A Short Visit to the Stony Swamp

We had to make a run into Ottawa to get a replacement computer for my oldest son. The Trailing Edge is not far from the Stony Swamp Conservation Area, so I looked up some caches to hit while in the area.

The first cache was easy enough to find. I figured that if you went down a dead end street, there might be an entrance to the trail system, and I was right. The cache was hidden in a camouflaged thermos bottle, which is a perfect way to keep the contents safe and dry. I’ve got one here that doesn’t tend to keep things hot or cold, so now I know what to use it for in the future.

I found a travel bug in that cache, but when I went to log it, I found that it’s basically been lost since at least April. Nobody logged that they left it there, or where they found it before putting it there. I took it home with me, logged it properly and will drop it someplace else next time I’m out. I see someone is watching this one, so that may be the owner, trying to determine where it wandered off to. I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see it back in play.


The second cache we went to was on another part of the same trail, but we had more difficulty finding the way in. After circling around the neighbourhood for a while, we finally found the way in. I liked this part of the trail as the Precambrian rock had come to the surface and was actually the trail bed we walked on. I was upset with myself for having actually forgotten to bring the camera along on this expedition. There wasn’t much to see on either of these trails, really, but I would have taken a photo of the trail across the rock itself.

I had several other cache sites planed for the day, but my body is in fatigue mode again, so I thought it best to stop for the day, before I trip over my own feet and do myself some injury. It wouldn’t be the first time.

These are nice trails, and I had only scoped out a few of them in a very small area of the Stony Swamp. We will be back....likely numerous times over the coming years.

We Did Enjoy Greek Fest....

Before I start getting e-mails asking why I haven’t been out geocaching, I better get a new installment of some sort in here, whether I’ve found any treasures or not. Last week I was busy with the fair, and company, so I didn't get out at all.

We went to the Greek Fest in Ottawa today, and had a great time. Wonderful food, wonderful music, and lots of friendly, helpful people. After that we went looking for a nearby cache.

You may remember my saying, when we went to Kingston, that city geocaching just isn’t the same. Well, I thought it would be okay today since we went to someplace I’ve been to many times over the years, even as a child, and later with my own children. We went to Hog’s Back.

The first waypoint was fine. It took us to a sign that had several pictures and information about the area on it, and we had to find the right numbers to fill in and create a new waypoint. We found that too, and worked out a clue that pointed us at an old maple tree. The problem was, we couldn’t see any maple trees, old or not, from the place we stood. We finally found a trail that led into the woods, and we did seem to be going generally in the right direction. We found another path that led off of this one, which definitely sent us toward our goal, though by now we were well into the trees and couldn’t see if there was a maple ahead or not.

I want to point out that this was not a "tourist" type of trail, and I’m not sure where it was going. It was just a narrow trail through dense brush. Then we saw it. Not the cache, but a blue tarp. A tent or a lean to. We didn’t go close enough to find out for sure.

In our normal woodland environments, we are on the look out for bears and coyotes, and things like that. In the city jungle, it’s the people who worry me. Had we happened upon a place where some homeless person had set up a shelter, or had we come across some place where drug dealers do their business? Either way, I didn't think it was a good place to be. We quickly, and quietly, backtracked and got ourselves out of there. I consulted the tracks on the GPS later, and saw that we had circled the cache, and were probably narrowing in on it when we spotted the tarps.

Nope. City caching isn’t for me. I’ll take my chances with the bears!

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.