed for Prescott. We stopped for lunch at Burger King, and then went to visit the nearby Sandy Hill Cemetery. This is a very interesting place, and you can get a lot of exercise just walking up and down the hills there. There is a set of stairs though, and they were made out of stones taken from the old canal at Cardinal. Part of the hunt has to do with counting these stones. Then you have to find certain tomb stones of some interesting people and get some more numbers before you can work out the final waypoint. We ran to sit in the car twice while we were in the cemetery. The rain didn’t last long, but it kept coming back. We found ourselves going around in circles there for a minute, but we did find the cache in a clever place, and wondered how we missed it the first time.

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From there we went to a commercial area where someone got pretty creative with their hide. Luckily it wasn’t busy there that day, or it would have been really hard to retrieve this one. We had it in a matter of moments, and off we went again......after a quick visit to the local Canadian Tire store, to get a new windshield wiper.

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Our final stop of the day wasn’t as successful. Well, it would have been, but things got too wet to continue. This was an easy multi, at the Prescott Harbour. We had no trouble going from one spot to the next, so I’m sure we would have found the cache. But just as we got near the stage, the sky decided to really open up. Luckily we had the stage roof to protect us from that downpour. Several others took shelter there too. Once it was over, and the others were out of sight we let the GPS lead us to the area where the cache is hidden. It turned out to be in some very wet bushes. I did venture in, but decided I’d better get out of there before I was soaked to the skin. We know where to look, so we’ll pick this one up next time we go through Prescott.

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Making Another Loop

The sun was shining on July 27th, so we made a run for it. Grabbing a couple of sandwiches and apples, some yogurt and a few cans of soft drinks, and off we went. You can’t waste the few good days we’ve had this year hanging around the house doing useful things. Those can wait!



I had laid out a loop once again, this time taking us as far as Carleton Place, if we went the whole way.



Our first stop was at Nicholson’s locks. Let’s be a bit more precise with that location. I was at Lower Nicholson’s locks. This is a place I’ve never been to before, though I’ve been to Upper Nicholson’s locks hundreds of times. There is an interesting difference, that I noticed within a few minutes of arriving. When they let the water out of the upper locks, the lower ones overflow. I asked about that, and they said it happens all the time. The Upper Nicholson’s locks have a 9 foot drop, while the Lower locks have only a 4 foot drop and there isn’t a very long stretch of water in between the two, so the upper one has a tendency to flood the lower one when they release the water. A slight engineering problem, one would think, though the canal itself is an engineering marvel, especially considering when it was built.

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We didn’t complete the search at the next stop. It was an old school house along a one lane deserted road off Roger Stevens Drive. It’s used by snowmobilers in the winter as a place to warm up as it’s also situated along the Rideau Trail. The problem was, the cache is somewhere along the trail too, but after wandering back into the forest for awhile, the boss got uncomfortable about leaving the car in such a place for any longer and we went back before finding the cache. I did find a few treasures along the way though. I’ve never seen red mushrooms before, or these other rather translucent flowers before. (see pictures)




If you know what either of them are, please leave a comment.




























Our next stop was more successful, though we thought we would have to get wet at one point. This is also along a forgotten road, in Beckwith this time. An excellent spot to go mudding, and apparently that’s just what others were doing there that day, as three vehicles passed us as we were coming out. I left the travel jeep at this location. It seemed appropriate.

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From there it wasn’t far to an unused portion of the 2nd line, which led into a beautiful swamp, they actually refer to as King's Creek. I can't believe I forgot to take a picture of that! I did get a shot of the big puddle on the roadway though. We’ve seen a lot of this sort of thing this year. The same mudding vehicles came from the other side of the swamp, and passed us on the old road once again. I think it’s very smart of them to travel in groups if they are going to try driving through that much water.

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From there we went to Ashton, and went looking for a cache hidden near a park. There was LOTS of poison parsnip all over the place. I put a warning on the geocaching site about that. This was probably the easiest find of the day though, and I picked up another travel bug. This time it was a fishing bob, so I’ll need to leave it someplace closer to water, I guess.

