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.

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.

Addicting More People to Geocaching

I received an e-mail request this week from a friend whose son is in school with my daughter. She and her family have been wondering about geocaching and asked if I would take them out for a beginner's lesson. So yesterday morning we piled our three kids into her vehicle with the two of us and set out for Baker Park on the Bow River in Calgary. I had my iPhone with the geocaching app and my Garmin Oregon 200 to show them both options when they start out.

We began with the Dollhouse cache (GC1RT7C) to get the kids excited because I knew it had recently been found and was supposed to have good swag in it. This one took a bit of looking and then was found where we didn't expect it. The kids found it easy to follow the compass on the Garmin so I let them carry that one and worked off the iPhone with my girlfriend. The three kids took turns holding the GPS and telling the others which way to go. We followed along making sure they didn't get too far off course but they did very well. And we had our first smiley for the day.

The next cache we aimed for was Baker's Bark (GC1EV27) which was a different kind of 'micro in a tree'. No trades here, just signed the log and off we went to search for I Do (GCXJTA). This is a very beautiful area right down by the river with bright beds of flowers surrounding a stone wall. We watched a few young men leaping into the chilly waters across the river and a Zodiak float by with two life-jacketed paddlers aboard.

 The search was briefly interrupted by the appearance of two snakes who may have been guarding the cache and who caused all the children to leap upon the stone wall and scream! Luckily my friend and I were not deterred and continued to peer under rocks and into nooks and crannies. Unfortunately, no cache was unearthed and we had to leave this one for another day.

We moved on to look for one of the Calgary Parks caches called, of course, Baker Park (GC299K3). This was when I saw the change in my friend from 'interested observer' to 'addicted cacher' as she made her first unassisted find. Her face lit up and she got excited and declared herself hooked! I always love that moment!

Our last cache of the day, Baker's Hedge (GC1EV1Z) was also exciting for her young daughter when she made her own first find. We told ourselves it was because she was closest to the ground but really we all had our backs turned when she said ' Oh I found one." And honestly I didn't really think she had found one, but there it was! So much for me showing her how its done!!

After such a good day of caching I am sure we will be going out as a group again before too long. And we have another girlfriend with kids who we'll have to take out and addict!

Sunny Sunday geocaching

We got the jump on Family Day and spent our Sunday together geocaching in local neighbourhoods last weekend. The littlest goat decided she only wanted to do 3 caches, but after each one she said, "Well, just one more!" until we had done 6 caches and run out of steam. When we could not find the seventh cache we decided that was a good time to return home and relax!
We planned the searches to start with a large ammo can that had been found recently and was listed as a 1 in difficulty and 1 in terrain (5 being the hardest, 1 the easiest) so that our daughter would not get frustrated early. It turned out to be easy enough that she spotted the container first and was able to retrieve it herself. It had been placed by a Pathfinders group and had been well maintained.
On the way to what was going to be our second search I noticed a listing for a micro cache on the way. A micro is usually quite small (not as small as a nano!) and difficult to find although this one was listed as a 1 for terrain and 1 for difficulty. Turns out the terrain was definitely easy, even in the snow, but the difficult was more of a 2 since it was green and hidden in a tree. The old goat and I jumped out and took about 10 minutes to find this one while the littlest goat stayed in the warm car reading a book.

Our third search offered a walk in the aspen woods of an off-leash park. It was rated a 1.5 and 1.5 and we found the terrain a bit tricky due to ice but the cache relatively simple to locate. 

We decided to drive to a neighbourhood where we had never geocached before for our last three caches and found ourselves in MacEwen near Nosehill Park. This area has beautiful views of Calgary and is worth a visit. Only four geocaches hidden here and we found three out of the four. Not a bad day for winter caching in a cold climate!
In my next post I'll talk about cache containers a bit more. There are some really clever hides out there and I'm always curious to see what people will think of next. If you are a geocacher, post a photo of your favourite cache container!