Boler Expedition 2009: St Malo

14/08/2013 By Kabutroid
And somehow, I managed to be even later at logging this cachen than my previous finds of this camping trip. Inadvertantly, I had apparently walked probably within about 20 meters of this cache the first day we arrived and scouted out the beach. Having just arrived, I wasn't wearing anywhere close to the right type of clothes to go tromping off along a trail that followed the water's edge, so this ended up being the last cache I found during our stay.

And what a stay. It was a gorgeous, warm, sunny, bug-free, quiet camping trip (we had the ENTIRE bay 5 to ourselves for all days except Sunday). Which actually leads me to the other curious thing that occured the previous time my wife and I came to this beach. As I'd mentioned in previous logs, the Perseids meteor shower were happening right about now, and we wanted to get some good stargazing in while sitting on the beach. Seems reasonable, right?

So in the pitch black (aside from the stars... the moon was too low to be visible or light anything around us) of Monday night, we grabbed our lawn chairs, and hoofed it over towards the beach. Given we'd just walked this path the day before, we weren't too worried about getting lost... although in retrospect having the GPS with me at THAT point would probably have been wise. But I digress (from my current digression. Digresception?) We had with us exactly one flashlight... which as it turned out had somewhat weak batteries.

Now, keep in mind that it's absolutely dead quiet due to a) the empty bay we were in, b) the trees, and c) the small size of the park making for extraordinarily few animal noises. So we've got pitch black and dead silence. Literally, the ONLY thing we could see was the circle of light where the dim flashlight pointed. If you turned it off or turned your head (anywhere but up towards the stars), you could not tell the difference between your eyes being opened or closed.

NOW... all that said, I've been playing nothing but FPS games such as Fallout, Skyrim, and most recently Dead Island. This does not help the situation. Despite some jitters and joking about how very... first-person shooter the scene was (and I'm talking EXTREMELY first-person shooter feeling, since you literally had no peripheral vision due to the pitch blackness of the night). Only the occasional cricket or (what I assume was a) squirrel running up a tree.

We worked our way to the beach and enjoyed the hell out of that for about an hour. And now... was the trip back. Strangely, I was more nervous and jumpy on the way there, but on the way back, I was the one that held things together. WOOH, go teamwork! Despite almost getting pseudo-lost (in that we accidentally almost took the ridiculously long way down the main road to get back to bay 5), we soon found our way back to the tent in one piece. Definitely an experience.

Sorry, I just HAD to tell that story, and the beach cache seemed the best place. Coming back during the day, several days later, finding the cache was essentially a cake-walk! Although I kinda wish I'd looked for it during the night over there, although I'm pretty sure Laura would have lost it if I'd wandered off and left her on the beach. Odds are, I would have too ToungeOut . When I had daylight, I quickly found my way to ground zero, and thankfully the area was abandoned. A few seconds later, my very first hunch turned out to be the correct one, and I had the cache in hand Smile . One logbook signing later, and I was on my way!

Thanks for the cache and the awesome memories of the beach here. It will be quite some time before I forget this area BigSmile .

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and nanomail ball