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Finally, we got to Carleton Place, and after stopping at Tim Hortons for refreshments and relief, we went off to pick up one more cache before heading home. This one was called the Spooky Pine Forest, but it didn’t seem at all spooky to us, especially since the cache was right on the edge of it. I left the travel bob and picked up another travel bug. This time, a frog. He can live with me for a week or two before I find him a new home.

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We did stop in Franktown on the way home, to grab one more, but it was located under cedars and it was late enough in the day that the mosquitoes were in attack mode, so we decided to leave that one for another time. It shouldn’t be hard to locate when we are driving through there some time. There seems to be a bit of old pavement to follow that we would never have noticed if we hadn’t been planning to find treasure.
We had a nice day out and never got rained on once :)

Birthday Loop

Saturday, July 12th, was the perfect day for geocaching. It was also the hubby’s birthday, and given the opportunity to choose what he wanted to do with his day, he decided geocaching was exactly what he wanted to do.

We set off shortly after 10 AM and made a loop from Smiths Falls, to Port Elmsley, to Perth, down the road towards Westport, but then turned off on the Narrows Lock Road, crossed the Narrows Lock and came out at Crosby. From there it was back through Portland to Smiths Falls. We stopped for lunch at Col. Saunders in Perth at 1 PM and got home at 6:30 PM. It was a really nice way to spend the day.

The first stop was a multi, and while we got the first waypoint, there were too many bugs of the sort that would hurt to stay around and work out the next waypoint. We’ll do the math and stop there some other day to continue. The site is just the chimney of an old church that burnt down a long time ago. We’ve passed it many times but never stopped to look this closely at it before.














The second stop was at the Port Elmsley Drive In. That was an easy find and we weren’t there long before heading for Perth.



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At Perth, we stopped at the Last Duel Park. A little girl came over to us as we were getting numbers to work out the final coordinates, and said, "My Dad sent me over to ask what you were doing." I guess the fact that I was holding a clipboard caught his eye. Rather than try to explain it to her, and then have her try to explain it to him, I just went over and filled him in on Geocaching. He had never heard of it, and has no internet connection, so he won’t be looking it up, but did think it sounded interesting.

We went off and eventually found the cache. When we got back to the area where the little girl was, I went over towards her, and she came running, saying, "What did you find?" I showed her our latest treasure, then offered her a choice from my bag of goodies. She chose a little orange ball and was thrilled.

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We had lunch and then left the Perth area in search of the Narrows Lock Road. I’ve never been to the Narrows before, but I’m glad the geocachers sent us this way.

There is a lot of rock back in there, along the road. It’s much like around Huntsville and Bracebridge. I really liked it. To me, it was the highlight of the day. This was a place we would never have found if we had not been treasure hunting, and it was a treasure unto itself.

This is where we picked up our first "Travel Bug"....or in this case, a Travel Jeep. They have numbers on them and you enter those online so the owners can track it as it travels from cache to cache. I’m going to keep track of it too, once I drop it off someplace else. I’ve seen geocoins, and such, before, but never picked one up until now as I wasn’t really sure how to handle them. But it’s not hard, so I’ll like do that more often in the future.

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We drove a little further down the road and came to the Narrows Locks. This is summit of the Rideau system as the water flows downhill towards both Ottawa and Kingston from here. I had always wondered about that, since I had noticed that the boats move downwards in the locks towards both cities. It’s a pretty little spot, and very active, with boats from both lakes waiting their turn to get to the other.

The cache there is along the Rideau Trail, and while we did start off looking for it, we decided it was just too hot to go for that kind of a hike that day.


We moved on to the Portland area, where there were two caches. One was in a rural setting, and looked pretty new. I picked up a beaded bookmark there that is quickly becoming a favourite. I may have to try making some of those myself. I think I was rather glad there were geotrails here, from previous treasure hunters, or I may not have found it so quickly.
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The Portland Roadside stop was at....well, a roadside stop. A bit of parkland with outdoor biffies and lots of milkweed flowering near the water. The cache here was just a micro, thankfully the only one of the day. Once the coordinates were nailed down, I had no difficulty finding the log book.
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We had lots of exercise, fresh air, and fun. We even stopped at Tim Horton’s before heading home.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Today we finally succeeded at finding a cache, and then failed at finding another one.

