Post date: 21-May-2009 16:09:55
On Friday, May 15, 2009, we drove to the Red Lodge Provincial campground, which is about 20 minutes from Gasoline Alley. We stopped at Gasoline Alley on our way to geocache. Our first coordinates took us to Glenn’s tea house and restaurant. We looked all over an electrical outlet post for the cache. I couldn’t see anything and Colin started feeling for items that moved. Sure enough, a metal outlet cover with no holes was magnetized to the outlet pole. On the other side of it was a duct tape envelope that contained the log book (very clever location).
Next, we headed past the Esso to a little duck pond beside storage sheds. On the side of one of the sheds was a round plastic jar that contained quite a few goodies. We traded a geocoin (that we picked up in Hawrelak Park the previous weekend) for a mini flashlight that might come in handy while camping.
The third cache that Colin found was much trickier. It was in the parking lot of the Budget Hotel. I am sure that people who stay here and spot geocachers must wonder what on earth they have lost or what they are looking for. After much rooting around through the gravel filled tree area, we started looking in the holes of the cement parking blocks. Colin pulled out a loose rusty boltsand there was a micro cache on the end of it (what a sneaky spot). We signed the log book and headed to our campsite.
On Sunday, May 17, 2009, we went on a mission to find a geocache hidden 250 m from our campsite. We took 3 friends with us. The GPS brought us to the edge of the Red Deer River and the arrow pointed to the other side of the river. It was warm out, but none of us brought a raft, so we found a shallow area of the river and crossed on foot. Colin and I tested our Teva sandals while the one friend who braved the river with us went barefoot, so he would not get his runners wet. When I stepped in the water it felt like I had put my feet in the ice water in our cooler. The current was strong, but we made it across without falling.
I found the cache a few feet into the thick of the woods. I saw the corner of a camo container sticking out from under a long log. The inside of the container was a bit wet, but nothing inside was damaged. It contained a Canada pin, a watch, compass and a few other items. We didn’t trade anything because we weren’t sure if we would get wet getting to the cache.
On our way back across the river, Colin went first and then decided to throw his sandals across the river for his friend to use. Being the pessimistic one, I decided to wait in the middle of the river in case disaster struck. The first shoe cleared the shore by about 5 m. The second shoe wasn’t as luck and landed about 5 m from the shore and 3 m from me. I managed to sprint across and grab it before it floated away. The other geocaches near the campsite were about 6 km away so we decided not to look for any of those.
The wind and the forecast of snow scared us away from camping on Sunday night. We decided to pick up one more geocache on our way home. We found Bird on a Wire under the stairs of a lookout in a bird habitat conservation near Red Deer. I never would have known the place was there if it wasn’t for geocaching. This was the first matchbox geocache we’ve found.
Colin recorded the 5 geocaches that we found this weekend and now we’re up to 20 finds total since we started geocaching in January 2009.