Birthday Happenings

Sunday, July, 12 was hubby’s birthday, so I let him decide what to do with the day. Luckily the weather was perfect for lots of outdoor fun.


First we went to downtown Merrickville, where the annual Cruise and Shop was underway. There were about 500 antique cars on display, and though I recognized some from other years, I saw some new ones that were interesting too. That took up the entire morning.



Hubby then decided it was a good day for geocaching, so it was just a matter of which direction to go. He thought it was a good day to head to Prescott, so I hunted up some caches to visit. I have a travel bug to get rid of, but most of the caches in the Prescott area seem to be micros. I found a couple that weren’t and armed with all the coordinates, off we went. The road between Merrickville and Kemptville was extremely busy. It was just a solid stream of traffic headed into the village. It was as if the city people had all come out of church and headed to the Merrickville to see the old cars. I don’t remember ever seeing highway 43 this busy before.


We went to Prescott by a cross country route, and found the first two caches very easily. I’m not fond of micros for some reason, but these were at least in interesting containers. One was at an old train station. Last time I was there it was a factory outlet for some line of pots and pans. Now it’s where the Grenville Historical Society houses it’s Archives and Resource Centre. It’s a nice old building and I’m glad it’s being used for something.







We didn’t find the third cache we looked for, down at the harbour. We had been there last year, but got caught in a storm and gave up. (See http://georambling.blogspot.com/2008/08/between-rain-drops.html )
This one is a multi and we tried to find it using the coordinates worked out last year. But we may have gotten one of the numbers wrong somewhere along the way as we didn’t find it this time either. I wasn’t in the mood to work through the various steps again that day, so I work it out on some other visit to the harbour sometime. There is a very friendly cat that lives in the rocks at this harbour. It was nice to make his acquaintance, so I felt like I had found some sort of treasure there after all.






As we walked along the water, looking at the sights, I noticed another cache show up on my GPS. I wasn’t expecting that, for some reason, but we went to hunt it out. After waiting for some muggles to come and go, it was another quick easy find. Still, it was another micro, and I still had the travel bug.









We decided to go back to one of the caches we had not found on a previous year. We thought we would have better luck this time, as we have now seen a picture of the actual cache container, so we would have a better idea what to look for. No such luck. There was a family having a picnic right about where we needed to look. We sat on a bench for a while and watched the boats, but it was obvious they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

The only other cache I knew of that would be big enough to drop the travel bug had us going around in circles for a few minutes, but that turned out to be okay as we ended up over at Burger King where we were able to make a rest stop and refuel ourselves. Great birthday dinner that turned out to be, but we had been out to Rideau Carleton Raceway on Friday night, and even got to ride in the chase car, so nobody was complaining. At Burger King we used an Entertainment coupon, so it was two Whoppers for the price of one. Then we each discovered we had won in the latest contest. One got a Cheeseburger and the other got another Whopper for next weekend (since that’s when the current promotion ends). So, considering that’s 4 burgers for the price of one, I’ll take that as another treasure collected that day.
When we got to the location of the final cache of the day, we found that it would be necessary to walk through several yards of poison parsnip, just to get to the treeline. The caches is a multi hidden in an old dump, so there was likely even more of the noxious weed in there. We decided not to take any chances as that plant produces blisters on the skin. So I still have the travel bug. I do hope we have better luck next week!

Monkee Adventures

We went geocaching on Sunday, June 21, but the story starts well before that.

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.

And I've Lived Here, How Long?

Today we followed 3 trails in the area that we have never been on before. We've driven by a couple of them for over 30 years, and never even knew they were there! The other one is within walking distance, and while I suspected there was a trail there, I've never been on it before.

The first was the Merrickville Beach trail.....an old snowmobile trail, from the looks of it. I believe there are plans to join it with the trail behind the French School (St Marguerite Bourgois).

The second one was near the Riverside Park on County Rd 44, outside of Kemptville. Lovely trail. It actually leads down to the river before turning to follow it.

As we were just finding the trailhead, another group of people were leaving. Turns out it was the owner of the cache and his entire and extended family. Wow. I almost met a real pro at this. From his profile page, I found he has over 1200 finds already.

Then we carried on to find a causeway to a park on an island that we never knew was there. John C. Foster Park is 23 acres of parkland. We've only been driving by this for the past 33 years! We would have stayed to explore more of the trails but we heard gunshots, and remembered it was hunting season. Not the best time to be poking around in the woods and we had not thought of that until then. I guess we'll have to explore some urban areas for a while.