Amazing Grace Stairway- Hwy 75 Northbound

11/05/2013 By Kabutroid
Ahh, now THIS is the cache I've been waiting to find. Probably for years now, really! For years even before geocaching, on the rare occasion I drove past this church, I'd always wanted to at one point actually stop there and see what its story was. However, I wouldn't be the one driving, or otherwise me and others were on our way somewhere, and of pretty much any of my friends, none of them are of the type that would actually want to take the time and stop and check things out. Come to think of it, the only time I've EVER gone past this church was when other people are with me.

Until today! Oh, well my wife was with me, but she was fine with me stopping for a cache or two (or four, the number I found today ToungeOut ) And I finally had another reason to go down the #75... my niece's performance at the concert hall in Winkler. Heading home from there, it was still the mid-afternoon, nice out, and ripe for caching! Three finds later, I finally get to the pièce de résistance of the caching... getting to stop at the church, and take in the scene. Seriously, more people need to take the time to stop at roadside points of interest. But I digress.

Having pulled into the driveway of the church, I hopped out of the car and set off towards the coordinates. Sauntering over, I checked out the signs and scenery in general. Upon arriving at ground zero, I was a bit perplexed as to where the cache could be hidden. Given the size of the cache, I had a feeling it could be anywhere. Unfortunately, I didn't have the cache description or anything on my phone, otherwise it would probably have made this process significantly easier ToungeOut . However, after about a minute of fruitless looking into holes or slots that might conceivably hide a micro cache, I realized that I should probably just be searching the obvious. I'm pretty sure that most of my initial searching however was due to me just hoping to find the cache the “easy” way, and not have to do a lot more bending and stretching ToungeOut . However, as all well-hidden caches are, this one took a bit of everything to locate and retrieve. Well done actually, the location couldn't have worked out better, really. Soon having the cache in hand, I signed the logbook and replaced the cache container.

Although, I DO want to make a bit of a suggestion. If it's at all possible, you may want to swap this for a bigger cache container that fits a full logbook. I wouldn't have minded being able to write a bit more about the cache site in the logbook if it were possible. But that aside, definitely a great hide. I figured a micromail ball might not quite fit into there comfortably, so I slipped a nanomail ball in and replaced the cache as found. NOW it was time to look around the area, and see what the story is. The sign gave me some info on the church, and so I strolled around the area, enjoying the evening. It was just starting to get cool now, the sun was slowly dropping, and the sky was clear as a bell. See attached pic, it's just about the definition of “relaxing scene”.

And so, I'm really glad I was able to stop here and chill for a few minutes. I'm STILL really perplexed as to why the highway routes AROUND the church. I'd think it would have made infinitely more sense to just have BOTH lanes of the #75 curve to one side or the other, and leave the opposite side just... field or whatever. I'm not sure if this church is still used on a regular basis, but I'd think that having the road on either side, it would limit parking to an extent. Although, thinking about it closer, given how much grass was growing on the “driveway”, I'm thinking it's probably not in regular use.

That said, thanks for the cache. This was definitely a great way to cap off a fun day of performances and geocaching.

Took: picture
Left: Logbook entry and nanomail ball