Boler Expedition 2008: St Malo #2

14/08/2013 By Kabutroid
A bit late in logging this, but better late than never. This cache was the first of three today, smack in the middle of our camping trip out at St. Malo. And I’m talking the most idyllic of all camping trips I’ve ever had here… no bugs, the ENTIRE bay to ourselves (apparently nobody likes camping without electricity these days), perfect weather, and the Perseids meteor shower to boot. But I digress... this is geocaching.com, not howwasyourcampingtrip.com or whatever ToungeOut .

I had been wanting to tackle some of the trails around here, but was generally busy doing whatever other things prior to today. My wife came with me for this hike, so she wanted to drive to the main trail entrance (or the side furthest from the beach... whether that’s the start or end, I’m not sure). We parked in the conveniently near parking lot there, and hopped onto the trail. Since I had already found the geocache along the North trail, we decided to take the one going towards the beach. After all, there was a SEVERAL caches down THIS stretch BigSmile . Not long after we hit the trail, several women came up from the other direction, asking how long it was before they reached the end. We had literally just started down the trail about 45 seconds earlier, so we told them it was just ahead. They seemed grateful, and told us that we have quite a distance to go, travelling the other way. Fine enough for me, since I’ve been training with ankle-weights for just this reason. My wife on the other hand was a little less enthusiastic about walking long distances, but she survived the entire walk down the trail and back up the road to the car without any big problems. As I said, the temperature was perfect for this type of hike.

Continuing down the trail, we soon reached a bit of a clearing of sorts, where it appears the park staff dumped all of the deadfall and brush that they removed from the forest. Having a fair amount of signal on her cellphone suddenly, my wife decided to stop and call in for a couples massage after the camping trip (something we were planning for a while, but kept forgetting to book). I took this opportunity to tackle the cache in the vicinity. After a few moments of indecision as to how to reach the coordinates, I quickly found the correct, non-bushwhacky path and soon found myself at an area that was just begging for a cache to be placed. And indeed, the cache was indeed waiting there for me Smile .

And for once, I was able to stand in one place... in a foresty setting... without getting eaten alive by mosquitoes! Seriously, it was almost bizarre how few there were for this trip. I’m chalking it up to the increased number of dragonflies I spotted... probably more this year than I’ve seen in the last 5 combined. I poked around the contents for a little bit, but was even more glad that the particularly large TB I was carrying at the start of our trip was able to be dropped into the cache I had found several days earlier. The logbook signed and a chainmail ball dropped inside, I replaced it as found and headed back to my wife and back to hiking. My wife had arranged our post-camping relaxation (which for the record was indeed awesome and relaxing... seriously, everyone should try this. Spend a few days roughing it in a tent on a basic campsite, and follow it up with an hour of massage), and we continued to trudge down the trail during the gorgeous day.

Thanks for putting a cache out here. I was a bit worried when I booked the campsite that there wouldn’t be any more caches here after the parks clamped down on geocaching in general a while back, but it looks like they’re playing along nicely nowadays Smile . A fun cache during a fun walk, in the middle of a fun camping trip... can’t go wrong BigSmile .

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and chainmail ball