Wolfe Island

We attended our favourite Martial Arts weekend, Kingston Kicks, recently and managed to get in some geocaching in the process.

First, before even checking into the Ambassador Hotel, in Kingston ON, we took the ferry over to Wolfe Island. It was a nice day, and we were not sure we would get another chance. We had never been over there before, but you can see many of the wind turbines from the mainland.

I often hear how noisy they are, but it there was only a slight breeze and though they were all rotating gently, we didn’t hear a thing. There are a lot of them though, in every direction you look.

There are probably about 40 caches on the island, but mostly we went after the non micro ones. We covered most of the island in the 3 hours we were there. It’s not really all that large.

The first one we found had a surprise waiting for us. I’d rather not tell you what that was, but it certainly made me think we were in for a fun day. There was also a travel bug in that cache, so I took that and have since placed it closer to home.

A lot of the caches were in or near trees, living or dead, but there was also one hidden inside another container that would definitely freeze to the ground and not be accessible in the winter time. It was easy enough to find, but even so, I’ve never seen anyone else hide a cache quite like that before.

There really isn’t much on the island to see, other than the wind turbines, but my favorite cache of the day was down along the lake shore. There was some amazing scenery there, but the sun was facing the wrong way at that point, so my best pictures were facing the opposite way. Too bad. Maybe I can get back there earlier in the day next time. And I do think there will be a next time.

Kingston Kicks and Beyond

The weekend of May 23-24 we went on our annual trip to Kingston Kicks, a martial arts weekend, held at the Ambassador Hotel. Saturday was a full day of seminars and Sunday there was a tournament. I love to go to these things as I get to see lots of people I don’t see otherwise. It’s like a big reunion every time. There is even a party on Saturday night, and a good time was had by all.
On Saturday I got to meet a couple of ladies I have only ever talked to online before, and we went off to lunch at East Side Marios. I’m not involved in the seminars, so it was good to have something to occupy my time for part of the day.

Later, after the seminars, we went after our first cache. Kingston has a lot of micro caches, and, I’m sorry, even though the bigger ones don’t have any "real" treasure in them, I still like them better than micros. All that work just to sign a tiny log just isn’t as much fun somehow. I knew there was a micro nearby, and off and on all day, I tried to get the GPS to pick up the satellite signals from inside the building. No such luck. There must be too much steel in the building, or something. But once we got outside, it was obviously not far off. We found it and then went looking for another one, also within walking distance, but even though we found lots of good hiding places, that one eluded us. Perhaps we will have better luck with it next year.


Sunday we stopped in Gananoque on the way home. First we went to a nice park with water running through it. There are boardwalks over the dams there, and lots of art to look at also. That cache was officially missing that day, according to the online log, but we thought we would scope out the area, and maybe figure out where to look next time we go through town, just in case the cache came back, or got replaced by the owner. We have driven over that bridge several times, but this was the first time we had ever stopped to explore the park.






Then we went to visit an old friend who usually is still down south when we are going through. This time we caught him at home and had a nice little visit with him and his new wife. After that we went to find a section of the Gananoque trail. The thing I love most about geocaching is that it points out things like this, that you may never have found any other way. It’s a lovely trail, with lots of big rocks and I would be quite willing to go back and explore more of it, cache or no cache. I don’t know what it is about me, but I do like big rocks! This section of the trail also lets you get a good look at a grand old oak tree. As I often say, it’s not the treasure in the cache that’s important, but the ones you find along the way. Nature certainly provided lots of treasures along this trail.


We went back into town and down to a little park on a bluff. After following the GPS for a few minutes, and getting a general idea of where to find the cache, we discovered a couple of kids poking around in that area. When they saw us, they strolled over to a picnic table on the opposite side of the park. I thought, perhaps they were also looking for the cache, and didn’t want us to know where to look. Well, I didn’t want them watching us either, so I went to the edge of the bluff, and found a set of stone steps to take us down towards the water. By the time we came back up, the kids were just peddling their bikes out of the park. That gave us a chance to look for the cache. The over head trees gave us a bit of trouble, but we found it.