We had tried to find the cache at Burritts Rapids twice before. It’s a multi, and the first time we were stopped when we discovered the sign referred to for waypoint 3 had been destroyed. A couple of other waypoints described things by colours though, so we continued along the trail and tried to find something useful so we might continue our quest. No such luck.

After reading the logs online, I discovered that the clues for waypoint 3 were still there, written somewhere with magic marker, so off we went again. We got to where waypoint 4 was supposed to be, and I remembered reading in the logs that if you found yourself standing on the grass, not near anything, (as I did) to take 6 steps in a certain direction. I tried that and saw a metal post, the sort of which should have had a blue tag on it. It was bent over and had no tag .

It was back to the drawing board. Or in my case, the computer to e-mail the person in charge of this particular cache to say that it had been destroyed once again. He apparently checked and e-mailed me back to say I should be looking for a green 2x2 wooden post, in the same general area I had been. And if I didn’t find that, the next waypoint was also written in magic marker someplace else.....and he told me where.

Well, today we went to try this one again, and found the marker for waypoint 4 but it wasn’t on the sort of stake he told me it was. We could not find where he may have written it where he said that was either. But we did have new numbers from what we did find, so off we went.

Well, hey, we found waypoint 5, though it was sitting in the middle of a swamp (we HAVE had a lot of rain this year, after all). After that it was easy to find the actual cache. Mind you, the bugs were bad, so I grabbed the first thing that caught my eye without even looking at the rest of it, signed the book and got the heck out of there while there was still enough blood in my veins to survive the experience.

It only took 3 trips to this area to find the darn thing, but you can't say we aren't persistent.

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.................................

After that, we went looking for something at the Ferguson Forest Centre. There are several caches in there. We stood right at Ground Zero for one of them but never did find the cache. It was probably staring us in the face, since the guy that hid it is famous for cleverly disguising his caches. We even checked into an animal hole. Ground hog, or possibly fox. Nothing. More bugs, and a lot of heat, so we gave up on that for today.

I did venture down an embankment for some pictures, but the mud started sucking me into the little stream. One minute I was fine, then, without even moving, I started sliding. I was going to land in that stream for sure but I managed to grab something and stop myself just in time. I did get rather muddy in the process though.

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At the Head of the Nation

We had a lovely lunch with number one son in Brockville today, followed by a little shopping and then off to the boonies to hunt for treasure. Two new spots had popped up in my e-mail this week, down in the area of Carpenters Tomb. We decided to go take a look on the way home.

One was quite similar to Carpenters Tomb, though much smaller in size. I’d love to show you but that would spoil the discovery for other geocachers reading this. (the rest of you can contact me and I’ll send you a picture, if you like). Anyway, it wasn’t hard to find and I didn’t have to feed any bugs to get to the site.

The other cache was another matter. Luckily we came well equipped with bug spray and made good use of it before venturing into the woods. It was feeding time by then, you can be sure. The land is posted as "no trespassing, and no hunting" but I’ve now seen another geocacher post a picture standing near that sign saying "Oh, there WILL be hunting here today!" Actually, it didn’t take much hunting, but it was a lovely walk. The cache posting tells us about this sign, but also says that’s to keep others out. Apparently they don’t mind having the geocachers as we are a good bunch for cleaning up any trash found along the trail, and not
leaving any of our own.

The trail is well maintained, and leads to a couple of wooden bridges across Fern bank Creek that is apparently the headwaters of the Nation River. There is a mystery to be found and identified at the cache. I was so busy looking for, and then at, the cache that I almost missed the mysterious thing we were supposed to identify. Well, it’s not too mysterious once you find it, but it is the biggest one I’ve ever seen. Once again, I’m not about to spoil the fun for any geocachers by spilling the beans here.

All in all, it was a very nice day, especially since it didn’t rain and the sun actually came out for most of the day.

