See-Eagle

05/08/2012 By Kabutroid
The See-Eagle. It’s a bit of a strange tale, today’s caching trip as a whole. Generally speaking, of all of my close friends, I’m the only person who geocaches, despite my best efforts to try to get others into it. There’s one person who is at least somewhat receptive to the idea of geocaching (I believe under the geocaching name Exousia, who has yet to obtain a find under it), but unfortunately has a 3 year old, and since having birthed said child, hasn’t particularly had time to go out caching (although when he’s a bit older, this may well become an outdoor activity for the both of them).

We were invited this weekend, my wife and I, to her family’s cabin out here. All fine and good, I loaded up my GPS with any caches even remotely nearby (well... the 950 caches closest to the cabin’s coordinates... so a circle of caches centered from here stretching mostway to Winnipeg ToungeOut ). At first I didn’t think I’d be able to even go caching, or if I did, I’d likely be hoofing it alone. However, as it so happens, Exousia’s mother, Kathy, has heard of geocaching, was quite receptive to the idea of it, and wanted to go on a hunt for it.

Little did I know that this short walk to this nearby cache would apparently end with me spending the entire afternoon with her ToungeOut .

So verifying that everyone else was going to chill in the cabin (pfft... cityfolk... never one to get close to bugs, or sticks, or anything even remotely natural), Kathy and I headed out for a walk. Since she was far, far more familiar with the area (I’ve only been to this cabin once before, in the middle of winter for snowshoeing), she led the way to walk along a path that followed the road... apparently part of the Trans Canada Trail I’m told. The walk went surprisingly fast, with the trail being fairly well kept. There were a fair number of fallen trees and other natural debris from the recent massive windstorm about a week prior to this that had since been cleaned off of the path, so it was somewhat interesting to look at the damage it wrought. Looks like the park staff were pretty quick to clean it up though. Several minutes later, we found ourselves ascending towards some informational boards and a bench. After skimming over the information, we headed out towards the cache. It took a bit of hunting around to find the best method to reach the coordinates from the bench, but we eventually found the correct path to take.

And I gotta say... having a lot of fun caching with someone else who’s clearly into being outdoors. Anytime I’ve gotten anyone else to go caching with me (aside from the rare few times I was amongst a pile of actual geocachers), I would have been very hard pressed to get them to take even a single step off the beaten path, never mind go somewhere with even the remotest possibility of getting scratched by a branch or bush. Kathy though... didn’t even hesitate. No matter what I plowed through, she followed. Hell, later in the day, she was leading some of it! Definitely cranks up the fun factor when someone else isn’t afraid to get some dirt under their nails, so to speak.

So reaching the coordinates, we began the hunt, slowly spreading out a bit since my GPS was bouncing us around. Wouldn’t you know it... Kathy was the one who found the cache container first. Her very first cache outing, and she got the find! WOOH! With any luck (and if the remainder of the day was any indication), we may have snagged another geocacher into the ranks. So after poking around the cache container and signing the logbook for both myself and Kathy, we replaced it as found, hid it a bit better (I’m guessing the wind may have knocked some of its camouflage off), and headed back triumphant.

Thanks for the cache so close to where we were staying. It started what would end up a full afternoon of caching BigSmile .

Took: KGT travelbug
Left: Logbook entry and chainmail ball