Milestones and Cache Events

Of course, many things have happened since my last post.

We came home from Restoule and we had a great haul along the way. We picked up 36 caches on our way home, which we thought would up our statistic for best week. Unfortunately, we were wrong since the statistic is supposed to be for Monday to Sunday and we came home on a Thursday.

Two weeks later, I decided I wanted to go out caching for my birthday. We were only 22 finds away from our 2500 find milestone, so I thought that would be a great present. We cached in the Napanee area because there have been a lot of new hides there lately and we wanted to start cleaning out the town again. We did alright, leaving only a few we either could not find, or they were just unreachable. Our 2500th find was epic, however.

Jen Holding Our 2500th Find

Coman123 put out a multi-cache to commemorate AaronHanes' 1000th find. It was long, it was tricky, it was fun, it was perfect. We worked on the various stages as we cached around the town. After finding the third stage, we stopped for dinner at a buffet. We decided that the food was here and the final for the cache was on the way home, so it only made sense.

Unfortunately, things went very wrong. I don't know what was in the food, or if we just can't eat like we used to. After only a couple plates, we were in severe, physical pain. It hurt so bad, we were cursing each other for deciding to eat there. We even had a hard time standing straight. We decided to try the cache anyways.

The cache was in a trail system (Good: we can work off dinner, Bad: we hurt). We started following the trail to find out that the closest we could get was 60m away. That was a lot of bushwhacking while bent over when your stomach felt like it was going to explode. We walked back to the car to try to find another trail. There was none, so we went bushwhacking anyways (Good: we were feeling better after a couple laps between the van and the entrance to the bush, Bad: There were a lot of thorns along the way). We eventually got to the cache and we never felt so happy to find an ammo can in the bush, even if it was painted gold.

Signing a Log in a Tunnel

Yesterday, we went up to Cornwall for a Geocaching event. It wasn't anything spectacular. We didn't reach any milestones and  the event itself was a simple meet-and-eat event. What made it enjoyable, though was the simplicity of it all. There was some great scenery, some great trades, and even a few hard fought finds. Of course, there was the typical skirt-lifters and poorly done caches, but that is all part of the game. Sometimes, the simple things can be just as much fun as the complex events with the mass finds and huge prizes.

I think the biggest surprise yesterday was that we were the only representatives from Kingston (Brockville not withstanding). Jen and I have noticed in the past that things seem to be slowing down around Kingston, but this really seemed to underline it. Looking at profiles, we found that most of the regulars have either stalled or are finding at a really slow rate (four to seven finds a month) this year. I suppose I should not feel so bad any more about our slower pace because at least we are still caching at a fairly good rate.

There is an another event next week which means more caching for us. We were supposed to go on a caching canoe trip on Sunday, but I accidentally made plans to help a friends with a computer. I'll tell you though, I'd rather be canoeing.

Where is "Restoule" and Why Can't I Pronounce it?

This will be another time delayed post. It appears we have even less phone coverage here than at Pancake Bay.

This stay has been the absolute polar opposite to our previous leg. The rain stopped as we were leaving Sault Ste. Marie and it got hot. Bloody hot! Since we didn't have a cache for 250km during the trip, we enjoyed the effects of air conditioning in the van. Imagine the brick wall of heat and humidity (remember the rain?) when we got out at Laval for our next cache! After that, we decided to try to keep a little more temperate and drive with the windows down.

We made a quick detour to visit my mother since we were going past. She informed us that she didn't see a drop of rain in the past three days. I sighed. She tried to convince up to stay a little while and have a swim - which was really tempting considering the heat. We decided we wanted to get to the camp at a respectable time, which we did.

As we arrived, we were proud of ourselves. It was still light enough that after we set up camp, we will be able to have a swim and eat dinner before it got dark. That quickly changed. We followed the directions to our camp site to be confronted with a pile of sand in the middle of the road. They were rebuilding a washroom and completely closed off road access to the camp section we were staying in. The choice was to drive back to the gate and get a new site, or carry all of our gear to the camp site. We chose to drive. This worked out well because we ended up saving $2. In the end, we got a pretty good spot and we had dinner by cooking hot dogs on the camp fire.