Father's Day

On Fathers Day we were invited to the cottage belonging to my daughter-in-law’s family. We had a lovely time there, as usual, and then went over to Bedford Mills to pick up the easy cache there. I had wanted to take my grandson, but left it too late, so I just grabbed something for him and ran it back over to the cottage before heading home. We’ll take him there to pick his own treasure someday, unless his parents decide to give it a try. I left them with the cache listing since they now have a GPS of their own.

I chose a little frog because he was wearing a shirt with frogs on it that day. What I really wanted to choose was the football whistle. That would have driven his parents nuts on the way home so I left it there. His family better feel thankful for that!

The Manotick caches

As I mentioned in the previous post, we also went to Manotick that day. The first stop took us to a really nice park. The cache wasn’t hard to find though I imagine that during the busy season one would have to use a bit of stealth. This cache is all about pins, and I certainly found a pretty one.


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On the way home we took in one more, on the outskirts of Manotick. Actually, the listing said to catch it while you can before the area becomes Mintoized. The people of Manotick aren’t happy about the rapid rate of development in the area. It will certainly change the nature of the place.
First we had to locate a 4 digit number and then do some calculations to come up with the waypoint. The cache was supposedly "kid friendly" but we waded through a lot of really tall grass, and trampled down a lot of clover and really began to wonder if we had used the right number to do our calculations. But then we found it. I guess we came in the long way, but were rewarded with a well stocked amunition box type of cache.

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Osgoode Area Caches

On Thursday, June 12, we decided we had time to go exploring the Osgoode, Manotick region. I printed off a few cache listings and off we went.
Our first stop took us on a long walk down a trail that had many large animal prints. They had definite claw marks and were too big to be dogs. It was obvious there were several animals roaming this trail, and I admit I kept looking back over my shoulder. There are all kinds of coyotes and bears around these parts, but since there were so many prints, I’m more inclined to think it was the coyotes. I have some pictures to show a friend who works for the Ministry of Natural Resources so maybe I’ll know what we were looking at soon. My own online search pretty well confirms the coyote idea though.

Anyway, it was a nice walk through the woods, with wildflowers growing here and there. The first path we followed ran along the side of a big field. Further back into the woods I noticed that the trees had actually been planted in straight rows in some areas.
As usual, in such areas, bug repellent was a definite necessity.

The second stop was at a town park. Of course, in such cases you have to be careful that people don’t see what you are doing. There were several very small children playing in the park. We pulled the car over by the side of the road to get our bearings on the GPS and at that point, I’m thinking that the woman with the little kids is wondering what we’re up to. We drove around the block and came back, and then parked someplace more logical. We did some walking around and then found the cache in a very clever and unexpected hiding place. A couple of the kids, by this time, were headed in our direction, so we actually took the cache back to the car to do the trade. Luckily the woman decided to gather the kids up and take them out of the park about that time, so we were able to put the cache back in it’s hiding place without anyone seeing anything. I think this one would have been impossible during the evening, as there would likely have been a lot of older kids around then.

Geocaching From the Other Side

Last year, while on a Car Rally, I discovered there is an ancient cemetery near my place, that I never knew about. It’s actually not only the oldest cemetery along the Rideau system, it’s likely the oldest in Eastern Ontario. It’s called McGuigan Cemetery.

Anyway, on Wednesday, June 11, we decided to go explore it, and see if there was some place we could hide a cache of our own. We located a good spot, and now have a container, so it’s a matter of learning the correct way to do things. Hopefully I can get this cache published in time for the next Go and Get Em event which I believe is the 28th of this month! Well, maybe I won’t get it done by then, but I’ll try.

Tip to .....well, not quite Tip

On Tuesday, June 10, we decided to try the Burritts Rapids Tip to Tip cache again. Last time we didn’t get very far as there was a sign missing, but we have since discovered that the information is still available, sign or not, so we were able to do the calculations to get to the next waypoint. Unfortunately, that one seems to have been vandalized also. I’ll be watching the logs closely, and if and when it sounds like it’s been fixed, we will pick up where we left off and finish the hunt.
On the last attempt I spotted a red trillium. This time we saw a turtle that seemed a little different from others we’re used to. I’ll have to look this one up.

