Kinosao

19/07/2008 By Kabutroid
Last cache of the day, and what a cache it was BigSmile ! My wife and I were driving around to the various lakes, trying to locate a potential beach with less activity than the one at Wasagaming. Not knowing which lakes had sand beaches, we wandered over to Katherine Lake (to find a nice view, but seaweed and generally unpleasant swimming conditions) and Whirlpool Lake (nice waterfall-type view and sound, but same type swimming as Katherine Lake). Deciding to call off our hunt for the perfect beach, we started to head back.

On the drive however, Laura was telling me she was tired and wanted to nap for a bit. Asking if it'd be alright if I take off for a bit to find a geocache that involved a hike, she was up for that. Not being much for the outdoors (mosquitoes will avoid everyone only to attack her, and she reacts quite badly to their bites... unlike me who barely gets bitten, and barely feels it or sees any bite marks when they do), I knew she wouldn't be up for a several-mile (round-trip) hike through the woods.

So... leaving her to nap in the car at the parking area, off I went! I decided to take the Kinosao trail on the way there, since it indicated 1.0km's if I'm not mistaken. It was the shortest, anyway. I was a touch nervous however, since I figured there might be bears or other animals that might attack me if I startle them. Turns out that worry was entirely unfounded however. The biggest animal I saw was a frog... not even a squirrel. Well, unless you count birds... but I wasn't counting flying things in my list o' things to worry about.

Unless of course this forest is home to flying bears. That kinda suck. And just watch... Murphy's Law will now dictate that bears will grow wings, and start attacking hikers from the skies.

So note: warning to future cachers... beware of the flying bears in the area! I'm sure it's now a certainty that they are prevalent in the area [:p].

That aside, it was a very quiet, relaxing hike. I didn't hear a single other soul, nor did I see anything other than bugs, birds, and the aformentioned frogs. After much twisting and turning, I eventually caught a few glimpses of blue through the trees, soon to be greeted with by far the most beautiful, serene sight of this trip. The view of the lake was gorgeous, and the water was crystal clear (see attached pic).

It didn't take me long to find the geocache, and so I took the container with me to the end of the dock to log it. Ahh... so wonderful did it feel to have my legs dangling in the cool water. Signing up the logbook, I found a travelbug of a cute little squid inside. Figuring that since only metal objects appear to be inside the 'Official Parks Canada' caches (that I've seen, anyway), I decided to trade out the plush squid for a metal airplane. Fit a bit better in the container, too Smile . Didn't spot the micro-geocoin however. It's likely there, I may have just not spotted it offhand.

After sitting around for another 10 minutes or so admiring the view and twiggling my feet in the water, I closed up the cache container in its hiding spot, and made my way back. Well... not before walking into the water up to my knees. Although I coincidentally had swim-trunks on, I figured I'd be quite cold without a towel for the long walk back to the car ToungeOut . I decided to take Brule path back (which seemed to split into two after a bit... and I inevitably ended up picking the longer one), I wandered on for another quiet, serene hike back to the car. Again, not a soul to be heard in the distance. Truly a wonderful journey.

Thanks for placing a cache here to let me take in the view. If the cache and the scenery weren't already worth it enough, the foot-twiggling in cool water after a long hike helped it along BigSmile .