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.

GCYRNX

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.

GCXY8J and GCYH3D

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.