The last cache of the day was called Timmy’s because a Tim Hortons was nearby. We figured that was a good excuse to take a break and have something to eat. After eating big meals all weekend, we decided to get some chicken wrap combos this time. Once fed, went off to feed the bugs. The cache is on another part of the Gananoque Trail, that is within walking distance of Tim Hortons. For some reason the mosquitoes were hungrier here, and we were glad we didn’t have to walk too far in, or hunt for too hard for his cache.

All in all, it was a great weekend.

Birthday Loop

Saturday, July 12th, was the perfect day for geocaching. It was also the hubby’s birthday, and given the opportunity to choose what he wanted to do with his day, he decided geocaching was exactly what he wanted to do.

We set off shortly after 10 AM and made a loop from Smiths Falls, to Port Elmsley, to Perth, down the road towards Westport, but then turned off on the Narrows Lock Road, crossed the Narrows Lock and came out at Crosby. From there it was back through Portland to Smiths Falls. We stopped for lunch at Col. Saunders in Perth at 1 PM and got home at 6:30 PM. It was a really nice way to spend the day.

The first stop was a multi, and while we got the first waypoint, there were too many bugs of the sort that would hurt to stay around and work out the next waypoint. We’ll do the math and stop there some other day to continue. The site is just the chimney of an old church that burnt down a long time ago. We’ve passed it many times but never stopped to look this closely at it before.














The second stop was at the Port Elmsley Drive In. That was an easy find and we weren’t there long before heading for Perth.



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At Perth, we stopped at the Last Duel Park. A little girl came over to us as we were getting numbers to work out the final coordinates, and said, "My Dad sent me over to ask what you were doing." I guess the fact that I was holding a clipboard caught his eye. Rather than try to explain it to her, and then have her try to explain it to him, I just went over and filled him in on Geocaching. He had never heard of it, and has no internet connection, so he won’t be looking it up, but did think it sounded interesting.

We went off and eventually found the cache. When we got back to the area where the little girl was, I went over towards her, and she came running, saying, "What did you find?" I showed her our latest treasure, then offered her a choice from my bag of goodies. She chose a little orange ball and was thrilled.

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We had lunch and then left the Perth area in search of the Narrows Lock Road. I’ve never been to the Narrows before, but I’m glad the geocachers sent us this way.

There is a lot of rock back in there, along the road. It’s much like around Huntsville and Bracebridge. I really liked it. To me, it was the highlight of the day. This was a place we would never have found if we had not been treasure hunting, and it was a treasure unto itself.

This is where we picked up our first "Travel Bug"....or in this case, a Travel Jeep. They have numbers on them and you enter those online so the owners can track it as it travels from cache to cache. I’m going to keep track of it too, once I drop it off someplace else. I’ve seen geocoins, and such, before, but never picked one up until now as I wasn’t really sure how to handle them. But it’s not hard, so I’ll like do that more often in the future.

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We drove a little further down the road and came to the Narrows Locks. This is summit of the Rideau system as the water flows downhill towards both Ottawa and Kingston from here. I had always wondered about that, since I had noticed that the boats move downwards in the locks towards both cities. It’s a pretty little spot, and very active, with boats from both lakes waiting their turn to get to the other.

The cache there is along the Rideau Trail, and while we did start off looking for it, we decided it was just too hot to go for that kind of a hike that day.


We moved on to the Portland area, where there were two caches. One was in a rural setting, and looked pretty new. I picked up a beaded bookmark there that is quickly becoming a favourite. I may have to try making some of those myself. I think I was rather glad there were geotrails here, from previous treasure hunters, or I may not have found it so quickly.
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The Portland Roadside stop was at....well, a roadside stop. A bit of parkland with outdoor biffies and lots of milkweed flowering near the water. The cache here was just a micro, thankfully the only one of the day. Once the coordinates were nailed down, I had no difficulty finding the log book.
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We had lots of exercise, fresh air, and fun. We even stopped at Tim Horton’s before heading home.

