Mountain Township Loop

What a wonderful weekend to go exploring.

I decided, that since we went looking for friends along the way last time, that we could do the same thing this time. There is this very interesting lady I know, who is into martial arts, belly dancing, archery, medieval reenactments and leather work, and who knows what else. She also raises chickens, I noticed, while looking at some pictures on Facebook recently. I plotted a loop around the area in which she lives and thought perhaps we could track her down while we were in the area.

Our first stop of the day was at the old Van Camp cemetery. GC21KYT Now, this is in Mountain Township which is really quite flat so it can’t have been named after a geographical feature. Apparently it was named for the Right Reverend Jacob Mountain (1750 -1825), the first Protestant Bishop of Quebec. The cache was cleverly placed, but not hard to find, and we were quickly on our way.

This is when we made a little side trip and had a short visit with the lady mentioned above. An archer practice was about to begin, but we were welcomed and introduced to some of the chickens. I’d say she’s not in it for the eggs or meat since the chickens all have names and are a wild assortment of breeds. It’s more like she collects them. And she certainly loves them.

We made our way from there to another cemetery, also in Mountain Township, but this one at Mulloy Road. GC21KYW This cemetery, unlike the previous one, is still in use.

From there we went to Inkerman, home of the famous Inkerman Rockets hockey team. GC21PAC This cache was a micro. I prefer the ones with treasures, though there hadn’t been much in the ones we had found so far this day anyway. This one, being in a film canister, took a little longer for us to find, but the coordinates were right on, so it was a good test of the accuracy for my GPS.

Then we moved on to Baldwin’s Bridge. GC1D5B0 First we had to locate the plaque commemorating the building of the bridge. Then we had to decipher what the instructions wanted us to do next in order to find a tag on which we would find the next set of coordinates. After we found that we had to go find where those coordinates took us. I don’t remember what was in that cache either, but the real treasure was finding some of the most amazing fungus I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if the person who set up this cache put it there on purpose for people to see these works of art, or if it was just great luck, but this, for us, was the highlight of the day.

After that, we were back at another nearby cemetery. GC21PA8 The stones had obviously been moved to this location as they stood side by side in curve. One of the grave markers was very unusual, and amazing to look at. From a distance it looked like an old tree. But when you got closer you found that it was, in fact, carved stone, with lots of interesting embellishments. The more you looked at it, the more you saw. I would guess that it was created for someone who was very close to nature in life.

We then drove the short distance into village of South Mountain. Someone had given lessons on geocaching last year, and had placed a few caches of different varieties in order to teach people how to go about finding them. I guess we should have attended the class as there was one we couldn’t figure out. More than likely I’m misinterpreting something, or made a mathematical error while working out the puzzle. At any rate, I’ll have more time to ponder this now that I’m back home, and perhaps we’ll pick that one up next time we head in that direction. There are certainly enough other caches in that area to keep us busy some other day.

But we were successful at locating two others placed for this practice session. One was another micro, and the other was the only time we were taken into the woods all day. I must say, I’m just as glad as there were plenty of mosquitoes in there. There was also some sort of animal den in the ground near the cache. Not something terribly small either.

It was a great afternoon, if not as adventurous as some.