Wednesday was even hotter. We were still able to hunt out 25 caches before the desire to return to camp overcame us. Swimming never felt so good - until we discovered the leeches. Even couldn't be cured by a good camp fire.

With the heat of this leg, the rain of the previous leg and the happy medium of the first leg, I can only imagine what our trip home will involve. We have a lot of caches lined up to make this a record breaking week. We'll see if we can actually do it.

Wet One in Superior

We just finished packing up from our stay at Pancake Bay Provincial Park near Sault Ste. Marie. This post will be a little delayed. We have no phone reception up here, so I have to mail in my post. This could take a few days.
If I had one word to describe this leg of the trip, I would use "wet." It started raining while we were finishing dinner on Sunday night, it is still raining now. It looked like we might get a break earlier - we hoped at least long enough to tear down camp. We ended up wolfing down soggy pancakes as the rain started again. Last night, we sat in the van to watch the last episode of Dr. Who before going to bed. The rain was so loud on the roof of the van, we couldn't hear it and had to stop.

It wasn't all doom-and-gloom, though. Yesterday, the rain held off long enough to get a respectable geocaching day in. We managed to get a respectable 29 finds yesterday (with the 11 we got on the trip here). It didn't start raining until we were already driving back to camp. I am also very happy to report that our new tent passed with flying colours with respects to withstanding the rain. It didn't leak at all through the entire ordeal! It makes me feel a little bad that we messed up one of the anchor loops while taking down the tent. Hopefully, it shouldn't affect things much.

We are now leaving for another Provincial Park that lies just outside of North Bay. We have been watching the weather, but the best we can determine is that no one has a clue!

If I'm on Vacation, Why Am I so Exhausted?

Yesterday's trip went well. We found 17 caches along the way and 2 DNFs (Did Not Find) before we decided to finish caching and just drive to my parents'. We arrived at 10:30pm. This gave me a lot of releif because we were actually considering sleeping in the van and arriving in the morning. This way, we got to enjoy the entire day without worrying about travel.

We slept in a bit, but that's what vacation is for, right? We enjoyed a nice pancake breakfast, did a couple chores (dump run, take apart a platform) then enjoyed the rest of the day. This meant having a few drinks at the dock and we went swimming. I got to show off some of my new CDs (Tom Petty's new CD, MOJO for instance) and I got to take a few pictures.


Dinner was a great meal of steak and barbecued potatoes. Afterwards, we went for a ride around the bay in the boat, returning at sunset. We finished the day by sitting around the fire, roasted marshmallows and finished the drinks we bought for the visit. I can still hear fireworks from other cottages.

I think I can honestly say we had a full summer vacation in one day. I guess this is why I feel so tired tonight. I expect quick sleep tonight.

Tomorrow is going to be another long day. I expect to be on the road by 9:00am so that we can get to our camp site at a respectable hour. We may not cache as much since the trip is still over 500km and we want to get there around dinner time. That said, we are going through Sudbury which promises some concentrated caching spots. After a day off from geocaching, I expect some good finds tomorrow.

... And We're Off!

Our optimal plan was to be on the 6:45 ferry and make a stop in Napanee for breakfast, caching and a couple errands. As you can see it's 9:15 and I'm just now sitting on the ferry. The good news is we have already eaten breakfast and we can now do our errands in Kingston. If we skip the caching, we will have only really lost about 10 minutes.

We're docking now, so let the vacation begin!

Back in the Saddle

It has been quite a while, but I did say I make no promises. A lot has happened, but rather than recounting it all, I'll just pick up where I am now.

Tomorrow, we leave for our annual Geocaching trip. It isn't as aggressive as previous years, but I'm as excited as ever. We will be spending two nights at my parents', two nights in Sault Saint Marie and two nights at a camp South of North Bay.

I'll try to post regular updates, but as the usual rule, I make no promises.