WOW! Manitoba Micro

15/07/2012 By Kabutroid
I have to say, I am more amused than I probably should be in the fact that while travelling into the USA, the one cache I happen to go after is named after Manitoba ToungeOut . This trip to the States actually grew quite a bit from its inception. From a simple idea batted around between my wife and I, to a friend joining us, to my sister-in-law hopping in for the ride, the four of us eventually gathered together and headed out on an adventure into the USA.

Well, to Grand Forks anyway, so it was more like dipping our toes into the USA ToungeOut .

But nonetheless, we had planned to do some shopping, and generally have a fun afternoon checking out things normally not seen North of 49. Specifically, we had all had plans to at least bring back some soda flavours that simply aren't encountered in Canada (c'mon companies... you can haul all of this to towns located AT the border, but won't bring it even a few steps further to sell to a massive market just a little bit further? C'mon!). So after hunting around Columbia mall and various other stores picking up all sorts of miscellanea (one of which was a peculiar console that plays both NES and SNES cartridges, now that both of those have passed into public domain... yay for old-school gaming goodness BigSmile ), we worked our way back to the border to await our inevitable inspection.

Yep... having a job as a customs broker, and having to state as such when crossing the border, pretty much guarantees that your going to be “randomly selected” for inspection. Right... random. What a strange, completely unpredictable coincidence that I just HAPPEN to be randomly selected for vehicle inspection EVERY SINGLE TIME I've been to the states since I've gotten that job, and not even a single time prior to that. Yes, quite random, this inspection.

But, we were all cheerful and happy, and having gone through this more times than I can count, it went smoothly and quickly once they saw that, once again, we had nothing untoward with us.

But prior to that... we had a USA cache to find! The others in the car (not one a geocacher... unfortunately not one of my closest circle of friends has taken to geocaching the way I have) didn't mind this, as it would give them a chance to stretch their legs. So I had my mind set on this cache by the rest stop that I passed on to save shopping time on the way to Grand Forks.

Pulling in, we parked and I immediately hopped out with my GPS. Once I reached the general vicinity, the cache was found almost instantly. Thankfully the area was quite secluded... apparently everyone thought today was too hot to travel or some such. Well, one guy was training his dog, but they didn't get too close for me to worry about them wondering what I was doing. Besides, the entire operation took only a few minutes. Once I had the cache and opened it, I signed up the logbook and dropped in a chainmail ball, and re-hid it a bit better than found (it was somewhat visible when I first arrived). And surprisingly, there was extraordinarily few mosquitoes to cause problems. That's one good thing about the massive heat wave lately... it's simply too hot for the mosquitoes to come out and play.

But with the mission accomplished, I headed back to the car, where conveniently everyone else had just finished either going to the washroom or getting drinks from the vending machines. So with everyone ready to finish the journey, we hopped back into the car and finished our trek to the border, where the inevitable search once again indeed happened (yep, you get searched both entering AND leaving the states as a customs broker) and they once again unsurprisingly found nothing unexpected, we continued our journey home, tired, happy, and soon filled with NES and SNES cartridge goodness BigSmile .

Thanks for the convenient cache that let me snag another find in the USA without inconveniencing my friends all that too much for my caching hobby Smile .

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and chainmail ball