SPOILER WARNING:  While I’m careful not to give away too many specifics about a cache, it is always possible I might mention details you don’t want to know. Proceed accordingly.

I don’t know if I’ll ever manage a “First to Find.” Sunday afternoon I was number 4 to log a find on a new cache down the road from our house. Several weeks ago I discovered a park area just down the road that I didn’t know existed before. The area tucked in behind houses and a forested area used to be a farm  a long time ago, and now someone maintains a mowed walking trail in what used to be a field. The last time we walked there I thought it would be a great place for a cache. Well, someone beat me to it, GC1R7F3 – Dinky Car Treasures, was put there a month ago. A cache for trading match box and dinky cars is great to have nearby as my youngest daughter really likes toy cars. We set off with a couple of cars to trade and after walking the main path first to avoid a couple walking their dog, we hunted down the cache. It took a few minutes of searching but we found and traded our cars.

I’m still thinking of placing a cache in the area. It’s a big field and I think we can put one a good distance away so it will be approved and give people a chance to do a coulpe with one stop.

SPOILER WARNING:  While I’m careful not to give away too many specifics about a cache, it is always possible I might mention details you don’t want to know. Proceed accordingly.

In a hurry to run some errands Sunday morning, I left the house without my GPSr. I planned to stop at two caches: one I already new the location GC1R72Z – Sam’s Zone, and GC1R752 – Are you smarter than a canine cacher which I new the general vicinity but not the precise location.

Sam’s Zone proved to be a problem again. It seems each time I need to go to the Walmart where it is located it happens to be a busy time of day. Once again too many muggles meant I didn’t attempt it. I’ll have to pick my shopping time more carefully next time.

I knew the canine cacher cache was near the PetSmart store. Previously I bypassed it becuase logs suggested it was missing. This time I had to buy dog biscuits. I knew the cache was available, so I might as well look. Upset at myself for forgetting the GPSr, I thought I would have a look anyway. Since I always decrypt the hints posted on the cache page, I at least had that to go by, and while it suggested a possiblity without being too blatant I proceeded to check a couple of places after leaving the store. Sure enough, the clue lead me to it. I could see it from a short distance, but it was in a fairly exposed area. My daughter and I sat on a curb for a minute, and during a brief break in auto and pedestrian traffic I grabbed the  cache and signed the log. After another brief wait I was able to replace it.

SPOILER WARNING:  While I’m careful not to give away too many specifics about a cache, it is always possible I might mention details you don’t want to know. Proceed accordingly.

A Friday evening trip to The Running Company in Oakville gave us an opportunity to go for a couple of caches near Lake Ontario. I used to live in Oakville and have always enjoyed going downtown. The downtown core is a quaint mix of  shopping along Lakeshore Boulevard,  old homes by the lakeshore, and the harbour with all its sail boats.

The first cache we attempted was GC11X1F – Good luck with this one! which first required solving a coded set of coordinates. Earlier in the day I took about half an hour to figure out the substitution code and the coordinates I got checked out OK at GeoChecker, a site where solutions to cache puzzles can be checked (if the cacher saves them there.) The coordinates took us to one of the waterfront parks just west of the Oakville harbour. It was a pleasant evening to explore along the rocky beach area, and we casually poked around the area we thought the micro cache was hidden. As in previous situations the fluctuating readings from my Nuvi 250 GPSr made it difficult to home in on a specific spot. We knew we were looking for a well hidden micro, but ground zero had a hundred potential hiding spots. After half an hour of searching we gave up. I’ve never asked for a hint before, but this time I decided to do it. I know we were really close, so I want to go back and find it. I left a message for the cacher who placed this one, but I think he’s away right now, so it may be a while before I hear anything.

Hoping for some better luck we headed to our second objective GC16T04 – LFC – 25th Anniversary which was just a few hundred yards up the road. This cache is by the Lions Foundation of Canada facility where guide dogs are trained. My wife and I both work for a company in the eye care industry, and this organization is one our company supports. My wife had been here before helping out on Community Day, but it was my first time to visit. It was very quiet at 7:30pm, but we had to be cautious as someone was enjoying a drink on their balcony just across the street and had a clear view of us. The cache was a nice quick find after our earlier disappointment. It might have taken a lot longer, but I quickly realized the hide technique was one I had seen before at another cache. We retrieved the cache, signed the log then waited for a safe moment to slip it back into position.

On the way back to our car we picked up one clue to multi-cache GCFBE3 – Sweet Sixteen. I’m sure it will take a couple more trips downtown to get the rest of the clues, but hopefully we’ll be back soon to complete the DNF once we get a clue.