Lower and Upper Brewers Locks

The next lock along the way is Lower Brewers Lock. It was a great place to stop for a picnic, which is just what we did before searching out the cache. There is some sort of art studio on the far side of the bridge but we didn’t stop in there this time. This was the first time I’ve ever been to this lock, though I’ve lived on the Rideau Canal System for the past 34 years.

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We followed the road up a big hill and went looking for Upper Brewers Lock. Just as we were about to give up, we came upon the sign. We got there just as the lock man was shutting down for the night. It must have been 4pm. Of course, they would stay open later during the summer.

This is also a pretty site, and there were two families of geese there. We had to pass where they were to get to the cache, so they moved into the water. They are likely used to such disturbances, as they didn’t go far or fast.

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Kingston Mills

On the way home, on Monday June 9th, we decided to check out some of the locks we had never been to. Well, actually, we
accidentally found ourselves driving by the first one last year, but didn’t have time to stop. It looked pretty interesting though, so we wanted to go there this year, to check it out properly.

Kingston Mills must be very busy in the summer as there are long docks at the upper and lower ends of the locks, as well as a basin below the top lock. The drop is significant at this site and I was surprised to see how shallow the water would be, going from one stage to the other. You sure wouldn’t want a very deep hull if you were planning to pass this way.

To find the cache we had to correctly answer a series of questions about the various fish found in the Rideau. There is a sign that holds all the answers, if you read it correctly. Once you have those answers, you have to plug all the correct numbers into the right places to build the waypoint where the cache is. We apparently did a great job as we found the cache without further problems. I do think it was good that there were two of us working on this puzzle though, as we corrected each others mistakes as we worked through it.

We took the time to explore the locks, from top to bottom but didn’t have time to do a second cache in the area which may have had us doing some rock climbing . I’m all for trying that though. Maybe next year.

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While in Kingston, I thought we’d visit with a long lost cousin. I actually met her on Facebook, but we’ve gotten together a few times since then. I looked up her postal code and discovered there were geocaches right in her neighbourhood, so we thought we would pick up a cache or two while we were at it. But the closest one was in the Cataraqui Woods and the bugs were out, so we just visited instead.

She told us her sister used to do that, so I’m going to challenge her sister to find this one next time she goes for a visit. We went the next morning, but like other city caches we looked for, even though this one was in the woods next to a park, there was just too much trash. I don’t enjoy this sort of situation. We didn't find the cache, but I did see a lovely wild rose growing by a fence post.

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Meadowbrook Mystery

We knew there was another cache right near the Ambassador Hotel, where we were staying. We also knew it was along what may be a another swampy area, somewhere between a major road and a railway line. The trick was to find a way to get to this area.

In the country, that wouldn’t have been a problem. But in a city, most rivers and waterways have houses along them, and no access to what lays behind. Well, there may be access, but finding it might be difficult. And once you do find it, where are you allowed to park?


On Sunday, June 8, 2008 (okay, so I'm a little behind in my blogging, but hey, I have a life), after cruising around in circles a few times, we decided to try from a different angle, and that’s when we found not only access to the trail, but a place to park too. Luckily nobody else had parked there when we needed it. This cache is listed as the Meadowbrook Mystery, though the main mystery is why they named it that. It was well worth the effort to find it though, as we were immediately treated to the sight of ducks turtles sunning themselves on the rocks in the river. Something else was splashing around in the water too, but I wasn’t sure what at that point.
We wandered down the trail, and discovered that the graffiti artists had been busy under the overpass. I’ve never been this close to graffiti before, but certainly didn’t expect to find it in this particular location. About there we saw more thrashing around in the river and it turned out to be some very large carp, that apparently come up the Cataraqui Creek every year to spawn.

