Spencerville Mill

Our final stop for the day (Aug 26,2007) was at the Spencerville Mill.

There is a nice little park next to the mill. I’m sure the flowers are beautiful at the right time of year. The park isn’t very big, but it might be a good place for a picnic sometime. I might never have found the cache at this location if it wasn’t for the encoded hint at site listing on www.geocaching.com as I was literally standing on it.

My favorite "treasure" so far was found at this location. It was a fridge magnet created by one of the previous geocachers. I now frequently use what it says. "I use multi-billion dollar military satellites to hunt for Tupper Ware in the woods."

GCWBKY

Battle of the Windmill

In 1838 about two hundred American "Patriot Hunters" crossed the St Lawrence, about 2 km east of Prescott, Ontario, with ideas of capturing Fort Wellington. They ran aground at Windmill Point, and thought the gristmill, with thick stone walls, would make a great fortress. They were able to inflict some damage by placing sharp shooters high up in the windmill, but were soon well outnumbered by the British forces. They were cut off from escape by gun boats on the river, and soon ran out of food, water and medical supplies. The battle lasted only 4 days before they were forced to surrender.

I was to this site years ago, when my children were small.. I don’t remember it having trails or being able to get to the water in those days. I may just have to return with a picnic and my grandson, to watch the ships go by someday.

GCJHPA

Galopo Canal

I’ve been to Cardinal, Ontario many times in the past but never got to explore the wonderful parkland there. It’s well worth the trip. There are lots of people around, but not near the cache.
Though now we have the St Lawrence seaway, two older canals run through the town. There used to be some mighty rapids at this point, and the water still flows very quickly through one of these canals. The day we were there teenages were jumping off a bridge, and letting the current take them quickly downstream. This didn’t look like a very safe practice to me but there was even a mother taking part in the fun.

In another area, many scuba divers could be seen, both in and out of the water. It’s a very popular spot for diving as there are several sunken vessels in the area. There is no need, however, to dive to see the remains of a steamer, Conestoga, which sank on May 22, 1922 outside Lock 28 of the Old Galop Canal.

I think I'm going to start adding the waypoint name, in case anyone wants to follow in my footstesp. All you have to do is go to http://www.geocaching.com/ and enter the waypoint name.

I'm going to add them to the end of each entry.

They look like this:

GCG4FX

The Blue Church

I guess I should have taken a picture of the tiny Blue Church, but I didn’t think of doing that since it’s not an unusual site to me. Now, of course, I remember chastising an internet friend for not sharing pictures of kangaroos just because he sees them all the time and didn’t think of them as something unusual enough to bother photographing. Strangely, though cemeteries are also not an uncommon sight to anyone, I don’t seem to hesitate to take pictures of those for some reason.. Unfortunately, thought the GPS coordinates were dead on, we found nothing there. It was such an obvious place to hide something, and not even slightly out of the line of sight for passers-by. Someone must have gotten curious as to what people were doing there and gone to check for themselves, and then made off with the entire stash. Honestly people, there is nothing of value in these caches so please leave them alone unless you want to play the game.

GCW13C

The day continues

On the same day that we went to Carpenter’s Tomb, we checked out five other sites.

As I’d like to post a picture of each one, I’ll report them separately. The first one was hubby’s first solo find. I found a big fungus and was busy playing with the camera at the time. This geocache is known as "L in the woods" and refers to some L shaped cement structures we found there. I don’t know what they were. They could have been part of a foundation for something, or just discarded forms from some other construction site. Finding them in the woods was unusual, to be sure.


This bit of woods was along the St Lawrence River. We also saw deer tracks on the beach and lots of goose poop in the grass, so I guess it’s a pretty lively spot at certain times of the day.

GCJJE3

Carpenters Tomb....is NOT at the Cemetary

There is treasure in these parts, so the story goes. It seems a man named Carpenter made his fortune selling furs and honey to the traders way back in the days of Upper and Lower Canada. He never married, or had any children, so he hid his gold and money somewhere on his property, to protect it from the thieves and pirates while he was out working his trap lines.

We had never heard this story before, and went for a drive one day, (August 26, 2007) to see what we could find. We knew we were in the right area when we came upon Carpenter’s Cemetery. That, in itself is worth taking time to explore. There is a curious sign that says "Enter at your own Risk". I’ve never seen one like that at a graveyard before, though perhaps they were afraid some of the older, leaning tombstones might fall on visitors. Unfortunately some vandals gave many of them a helping hand and now there are lots of stones that have been tipped over or broken in half. The orange flags in the picture indicate where there was damage done. There were an awful lot of orange flags, unfortunately. Luckily someone has been found willing to do the repairs at this historic site.

Just down the road from that there is a trail through the woods. Following that we discovered a pile of rocks. Now, I’ve seen many farmers pile up rocks from their fields, but I’ve never seen a rock pile like this. It’s a large rectangle, larger than my own home, so certainly much larger than any foundation someone of those days would attempt. The edges of the pile are stacked like one would, if building a stone wall though. The thing is, this rectangle is also filled in with stone, to a height of about 5 feet. It’s flat on top and you can actually walk around up there. If Mr. Carpenter hid his fortune in that rock pile, it’s definitely safe from me. It made my muscles hurt just to think of moving all those rocks. This rock pile has become known, locally, as Carpenters Tomb.

Someone suggested to me that perhaps it was there to distract people, and that the treasure was hidden somewhere else on the property. Well, I know people have been looking for it for years, but the rest of the property is now very flat, with trees planted in straight rows. I suspect there was a lot of digging and earth moving done for that to happen. Any treasure that had been buried would have been found.

The only treasure we found that day was the geocache, hidden exactly where the coordinates indicated. I wouldn’t mind going back there and poking about again someday though.
They have requested that no pictures of the actual tomb be posted, so you will just have to imagine it.....unless you want to go look for yourself. It’s not far from Brockville, Ontario, just off the county Rd 16.

GCQY5P

Back By Popular Demand

I’ve had several people ask why I’ve stopped adding to this blog. That rather surprised me as I originally thought I was posting this stuff just so I’d remember where we’ve been and what we’ve seen. Apparently others like to follow me on my explorations, so I’ll try now to fill in on some of the places we went to before I started blogging the adventures.

As for the reason I stopped, well, the sun started going down sooner, and since my hubby has a distance to travel, to and from work, it just got too dark to go any time except on weekends. Then we were prowling around the woods one day when we heard gun shots, and remembered it was hunting season. We got out of there and decided not to wander around such places again until hunting season was over. I’m not really excited about urban geocaching though, so, while we did try a few in parks it was harder to hunt for the treasures without being seen. Not long after that, the snow came. Well, some people apparently continue to geocache through the winter, but I’m not one of them. And even if I were, I think the over abundance of snow this year would have stopped me anyway.

So, let’s see what I can find to tell you about, before all this white stuff melts and I get to go on some new adventures.