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.

Scouting for a campground near Bragg Creek

On Sunday our little family took a drive to look for some potential campgrounds for future camping trips. We have lived in Calgary for five years but have not gone camping in the area, so we wanted to see what sort of sites are available. Our target area was south of Bragg Creek off of Highway 66, following the Elbow River. And since we were going for a drive, I thought we might as well pick up a few caches just for fun!

Our first stop was in the Redwood Meadows neighbourhood on Highway 22 before Bragg Creek.  To protect the townsite from the Elbow River floods a berm was built which makes a great walking path and happens to lead to two caches. The first one we sought out was On the way to Grandma's House (GC189XA). For a regular sized cache it was hidden in an unusual place but we made the find and headed off to Sherpa's Cache (GC17CF5). As we approached the trail head for this one, I glanced into the forest on our left and saw a beautiful buck laying beneath a tree enjoying the cool cover of the trees on this hot day. He was undisturbed by our presence and continued to rest as we passed by. The search for this cache was trickier and involved scrambling over rocks until the old Goat spotted the container. Inside the ammo can we discovered a travel geocoin ( SW#3's Shamrock) that we picked up to move along. When I entered the coin tracking number to log our find, I discovered that it had travelled to Europe, Eastern Canada, Hawaii and the southern USA and had ended up back at a cache just hundreds of meters from its origin!


Since we were so close to the Elbow River and it was a very hot day we went down to the edge of the river and dipped our hands and cooled off for a few minutes before continuing our journey.

We drove right past Bragg Creek as the line of traffic coming in and out was not inviting and continued on to Kananaskis Country on Highway 66. We stopped for a quick micro called Kananaskis Country Cache (GC12C97) right at the big sign for Kananaskis Country. The littlest goat jumped out of the car, walked over to GZ and plucked the cache from its hiding spot! She is getting to be an amazing cacher.

Just a few hundred metres away was the first campsite we wanted to check out and at the beginning of the path down to it, was another cache called Gooseberry (GCQM20). This one took a bit of walking around in the trees as the GPS couldn't get good satellite signals but eventually we found the spot and earned another smiley.

We checked out the campsites at McLean Creek and decided those would be the ones we try out when we get a chance to camp. Then there was just time for cooling off in the creek before heading back toward Calgary.

We made one final stop just before reaching the Trans-Canada highway and that was at a cache called Wolf Kubs Kache (GC3FK11) hidden by the Strathmore scouts. Parking near this cache was not allowed so the old goat and the littlest goat waited in the car while I made the trek to GZ to try my luck. This cache was easy to locate but hard to pick up. I had to use all my arm strength to retrieve it from its hiding spot and then repeat the process to replace it in the same spot! Should have sent in the old goat!

We are getting in more caching this summer by blending it in with other activities and taking opportunities to do quick ones when we can. They often bring us to places we never knew existed or ones that we have been meaning to get to but haven't taken the time. Where are you exploring this summer while you geocache?

Just Do It!

Lately I have been trying to get my family out for more caching together. Although we always enjoy our caching adventures, it is still hard to motivate them to just get out the door. So a couple weeks ago I asked my daughter if we could try to do one cache a day for a week. And it worked. As long as she knew there was no pressure to get a long list of caches checked off, she was willing to jump up and go. And I made sure to choose cache locations that included a park with swings, or an easy drive-up find, or one we could bring a friend to. So we completed the week with eight caches found and a new outlook on caching. If you are trying to motivate others to go along with you or you are trying to motivate yourself off the couch or away from the computer, just set small goals and have fun on the way. As they say, its not the destination that is important but the journey.

Today the skies were dark grey with thunder and rain about to spill down any minute. But knowing that in Calgary, the clouds could just as easily blow away altogether, I rallied the family out of the basement and into the car for a quick drive to Nosehill Park. There were three caches fairly close to a parking lot (within 600m) and I thought we would start with the easiest one and if it went well try another. I gave my daughter our Oregon 200 GPS and I used the iPhone app from Geocaching.com to navigate our way to Bushdee (GC21RWH). Our chocolate lab Scooby Doo was thrilled to be along on this adventure and she bounced along the trail chasing the ball we were throwing for her. The trees and the gully we were walking in gave the iPhone a bit of satellite trouble but the Garmin had no problem and the cache was soon in hand. The littlest cacher was still happy so we continued up the hill to find Beating Around the Bush (GC1B5GZ). We had looked for this one before but were unable to find it due to the snow cover on the ground. So we were very happy when the oldest goat came up with the goods and we checked off another find. The littlest goat got her hair tangled in a tree and ended up with a sappy knot but it didn't dampen her spirits so off we went for a third search. I didn't really think we would be able to find this one, DUCKY TAPE ROCKS!!! (GC3NZ8G) as it was listed as a 5 for difficulty (on a  scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being easiest) and a 3.5 for terrain. We had to do a bit of bushwhacking off the trails and a bit of back-tracking while we looked for a good way down into a gully. The hint indicated that the cache container was going to be a fake rock so we checked a few rocks without success. And then the oldest goat found a rock that rattled and that made three happy faces for the day! And not a drop of rain.