I use Twitter, and had searched for Merrickville stories. One said that monkees were taking over Merrickville. Huh? I followed that lead to discover that a lady named Louise Ingram creates monkey beads out of glass (lampwork), and the ones that don’t turn out quite the way she had hoped get left around town for people to find. There is nothing I love more than a treasure hunt so I decided to keep my eyes open in the future when walking about the village.Then Friday she announced on her blog that she had just set three more monkees free. She had also posted some pictures from around town, and I figured they had to be along that route. So, I took myself for a walk, and used my brother’s old trick to locate something. I thought, "If I were a Monkee, where would I be?" I got an instant picture in my head and made that my destination. If I didn’t find one there, I wasn’t meant to be searching. But oh.....I found one before I got there. In fact, it was so out in the open, it was amazing that it hadn’t been picked up before I passed by. Still, I had a destination in mind, and I’m too curious not go check it out. That’s where the dilemma came in, as I did find another one where I had decided to look. Now I had two, but I knew I shouldn’t, so I wanted to put one back. But which one? Smiler, with his big toothy grin would make a better showing hanging on a necklace. But Buttons was as cute as a button (which may be why he had that name). He was much smaller though, and not as likely to be noticeable on the sort of necklace I usually would make. I couldn’t make up my mind, so I thought I’d sleep on it.
The little monkees had a sleep over at my place, and by morning I knew what to do. We would definitely be going geocaching sometime that weekend, so I would drop one off in a cache somewhere. One of the monkees was going on an adventure! I still didn’t know which one (it’s hard to part with such treasures), so I consulted a few people, and let the majority rule. Buttons is just too cute to let go of, so Smiler went to Brockville.
I had a list of caches I thought we might get to visit, but the first order of business was to get fed, so we headed downtown, where the Food Festival was underway and spent an enjoyable time walking the streets trying to decide what to eat. Although there were some pretty interesting choices, we ended up with a wonderful medium pizza, with 3 toppings for $8.99, as we could sit inside at 241 Pizza.After that we had to make a stop to look for a wedding present before we could go geocaching. Unfortunately, by the time we actually could start our hunt, it had started to spit rain, and the sky was promising something worse. The closest cache to the store was down a little blocked off dead end, and that’s where Smiler is hiding. Now, while I had thought it would make a better story if I had a big snake swallow him at another cache on the list, I wasn’t sure we would get that far before the rain came. I felt I had to let go of him at the first opportunity, in case it was also the last. The cache where I left him was perfect though, since there were other trackable items there, and whoever finds the little monkee may be more inclined to report him found. His creator does like to know her little critters have found a good home.
We went from there to a nice paved trail along a little creek. I believe this trail actually winds through town, all the way back to the St. Lawrence, but this is the first time I’ve ever been on any of it. That’s what I love about geocaching most. It gets you to explore places you pass all the time.There where three caches along this trail, but we only hit two of them as the third one was just a micro cache, and further out, so we may have gotten too wet if we had gone looking for that.
The first one along the way was cleverly hidden, but not difficult to find. The second one was where the big black snake resides. But upon finding it, I discovered that it was a good thing I’d left the monkee where I had, because the snake really only swallows a log book, and not treasures. From there we had time for one more, on the way home. It was just placed on a piece of land that will be developed soon. We thought we had better have a look before it was, as afterwards that cache would no longer exist.
It was a nice day, with nothing but easy caches (meaning we were successful without too much effort), and while I left a monkee for someone to report found, I also picked up two other trackable items along the way. That means I have to go out again, as soon as possible, to find places to drop those off also. One is a fair size though, so it may be a while before I find a cache with enough room to accommodate it. Wish me luck.
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