After my Pine Lake Adventure, my husband and daughter wanted to do a series of caches as well but didn't have the stamina to do 100. So we headed just North of the city to a series placed by a veteran cacher who goes by the handle KinderKen. He placed 13 separate caches along a quiet country road where there are often moose, deer, coyotes, muskrats, ducks, hawks and other birds. We started at the West end of the road because it was closer access for us but it didn't make a difference to your searches which one you started with.

The area is certainly quiet with very little traffic, lots of birdsong, some cows warning us off their pastures, and lots of buzzing mosquitoes. We had the first cache, (GC3F4QM) A Snaky Road Cache, in hand very quickly as I had seen one just like it on the Pine Lake Trail. Each cache had an original container and was hidden in a different manner than the previous one. Some required a bit of a climb, others just needed a good pair of eyes or three. We added in one cache along the same road (GC2VYB8) Just Off the Trail which was placed by Sleepy_hollow. The littlest goat found it with no problem after a boost up the bank by Mama goat. We enjoyed the little meadow this one brought us to, with a variety of wildflowers in bloom.

The final cache in the Road series is called Ziggy Zaggy Road cache (GC3F4YG) and is rated higher on the difficulty scale. Unfortunately, this one proved to be too elusive for us and we had to go home with one DNF. We did stop at another cache just down the road (GC23G73) Mountain View Trackable Bed and Breakfast to drop a geocoin to move along its way. We enjoy picking up these travelers whenever we can and checking out the maps that show how far they have come. We have several travel bugs and coins circulating in the geocaching world right now and hope that people will keep them moving.

Doing these road caches inspired us to do more series and our next adventure took us along the Bearspaw Lasso Trail for a string of hiking caches. 

An Amazing Adventure at Pine Lake

This has been an absolutely amazing month for geocaching for us! We have had a slow start to our year but recently had an opportunity to make up for that in a way I had never imagined. After volunteering to help the GeoWyrms, a couple who are heavily involved in the geocaching community here, with a Geocaching 101 presentation, they invited me to go along on a Power Trail geocaching expedition to Pine Lake, Alberta. Since the old goat and littlest goat had things to keep them busy at home, I eagerly said yes to the invitation!

 I have never done a power trail, the most caches I have previously done in one day was 23 during a CCARS event with friends. The GeoWyrms thought we would be getting about 83 caches that Saturday! Unbelievable!

Since we would be away from the city, I packed carefully. I brought along bug spray, sunscreen, a hat, a rain jacket, extra socks in case my feet got wet, a water bottle, my cache bag with trade items, a couple extra pens, extra batteries for my GPS, some cash for food, antihistamines  for any allergy problems, and my cell phone. I made sure to load all the caches in the area into my GPS just in case we went for some that weren't on the Pine Lake Power Trail.
  

I was so excited that I hardly got any sleep the night before. A quick shower, breakfast, and a short drive to meet up with the GeoWyrms, the Uh-ohs and Mr. Ge0Patr0l and then we were off to Pine Lake. The drive was fun and seemed to take no time at all. Our first warm-up cache was actually at a strip mall in Innisfail after a quick stop for snacks and a bathroom break.  Then it was off to the trail.

The Pine Lake Micro Trail was created by a cacher called CharlieRona who has found more than 8000 caches. He placed the first 37 caches in the summer of 2012 and the remaining 83 earlier this summer. The GeoWyrms had already done the first 37 so we started at the other end with (GC4EHR4) Pine Lake Micro #120. Most of the caches were bison tubes or medicine bottles but there were a few regular caches and some surprises.

In the afternoon when we were all getting hungry, we stopped and ate out of the back of the pick-up. Mr. GeoWyrm had shopped for some MREs that we were all curious to try. Meals Ready To Eat is not quite true. They require heating with a special heat pack activated by a small amount of water. We all had different varieties and had some fun swapping tastes and checking out what was in each pack. They were definitely filling and flavorful but I'm not sure I'd want to eat them everyday!

This area was so beautiful and quiet. We had great weather until the afternoon when a brief thundershower forced us all into the cab of the Uh-ohs truck. At the end of the downpour we discovered the truck had a fast tire leak and a quick change was needed before continuing on.

As we cached the GeoWyrms reached their 4000th find and we reached our 400th find. Very exciting. But even more amazing was that instead of getting 83 caches, we finished the day with 104! I am still stunned by that number. We added on some caches that were near the Pine Lake Trail to make sure that the GeoWyrms made it to 4000 since they were so close. I phoned my family on the way home and told them how many we had done and they were equally incredulous.

