Night Cache

One night over the weekend, there was a wonderful full moon out and the temperature was above zero Celsius, so we randomly drove to a cache area. Once there we did a half mile walk to the cache and then bushwhacked to ground zero. Despite the great light cast off from the moon, the bushes still seemed eerie. Luckily all went well and we made the find. The stroll back was even better since the breeze was behind us. It was a great night. Sometimes night caching can be just as good as day caching... this was one of those times.

Black Friday Upgrade

So we decided to upgrade the GPS to a Garmin 60s. After receiving it, we took it out on a 4 day - single cache workout. Hasn't been much of a test for it just yet, so the jury is still out on if it is any better then the Colorado or not. Either way, it is a nice unit and we're glad to add it to our caching arsenal.

2011 Recap

This year started year late as we experienced one of the worst winters in quite a while. The first real adventure was the annual Cache And Release Winter event at the beginning of May. It was a cold day with quite a bit of snow on the ground. After the first two drive by caches, the third was along the Sturgeon River. We spent way too much time slogging through the hip deep snow, though getting the First To Find (FTF) was a nice reward. It was then we both decided it was time to invest in some snow shoes. So it was off to Canadian Tire and then back out into the frigid weather. Armed with the new equipment, we found our stride and grabbed seven more caches. It was great fun and made us fans of snow shoeing. Unfortunately, the time spent fighting with the deep snow and buying some snow shoes killed most of the day and with night falling along with the temperature, we decided to call it a day. 10 finds in total with 5 FTFs. It was fun. Next year we'll be better prepared for the snow.

Our next adventure came in July. We headed off to Utah for Tatterhood's brother's wedding. On the way down, we stopped and cached at the various rest stops. After the wedding, we headed to the Moab/Blanding area of Utah for a family reunion. Once there, we grabbed several caches in the area and made a trip over to Mesa Verde in Colorado... of coarse we had to grab a Colorado cache. A few days later, we headed over to Arches National Park... but driving through the entrance just seemed to simple, so we decided to put our stock Toyota Tacoma (Obsidian) to the test and take the off-road way into Arches. This involved taking Obsidian up a few mountains and doing a few rock stacks. Despite her long wheelbase (she's a Crew Cab), stock all-weather tires and retarded mudflaps, she made it no problem. Naturally there were several cool caches along the way. It was a great and memorable experience. On the way home, we were able to stop at a few caches that I've (Torran) has been eyeing for years.

Since then, caching has taken a backseat to life. We did manage to find a neat cache out at Pembina River and another one on Nov 11 at around 11:11pm. So hopefully now that things are quieting down again, we'll be able to get back into the sport we love.

The Kokopelli

This past year we went down to Utah for Christmas. While there, we took Zer0 up on his offer to go do the Kokopelli Series of geocaches. The series is made up of approximately 150 caches, placed in such a way as to resemble the Kokopelli. The link below offers a map view of the caches... zoom out to see the picture.

http://www.geocaching.com/map/default.aspx?lat=37.033767&lng=-113.963867

The caches were laid out in the desert and after much hiking, we found all of them. Though it wasn't about the numbers, we did hit the 1000 finds milestone. More important though was the adventure of wandering around the desert and completing this series.

2009 Utah Adventures

I decided to break up this next part of the 2009 adventures into 3 movies. All feature areas within Southern Utah.

2009 Adventures Part 1

After a year in the waiting, I finally got to doing a 2009 Adventure Video. This is Part 1 of our 2009 adventures and features Elk Island National Park, Slave Lake, and Alberta Beach.

Turn up the volume and enjoy!

Discovering Cooking Lake

On Aug 7, 2010, we headed out to a place many geocachers have talked about; Cooking Lake and Blackfoot Rec. Area. It was a great experience from the moment we got there. Being new, we wandered over to a map and tried to figure out where to go. We were quickly apporached by a friendly Host who directed us to the right paths and told us some of the structures we might encounter along it. Our first few caches along the well groomed trails were challenging only in the fact that there were swarms of mosqiutoes hiding out in the bushes, waiting for some crazy fool to come close enough... AKA... us.
We were impressed with how maintained the trails were and how there were pit toilets and shelters all along our journey. We managed to make it to a shelter about 6-7 kms from the stagging area where we found more toilets and a fresh water supply... they really know how to take care of a hiker/biker out here.
The highlight of the day came when we were riding down the trails and came around the corner. We quickly stopped and stood in awe as a male Moose strolled less then 40 ft away from us. At first he watched us intently, but when we didn't move he just went on eating leaves, every so often checking to see where we were. After some time he wandered back into the bushes, but this was not the end of our encounter. A female moose decided to be brave and follow the male. She crossed the trail even closer to us and then away she went into the bushes again.
We managed to grab 9 of 10 caches... the one that got away was in the middle of a mosquitoe infested, thorny bushed area, 200ft from the trail. The sad part is, we were the first no finders of that cache ever... rats. Probably one of my favourite caches of the day was a huge keg sized cache. Funny thing was it was classified as a regular...but it was clearly a large... still it was a great experience.
We both highly recommend this area for caching and hiking/biking and we will be back.