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!