Just for fun I thought I would try out Google’s News Web Element to see what kind of stories it might show. Here it is set to get geocaching stories:

The California parks system has announced rules for geocaching on state land. Fortunately they haven’t gone so far as to ban the activity. Here is an article in The Sacramento Bee.

SPOILER WARNING: While I’m careful not to give away too many specifics about a cache, it is always possible I might mention details you don’t want to know. Proceed accordingly.

The long weekend gave plenty of opportunity to hunt for some caches. Since I still have a lot of “close to home” caches to find, even going out to run errands gives me a chance to make a couple of stops.  Saturday morning I drove by, but chose not to do GC1R752 – Are you smarter than a canine cacher since the latest log entries suggested it was missing. I see it is back in action, so I’ll be stopping there soon since dog biscuits are on my shopping list. After doing groceries I swung by GC1R72Z – Sam’s Zone. I know exactly where the cache is, but noon on a Saturday is Muggle Central at a Walmart. I had to abort, but I won’t call it a DNF.

Bridge Out

Read more…

SPOILER WARNING:  While I’m careful not to give away too many specifics about a cache, it is always possible I might mention details you don’t want to know. Proceed accordingly.

Credit River - Running High and Fast

I decided to try visiting five caches in an hour Sunday morning. Of the five, one I had never been near before, one I had scoped out while driving by, one I had visited before, and two I had tried to find before but failed. This wasn’t as challenging as going to five new ones. All of these caches were within two kilometers of home, three along the same stretch of the Credit River near a gravel path. Things got off on the wrong foot when I decided to take a short cut which unbeknownst to me took me away from the first cache I planned to go to. That was OK. I had to come back past it, so no time was lost.

Read more…

I completed my first cache find from the TerraCaching site today. There is only one physical cache close to where I live so most of the finds I will get are going to be locationless caches. These types of caches involve completing some task and supplying some evidence to prove it was done, often photos with a GPSr in them.

For this locationless cache I had to find an ad wrapped vehicle. This is what I got:

SPOILER WARNING:  While I’m careful not to give away too many specifics about a cache, it is always possible I might mention details you don’t want to know. Proceed accordingly.

My wife and I decided to walk into Streetsville Friday evening. It was a beautiful evening, so we headed out for dinner at one of the pubs downtown. On the way I figured it would be a good opportunity to do GCQ4EJ Street Queen – First Reign, since I thought the stages of this multi-cache would be on the way. My GPS was being tempermental and didn’t want to acquire a signal. It finally did once we sat down at the pub. I plugged in the coordinates of each stage while we waited for dinner to arrive.

We enjoyed a good dinner, some wine for my wife, coolers for a friend, and a couple of pints of Guinness for me. After dinner we headed out to do the stages. Since we were in the middle of town we did the stages in reverse order which was fine. However, that meant doubling back to get to the final. It was a great eveing for walking. The only issue was the failing light as it was about 8:15 at that point. We reached the area of the final between 8:30 and 8:45 and had to look quickly. It took a little while and despite a few thorns and a GPS reading that was taking us a few metres off target, we found it.

SPOILER WARNING:  While I’m careful not to give away too many specifics about a cache, it is always possible I might mention details you don’t want to know. Proceed accordingly.

We were at a bowling banquet at Vic Johnson Arena Sunday morning, so I thought we would do the first step of GCK438 Parking on the Credit: Streetsville Memorial before we went home, since it was just down the hill behind the arena. This is an offset cache that requires finding some numbers on a landmark and using them to calculate the location of the final cache. The first part went quickly. I could see a sign in the distance that I thought was the target, but as I reached it I realized the GPS was showing that I was still off the mark a little. Following the readings I reached the proper location a few seconds later and saw what were obviously the numbers I needed. After a couple of minutes of calculations, I could the final was further in the park. Because of the banquet, we weren’t dressed for the next step, so we decided to come back in the afternoon before a trip to Murphy’s for ice cream.

We came back about three hours later. I thought the final would be a quick find, but I was wrong. While I am confident about my calculations, my GPS reading kept shifting. I thought I was a metre away from the target then while standing still the reading would change to 7 – 9 metres. We checked a bunch of possible locations without luck, and for my troubles I managed to put a gash in my scalp from a tree branch I didn’t notice. We’ll be back.

Since this is the first cache I writing about that involved calculations, I’ll mention here that I’m adding some tutorials and tips for the various types of calculations you might require to find a cache. See the Geocaching Math page.