While in Kingston, I thought we’d visit with a long lost cousin. I actually met her on Facebook, but we’ve gotten together a few times since then. I looked up her postal code and discovered there were geocaches right in her neighbourhood, so we thought we would pick up a cache or two while we were at it. But the closest one was in the Cataraqui Woods and the bugs were out, so we just visited instead.

She told us her sister used to do that, so I’m going to challenge her sister to find this one next time she goes for a visit. We went the next morning, but like other city caches we looked for, even though this one was in the woods next to a park, there was just too much trash. I don’t enjoy this sort of situation. We didn't find the cache, but I did see a lovely wild rose growing by a fence post.

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Meadowbrook Mystery

We knew there was another cache right near the Ambassador Hotel, where we were staying. We also knew it was along what may be a another swampy area, somewhere between a major road and a railway line. The trick was to find a way to get to this area.

In the country, that wouldn’t have been a problem. But in a city, most rivers and waterways have houses along them, and no access to what lays behind. Well, there may be access, but finding it might be difficult. And once you do find it, where are you allowed to park?


On Sunday, June 8, 2008 (okay, so I'm a little behind in my blogging, but hey, I have a life), after cruising around in circles a few times, we decided to try from a different angle, and that’s when we found not only access to the trail, but a place to park too. Luckily nobody else had parked there when we needed it. This cache is listed as the Meadowbrook Mystery, though the main mystery is why they named it that. It was well worth the effort to find it though, as we were immediately treated to the sight of ducks turtles sunning themselves on the rocks in the river. Something else was splashing around in the water too, but I wasn’t sure what at that point.
We wandered down the trail, and discovered that the graffiti artists had been busy under the overpass. I’ve never been this close to graffiti before, but certainly didn’t expect to find it in this particular location. About there we saw more thrashing around in the river and it turned out to be some very large carp, that apparently come up the Cataraqui Creek every year to spawn.

The trail wound through some nice countryside, complete with a little stream and lots of wild flowers. The cache itself was off the trail in the woods where the mosquitoes were just waiting for us to arrive. I’ve never seen so much in any one cache before, and would love to have explored it further, but only had so much blood to give, so grabbed the first thing on the top of the pile and replaced it with the biggest thing in my kit (since it was also the easiest thing to grab), and got us out of there as quickly as possible. I was almost back to the car before I realized that what I had picked up there was a fuzzy bald eagle puppet. I know someone who will likely love that :)

On the way out we saw a rabbit sitting on the trail. That was a nice bonus. It was a great evening for geocaching and a great trail to follow, bugs and all.


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City Caching

We spent the weekend in Kingston, for the annual martial arts event known as Kingston
Kicks. As usual, we had a great time. I took a binder full of cache listings, in case we
had any spare time to go exploring and we managed to squeeze in a few during the late
afternoon or evenings each day.

We did our first ever city cache on Saturday. Actually we looked for three caches that
day, but we only succeeded once.

The first one was in a parking lot, so you had to wait for any vehicles that came along to
be empty, and then keep an eye open for new ones arriving. We waited patiently for one
vehicle to leave. The lady in it must have been waiting for someone to finish work as she
sat there for quite a while. When she left we move our car right over in front of where the
cache was supposedly hidden and then had to wait when another woman showed up with
an entire grocery basket full of stuff to load into her vehicle. After all that we looked in
the only place there was to look and found nothing. There simply was no place else to
look. It was a big empty parking lot, with just a couple of well spaced trees for
decoration and one of them was right in front of us.

We did better at the second one. Luckily, by then, the businesses it was near were closed
as I don’t know how you can look for this sort of cache on the sly. In fact, it wouldn’t
surprise me if someone who worked nearby, decided to call the cops if they spotted
people like us prowling around like that. I must say that I really prefer a more wilderness
setting for such activities. As it was, gloves were needed as there were all sorts of other
gross things where this cache was located. There was even a pair of thongs!

I’d had enough of this city type caching so we went looking for something a little more
rural. We found a trail along a swamp and started in on that, but it was too wet and the
mosquitoes were hungry so we decided to give up for the night. It looks like an
interesting area though, so we may try that one again some other time.