Quick and Easy

Saturday, June 6th, we thought we would take the grandson geocaching again, but we couldn't get anyone on the phone. Oh well, we decided to go to his area anyway, and maybe someone would be home by the time we got there. No such luck. So we checked out a nearby cache on our own.

I think we'll take him back to this one, as it's easy to find, and right about his eye level, so he should be able to find it on his own ..... maybe even with the GPS in hand, as he seems to have quickly figured out how to read it.

There are quite a few caches at Ferguson Forest Centre, and that's where we took him last time. This one though, you could drive right up to, if you wanted to. There were some flowers along the road that I can't identify. And on the other side was a fence. People often walk their dogs in this area, and though there are poop and scoop rules being obeyed, nobody apparently told the pet owners that they should also carry out what they retrieve. We spotted a few plastic bags, with obvious contents, hanging from the fence along the way.

Birthday adventures

Sunday was my birthday, and the sun was out, so what better way to spend it than going for a walk in the woods while searching for treasure. We decided to take our 4 year old grandson with us on this outing. He loved it, and even managed to stay out of all the mud we found along the way. He was quick to point out such things as yellow and red trilliums and butterflies and he enjoyed moving any broken branches or sticks that had landed on the path where we were walking. Going around a bend and discovering a bridge or boardwalk simply thrilled him. He definitely liked being "way far back in the woods" and the chance to choose a treasure from the cache was just icing on the cake.

We actually took in 3 caches that day, though were only successful at two of them. The first was Howard’s Middle #3 at the Ferguson Forestry Centre. (GCH82Z) That’s the one with all the boardwalks and bridges. There are lots of trails in that bit of woods, and I’m sure, without the GPS I might even get lost for a while, or come out at the wrong parking lot. But it’s a lovely walk, well worth the time. My grandson surprised me by passing up various things in the cache and choosing a little hair clip because he thought his mommy would like it. What a nice boy he is!

After that we took him to play at playground at South Grenville Park. There is a cache in the woods there too, (GCYG1C) though I suspected we wouldn’t find, as it was hidden by a cacher named Wareed. He can be rather tricky. We didn’t find the cache but we have not given up, and will go back and try again sometime. While we were there another gentleman came looking for the cache also. He didn’t think it would be too hard to find and held out his hands to indicate how big it was. He was still there when we left, muttering something about how we might find him there in three weeks when we come back. We had to give up the search in order to get the grandson home in time for my birthday dinner. That was a lovely surprise that I didn’t learn about until we arrived to pick him up.

After dinner we went for a little walk to show my daughter-in-law how to read the GPS so their family could go geocaching also. I told the story of how there was a cache within site of her family cottage a while back, but now there is one very close to their home also. (GC1NRY2) By this time even the 4 year old could read the GPS, so he was explaining it to his mommy. It didn’t take long to find the cache (which is really good when you are trying to encourage someone to try this activity), so now she’s all set to take the family adventuring soon. I just hope we get to go with them occasionally. I think that would be great!

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Today we finally succeeded at finding a cache, and then failed at finding another one.

We had tried to find the cache at Burritts Rapids twice before. It’s a multi, and the first time we were stopped when we discovered the sign referred to for waypoint 3 had been destroyed. A couple of other waypoints described things by colours though, so we continued along the trail and tried to find something useful so we might continue our quest. No such luck.

After reading the logs online, I discovered that the clues for waypoint 3 were still there, written somewhere with magic marker, so off we went again. We got to where waypoint 4 was supposed to be, and I remembered reading in the logs that if you found yourself standing on the grass, not near anything, (as I did) to take 6 steps in a certain direction. I tried that and saw a metal post, the sort of which should have had a blue tag on it. It was bent over and had no tag .

It was back to the drawing board. Or in my case, the computer to e-mail the person in charge of this particular cache to say that it had been destroyed once again. He apparently checked and e-mailed me back to say I should be looking for a green 2x2 wooden post, in the same general area I had been. And if I didn’t find that, the next waypoint was also written in magic marker someplace else.....and he told me where.

Well, today we went to try this one again, and found the marker for waypoint 4 but it wasn’t on the sort of stake he told me it was. We could not find where he may have written it where he said that was either. But we did have new numbers from what we did find, so off we went.

Well, hey, we found waypoint 5, though it was sitting in the middle of a swamp (we HAVE had a lot of rain this year, after all). After that it was easy to find the actual cache. Mind you, the bugs were bad, so I grabbed the first thing that caught my eye without even looking at the rest of it, signed the book and got the heck out of there while there was still enough blood in my veins to survive the experience.

It only took 3 trips to this area to find the darn thing, but you can't say we aren't persistent.

GC76B0

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After that, we went looking for something at the Ferguson Forest Centre. There are several caches in there. We stood right at Ground Zero for one of them but never did find the cache. It was probably staring us in the face, since the guy that hid it is famous for cleverly disguising his caches. We even checked into an animal hole. Ground hog, or possibly fox. Nothing. More bugs, and a lot of heat, so we gave up on that for today.

I did venture down an embankment for some pictures, but the mud started sucking me into the little stream. One minute I was fine, then, without even moving, I started sliding. I was going to land in that stream for sure but I managed to grab something and stop myself just in time. I did get rather muddy in the process though.

GC103D5