Wave Hello To The AVR

02/05/2009 By Kabutroid
Was this cache in waving distance of the mini-railway? I kinda thought that was off on the other side of the Zoo? Or am I thinking of the wrong railway? I'm probably way off, but what I've got in my head is that little mini-rail path that's associated with the Zoo, in the middle of which the cache "The Zoo Train" is. Offhand, I didn't see any tracks or anything remotely rail-related, but I probably just wasn't paying attention Frown . Too bad... because I could see me being kinda interested in that. I'll be checking out that description-posted website after I'm done logging ToungeOut .

Anyhoo... this was find number 499. I had 500 planned for a nearby cache, and decided to tackle all the caches on the far West side of Assinaboine Park to fill out the before and after of that milestone. Having just finished locating the 'All Canadian' cache a bit to the South, I just walked over to this one. No point in trying to fanangle my car closer between all of these caches... the driving around and parking would take 3 times as long as walking, and I wouldn't get any fresh air or exercise if I was in a car.

And as an added bonus, I came home smelling like outdoors, so my cat (and later my wife) was smelling me for several minutes straight ToungeOut .

But... on to the cache! It was fairly quiet out on this side of the park. A little bit further NorthEast, there were various families eating at the fire-pits, but generally quiet. So naturally, this quiet had to be broken . In the time it took me to walk the several hundred meters from the All Canadian cache to this one, TWO more cars parked alongside the road in that small stretch. Ignoring them in general, I kept walking. By the time I had reached the bushy area right around the coordinates, two people from one of the cars of COURSE had to toss a baseball between the two of them RIGHT beside the trees... about 30 meters from where I was. Greeeeat. Well, I at least thanked my blessings that I got into the trees BEFORE they showed up, otherwise I'd have had a harder time kinda getting around them without looking conspicuous.

While they were preoccupied with catching the ball and not getting beaned in the face with it, I proceeded to look around for the cache... to no avail! Huh... I thought. The one place that I assumed it would be was dead-empty. After several minutes of poking around, I decided to consult my palm-pilot for the previous logs and hints (if any were there). Normally it'd take me a lot longer to break down to that, but the people playing catch right friggin' beside me were making me not want to stay around too long.

At which point... thank you greatly for the hint BigSmile . It helped me quite a bit, although it did confuse me at first. Turns out, when I figured it out, I was standing about 3 feet from the cache container, and happened to have caught a bit of it in the corner of my eye ToungeOut . Really well hidden in there, I gotta say!

A quick signing and chainmail-balling later, and off I went. In the opposite direction of the tossers nearby (baseball-tossers, of course ).

Thanks for getting me out and into the park again. The fresh air was wonderful, it was a nice day out (a bit chilly, but workable), there weren't any mosquitoes or other insects quite yet, and after a thorough check, I'm pretty sure I came out woodtick-free BigSmile .

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and chainmail ball