Our day wrapped up with dinner and drinks back in Calgary and a tired but happy drive home.

More Adventure than we Planned

The nice weather (Calgary nice, not Vancouver nice!) had me chomping at the bit to get out and do a little caching. We wanted to go somewhere that the dog could come along to, so we chose one that was supposed to be a walk along a power line right-of-way.

We stopped for two quick road-side caches on the way. GC3VZH7 (Stix) was a quick find for my husband and then he made a second quick find by being the first to spot GC3VT9A (Home made tubing).

We parked at the recommended coordinates to look for GC25D6G (Road Allowance West #1) but then found ourselves on the wrong side of a barbed wire fence. As we walked up and down the fence line trying to see where the opening was, we quickly realized our only option (besides leaving) was to go over. Except for Scooby who had been running back and forth underneath while we were making our decision. So a bit of careful climbing and a lift over for the littlest goat and we were all on the same side as the cache. Allen got his hat trick by being the first to spot this cache in its hiding spot. The littlest goat was pleased to see an item she wanted in the container so we did a quick trade from her swag bag and signed the log book.

The dog was enjoying the outing and our daughter was happy with her trade so we pushed on toward the next closest cache. This proved to be more of a challenge than we were prepared for. There was quite a steep slope down to the next cache and still lots of ice and snow on the ground in that area so we had to detour into the woods a bit to avoid slipping down the hill. Unfortunately when we got to the bottom and were parallel to the cache, we proved to be on the wrong side of the same fence. After some deliberation I suggested that the other two take a break while I climb back over the fence and scale the other hill to take a look for the cache. I climbed and scrambled, sank into snow, slipped on ice and ducked under trees all the way to ground zero. Scooby ran back and forth frantically trying to stay with both groups or get us back together. But between the tree cover messing up my GPS and the ice making it hard to cover ground, I could not locate GC35K25 (On the trail with Lucy). So I made my way back down to the other goats and we headed back to the car. A quicker walk back but three cold and tired cachers were ready to go home.

Day trippin' to Banff and a little caching

We have lived in Calgary for almost 6 years and haven't taken the time for a proper visit to Banff National Park. We have driven through it many times on the way to and from Vancouver, but we have never spent the day just walking or hiking in the park.

But this park is so beautiful and offers so many places to spend a day close to nature, that we decided to take the plunge this year and buy a one year pass to the National Parks which will enable us to make many trips there without worrying about the daily park fee.

In order to buy the pass and spend our first day enjoying the park, we headed off for a day in Banff. On the way there we stopped for a quick bathroom break at Dead Man's Flats and just happened to be near a cache named for the Flats. GC1MHB4 was a quick find after visiting with a 19 year-old cat at the local service station.

After buying the pass at the gates to the park, we drove on to Cascade Ponds for a walk around the frozen water.

The view was amazing!

 There were lots of signs of hoofed mammals in the area although we couldn't agree on which ones. We had beautiful weather for our walk and the littlest goat enjoyed leading the way.

  This will definitely be on our list of places to return with a picnic lunch! And maybe a cache of our own to hide if we can get permission.

 Our next stop was the town of Banff which, due to the holiday weekend, was crawling with visitors. Finding parking took quite some time and left us a bit of a walk to the cache for which we were aiming. GCMB99 is a micro cache right on the main street which made it challenging to search with so many muggles around. But the location proved to be a good one for actually pulling it out and signing discreetly. 

  Next stop, the candy shop! And the rock and gem store. So much to see! But littlest goat reminded us she needed to get back home to get ready for a sleepover and our one hour parking was running out so we made our way through the crowds back to the car and headed for home.

We had time for one quick cache on the road home and made a quick stop for Silver Tip (GC48268). We are getting better at micros (very small caches) and this one took a minute but we came up with the goods, signed the log and ran back to our vehicle.

It felt great to get out in the sunshine with the family, enjoying the views, the walk, the geocaching and I'm sure it will not be long before we head back that way for more.

Virtual Caching Down Under

A very exciting trip last month took the oldest goat to Australia for the first time. Since I was very upset not to go along, I made him promise to find at least one cache on my behalf while there. His hotel was near downtown Melbourne so there were several caches in walking distance, however there was also a festival on at the time (Moomba) and the muggles were abundant so caching was difficult. Two of the closest caches were muggled that week and two others were right in the heart of the action along the boardwalk so Allen did not feel comfortable searching for them. The only one he was able to do in plain sight was GCJ8HR (Yes, but is it art? II) which is a virtual cache. It is based on a public sculpture so the old goat just had to walk to it, take a photo of himself there and answer some questions in an e-mail to the cache owner.

