Post date: 22-Mar-2009 23:34:14
On Saturday, March 14, 2009 we left the house at 1:00 PM sliding on the half ice, half slush that covered the sidewalks (thanks to more spring snow). It was a short 20 min walk to the playground by the Rutherford K-9 school (still being built).
Since the Backyard Stash cache we were trying to figure out had no clues, we kept scrounging through many different areas and under many different logs. Unfortunately, after about 20 minutes I really had to go to the bathroom. We speed walked home to use the bathroom and then drove back to the site. We hunted again but with no luck. Later, Colin read all the comments for this cache and we discovered that this cache had been muggled. It’s frustrating to look for something that doesn’t exist, so we’ll be sure to carefully read the comments on the website next time.
For our second cache, we walked across the street and into the woods (where I always go running). In less than 20 minutes, we found Spruce Grovey. We decided to decipher the clue which was “groovy, man, groovy.” Colin picked the correct clustering of dead trees where the cache was buried. At the grooves and crossroads of the base of the trees there was a little hole with many sticks and branches piled on top. I moved the loose sticks and we found our first ammo can cache. It didn’t contain much—a Winnie the Pooh Kinder Surprise toy, a broken wooden bean spoon, and a game cartridge carrier for Nintendo. The coolest toy was a digger (that we packed with snow for a picture). We added a small Kinder Surprise cardboard gift box. According to the log book, the cache has been hidden here for two years.
After our first find of the day we were excited and ready for more (since we only found one in 2.5 hours). We stopped at Tim Horton’s for a quick break. Next, we headed to a pond near 91 St and Ellerslie road. The GPS registered that the cache was right in the middle of the bridge over top of the pond.
We looked all over the bridge. There was nothing hanging off the inside or outside of the bridge. We looked under each side of the bridge. The pond was frozen solid so we were even able to look further than where the cache should have been permitted to be hidden (you can’t hide items below a few feet of water). After getting really wet from digging through the snow, we decided to give up on this cache until the summer. We later checked the website and this cache does still exist.
We went home so I could change from my dripping runners and socks to my rubber boots (we should have worn waterproof pants). Colin and I went for a field trip to Gateway Park on the way out of Edmonton. It was the first time either one of us had been there and it’s quite a nice park.
We trudged on top of a crunchy top layer of snow that was not able to support us. Each time I hit the grass I almost lost my boot. It felt like we were using our feet to carve out cubes of snow to build an igloo.
Then we saw it—another trail in the snow. We switched from our new trail to the old trail. We arrived at the Comin’ and Goin’ TB Hotel cache and sure enough it was already visited once today. The green ammo can was chained to a tree with an old 4-digit turn combination bike lock (it only took Colin 30 seconds to crack the code). We didn’t really need to unlock the cache and we did lock it back up. It was locked because the cache had been stolen before. I don’t know why someone would steal an entire cache except to spoil the fun of geocaching. I mean what would you really do with all the stuff?
This was the best cache we’ve found yet. It contained 3 travel bugs and 1 coin. There was a travel bug on a green car, one on a picture frame and one on a miniature game of table hockey. We took the table hockey and a pirate coin. The coin had just been traded into the container that morning by the previous geocaching team. We swapped a Kinder Surprise polar bear for our two new treasures.
Side Note: What is really ironic is that when we got home Colin updated his Facebook status to say that he loves finding treasure in caches. His friend wrote on his wall: “What like pirate coins?”
We headed through more crunchy leg cutting snow (I had a space between my boots and pants) to the second cache by the oil Derrick (the other geocachers didn’t go to this one this morning). Colin found us our first nano cache (smaller than our two previous micro caches). I was looking all over the underside of the Oil Derrick, but Colin marched over to a lamp post and pointed to a metal cover at the base “It’s under here.”
“Really, how do you know?”
“There are scratches on the post from lifting up this metal base.”
Colin lifted it up and there was a tiny black cylinder the size of a bullet. It was magnetized to the base of the lamp post. As the description for the Nano Cache – yellow said online “You will spend more time trying to get back into the container than you did looking for the cache.” The scroll inside the container was very tiny. You have to be the master of small printing to sign this log. Colin signed our names for us.
The third cache we looked for in Gateway Park was Stick-it to your cache. We had to endure the deepest snow we’ve encountered yet to get to it. It’s also on the very edge of the park. It’s closer to the highway and exit ramp of the park then it is to the main park. We were unable to find this cache and discovered online through the comments that it had been muggled.
It was a successful 6 hour day of caching and we ended it by treating ourselves to some fat burgers in South Edmonton Common.