The trail wound through some nice countryside, complete with a little stream and lots of wild flowers. The cache itself was off the trail in the woods where the mosquitoes were just waiting for us to arrive. I’ve never seen so much in any one cache before, and would love to have explored it further, but only had so much blood to give, so grabbed the first thing on the top of the pile and replaced it with the biggest thing in my kit (since it was also the easiest thing to grab), and got us out of there as quickly as possible. I was almost back to the car before I realized that what I had picked up there was a fuzzy bald eagle puppet. I know someone who will likely love that :)

On the way out we saw a rabbit sitting on the trail. That was a nice bonus. It was a great evening for geocaching and a great trail to follow, bugs and all.


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City Caching

We spent the weekend in Kingston, for the annual martial arts event known as Kingston
Kicks. As usual, we had a great time. I took a binder full of cache listings, in case we
had any spare time to go exploring and we managed to squeeze in a few during the late
afternoon or evenings each day.

We did our first ever city cache on Saturday. Actually we looked for three caches that
day, but we only succeeded once.

The first one was in a parking lot, so you had to wait for any vehicles that came along to
be empty, and then keep an eye open for new ones arriving. We waited patiently for one
vehicle to leave. The lady in it must have been waiting for someone to finish work as she
sat there for quite a while. When she left we move our car right over in front of where the
cache was supposedly hidden and then had to wait when another woman showed up with
an entire grocery basket full of stuff to load into her vehicle. After all that we looked in
the only place there was to look and found nothing. There simply was no place else to
look. It was a big empty parking lot, with just a couple of well spaced trees for
decoration and one of them was right in front of us.

We did better at the second one. Luckily, by then, the businesses it was near were closed
as I don’t know how you can look for this sort of cache on the sly. In fact, it wouldn’t
surprise me if someone who worked nearby, decided to call the cops if they spotted
people like us prowling around like that. I must say that I really prefer a more wilderness
setting for such activities. As it was, gloves were needed as there were all sorts of other
gross things where this cache was located. There was even a pair of thongs!

I’d had enough of this city type caching so we went looking for something a little more
rural. We found a trail along a swamp and started in on that, but it was too wet and the
mosquitoes were hungry so we decided to give up for the night. It looks like an
interesting area though, so we may try that one again some other time.

Air and Water

Sunday we went out for the annual free hamburgers at Harvey’s and decided to see if we could improve our luck by checking out a couple of local caches.

The first one was at the Smiths Falls International Airport. It seems that airports and cemeteries are popular places to hide caches as we’ve been to several of both. This one wasn’t hard to find. In fact, I found it myself, and I wasn’t the one holding the GPS at the time. This would be a good cache to take kids to, for sure. Lots of aircraft took off while we were there, so that made it even more interesting.



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On the way home we stopped at Kilmarnock. This where one of the locks on the Rideau Canal is located. There are two caches there, and we tried for them before. We found one easily enough, last time, but failed to find the other. Of course, that was last year when we were pretty new at this. This time we had no trouble locating the cache. It’s amazing what a little experience can do.



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Other Treasures to be Found

Saturday was a beautiful day, so off we went in search of treasures. We were not having much luck as one stop we made was at a place so full of garbage that we didn’t feel safe poking about looking for the cache. At the other place we went looking for, we discovered an empty hole, covered by a stone, so we think that cache has been stolen. I’ve now seen pictures of the cache where the trash is, and it’s big. Reports say it can be spotted from 20 yards away. That means, to me, that it's likely attached to a tree with a bungy cord, or something, so there is no need to poke about in the trash. We may try for that again sometime.

In the meantime, we did manage to discover some treasures of another sort. It was Doors Open day in Brockville and we had time to visit two of the buildings on the list. One was the Armouries and the other was the Fulford Place.


The Brockville Armouries was considered a state-of-the-art building when it was constructed in 1900. It cost $50,000 at the time, but it had a new roof put on last year and the roof alone likely cost more than that, at today's prices.


It is currently used by the Brockville Rifles, the 113th Royal Canadian Army Cadets and the Vampire Squadron Air Cadets.

We got to go upstairs and look around. The officer’s mess is the highlight of the building, with comfortable, stuffed furniture and a good looking bar.