So now we have a cache found in Victoria, Australia which gave us a new badge for our geocaching.com souvenir page. I do hope I eventually get a chance to see Australia myself (and do some geocaching of course!) but it was cool to see Allen's photos and hear about the wombats and koalas and other truly Australian things.

Missing in Action

I have been MIA from here for too long! This is partly because we find it harder to cache in the late winter and partly because I have been busy with work and other parts of my family life. But I do have a few things to write about today so here goes.

My husband, whom I often refer to as the old goat, managed an out-of-province cache find and an out-of-country cache find in February. I found it very exciting to add the province of Quebec to our stats page when Allen went there for a conference and was able to find a cache just outside his hotel. Micro-Parc Shaughnessy (GC1MMVZ) was placed quite high up and he is vertically challenged so it almost eluded him but he managed to reach it and we received a new province badge for our souvenir page on geocaching.com.

This was the kick in the pants I needed to get more organized to find caches when we are out and about. So that weekend while our daughter was taking some ski lessons at the Calgary Olympic Park, Allen and I hunted down GC23K61 (Down by the C.O.P.) across from the ski hill and GC53C2 (Calgary History Tour- Olympics) which was placed to commemorate the 1988 Olympics which were held at the aptly named COP.

A couple of weeks later we decided to do a day of geocaching at a park we had never been to. In the 1920's Imperial Oil had a refinery on the site which is now the Ogden Refinery Park. The land was reclaimed as a wilderness park in the 1990's and there are walking paths and a frisbee golf course now available there. 

We bundled ourselves up for a cold winter walk and set out to find GC2CK86 - Ogden Refinery Park - Parks 100 cache. The littlest goat spotted this one before her Dad and I even got near. We continued on to find GCNRC4 - Fishin', Landin', or Strollin' which was quite a ways off the coordinates posted. Then on to one hidden in a place we had never seen a cache in before and in spite of its name, Pretty in Pink, turned out to be green! Our last find was GCing by Candlelight (GCMX3E) which had an easy path to it ...which we took on the way back down! On the way there we scaled some steep terrain that caused the littlest goat to decide to stay put and wait for us. It took a bit of hunting at the coordinates before we turned up the actual cache but we got lucky. We called it a day after that due to the cold.

Scooby's Cache GC43KNV

Our cache has been published and the first finders have logged their visits! Whoo hoo! Our coordinates were good and the cache has not been too easy nor too hard to find. We are very happy with the results!

Happy Geocaching in 2013!

On this first day of 2013 we are excited because we are preparing our own cache to be hidden. We finally decided we were ready to venture into another aspect of geocaching and have taken some time to agree on a location for our first hide. We are keeping it in our neighbourhood so it will be easy to maintain. This first one is not elaborate, just a small cache hidden in a park, but we wanted to keep the first one simple. (The littlest goat has plans for a much more amazing cache that needs a particular location and lots of time to set up.)

As for finding caches, Little Goat and I took a trip to Vancouver for Christmas and I managed to drag my Mom out for a few quick searches. My Mom lives in Surrey and we started with a short walk in a park in Clover Valley to find GC23MZ3 Clover Valley Prairie. As it had been raining all week and this was the first sunny day, everything was wet and mucky and that is also the condition the cache was found in. Although the cache was a plastic box and the contents were in a plastic bag, the log book was soaked and everything was damp.
Next we took a little jaunt over to The Fernery GC23H2H. This one was nicely camouflaged and required a bit of a search but we came up with the goods. Nice waterproof container kept the contents dry and tradeable. We signed the log and replaced it quickly with muggles coming our way.
We then stopped briefly at Ball Park Tour #4 but it was too close to a private home and we were uncomfortable rooting around in the trees. We decided to skip it and move on to Pace On By GC24JA5 which is at the Cloverdale race track. We had just started looking around when another cacher joined us. She had only 8 finds so far and was pleased when I made the find as it was in a place she hadn't thought to look. We pulled out a very wet piece of paper and made our best attempts to sign it before hiding everything again.
Mom decided it was time to head home as she was getting chilled so that was the last cache of a very good year of caching. We managed to get 136 caches this year, our best yet. I know many cachers who say it is not about the numbers but about the experiences and the places you go, but it is still nice to see the numbers go up and to check your stats page and see how you are doing.
Once we get our cache published and ready for finding, come take a look and tell us what you think. It is called Scooby's Cache GC43KNV and we are looking forward to your feedback.