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.GC15CRX
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.
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