Fulford Place is a magnificent Edwardian mansion, overlooking the St. Lawrence. It’s a museum now, but we’ve never been inside before. What better day to go than when it’s free.

One of the guides expressed that the men all seemed most interested in the woods used throughout the house, while the women were interested in the art. There was plenty of both.


Every room was different. One had silk wall coverings, while another had tooled leather. There was a room full of mahogany, both on the ceilings and paneled walls. There seemed to be fireplaces in most rooms, but they were all different. The house was actually heated by a hot water system, the original radiators still work.

There were intricate patterns carved into the wood throughout, and fancy tiles and marvelous marble. We were shown a reproduction of the dumb waiter that had been used to get the food had been prepared in the original kitchen below (where the gift shop is now) up to the very efficient small serving room just off the breakfast nook and main dining room. Another unusual feature was the very wide staircase. The idea was that if a member of the household were to meet a servant going about their business while going up or down the stairs, there was ample room for the servant to get way over and not be in the way.

There was more to see, but closing time came quickly and they wanted all the visitors out as they were expecting a wedding party to arrive for pictures. We did have time to walk around the outside of the house though, and see the Italian garden. We went home feeling like we had, indeed, discovered some treasure, even if it wasn’t listed on the geocaching site.

The Old Railway Bridge

We drove over to take a closer look at the old railroad bridge, in Smiths Falls. It’s been out of use and in that upward position for several decades now. We ventured onto it and also the railway bridge going the other way where someone has run some extra boards......probably so they can take their 4 wheelers and snowmobiles across it.

The cache is hidden somewhere in the hundreds of nooks and crannies of the swing bridge. You have to be really careful though, as the locals think this is a grand place to throw beer bottles. After a good look around and consulting the GPS, I think we have a pretty clear idea of just where to look more closely, but we were not dressed in an appropriate manner at the time to pursue the matter. We’ll come back for this one, though I believe it will also be something small enough to just hold a rolled up log scroll.

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A Sweet Treat

The long weekend was rather dreary, weather wise, but we did manage to do a little exploring.
The first stop was a quick grab near the Hershey Chocolate factory. The cache was found in the only logical spot in the vicinity of the coordinates, if you consider that anywhere else would likely have been underwater earlier this year. There were no reports of damage in the logs though, so it didn’t take long to find. It was a micro cache, so there was just a log to sign, and no treasure.

Of course, we did a little exploring inside the Chocolate Shop too, and got our treasures there. They always give you something free, even if you don’t buy anything. We did buy a box of little kiss shaped cookies while we were in there though. Too bad this is the last year Hershys will be open. I think there are some plans afoot to keep some form of the Chocolate Shop in the area though.

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You Can't go Home Again

Sunday was Mother’s Day. After a lovely breakfast, we went to Ottawa to do a bit of shopping. I knew of a cache near were we would be, so I brought the GPS along.



Back in the 1960’s, I lived, and then worked at CFB Rockcliffe. I spent a total of 11 years there, but when we drove through what was left of the base, I got a real shock. The big building I used to work in is gone, as are all the homes in the area where I used to live. The remaining ones are mainly empty, though I did see the odd car parked here and there, and a clothesline full of clothes. From the look of the remaining roads, though, I doubt that these houses are going to be left standing much longer. The parade square was actually growing grass in many places.

We made our way to the Rockcliffe Parkway, a road that definitely didn’t exist when I lived in the area. It runs below the cliff I used to live on, and through some rather nice parkland. There are lots of bicycle trails and a marina down there too.




The cache we were looking for is really one of a series of twelve. I haven’t been to any of the others yet. In fact, this is the first time I’ve gone geocaching around the city at all. But if the rest of this series is as nice as this one, I might just have to look them all up. The person who placed the cache went to a bit of trouble. I don’t want to give anything away by saying just what, but he didn’t just drop a container behind a rock or cover it with a piece of bark, as is often the case.




Finding this one made us feel better about not finding the one we looked for yesterday. I’m just about ready to become a premium member, so I can just download any cache that happens to be on what ever route we happen to be traveling. Am I hooked, do you think?

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