Dance and Song

29/07/2012 By Kabutroid
Manitou. Having grown up in the country (a few km’s outside Landmark to be specific... if you’re even remotely familiar with ‘Zilberfeld’, you get 5000 points), I had heard of the town, but never had the opportunity to visit it until not long ago. Having several nieces who live in Carman who just so happen to have taken up dance led to my eventual travels to Manitou. The first time I visited I was unaware of this cache’s existence, and thus walked right past it without the slightest idea.

This time however, I came prepared. Time forbade me from hunting for the cache beforehand, so my sister, wife and I went in to watch the play (The Count of Monte Cristo). After the quite enjoyable production, the fact that my nieces (and as a matter of fact, my brother in law had a few parts as well) were in the play worked out quite well in our favour. While most of the crowd took off, we stayed around to chat it up with them a bit, take pictures of their costumes, and general chilling for a bit there. This made it significantly easier to go after the cache without drawing a hundred eyes worth of attention to myself.

With the play done, I looked at my GPS and set off in search of the cache. However, it seems as though I got a bit turned around from looking at the GPS while inside said House of Opera. I immediately went the exact wrong direction, and ended up circling the building entirely. After I basically ended up where I started, I looked to the side and immediately recognized that which I was looking for. My memory of the cache description had become somewhat skewed since I read it last night, so I thought it was going to be in a somewhat different location, thus my initial confusion... I was looking for something entirely different for the cache camouflage to be on.

But with that correction made, I checked it out and indeed found the cache container in question. Although, I could be entirely off base, but I thought the Opera House was a historic site or some such. It could well be that they’re in on the geocaching, but I wouldn’t have thought the cache could have been hidden this way. Of course, it’s also entirely possible that in my few moments there I missed something obvious, and everything is all fine and good... which is also a distinct possibility. In either case, I didn’t want to draw undue attention to myself, so I snagged the actual plastic cache container and headed for the nearby picnic table.

Inside... was a tad unexpected. We found a fairly large handful of... black jube-jubes. Of all things to find in a cache... during a summer of 30 degree and up for weeks at a time... I can safely say I did not expect to find gummy type candies in it. At the bare minimum, I wasn’t expecting to find them even remotely whole as opposed to a sweet, black puddle at the bottom. But whole they were, and I thought it prudent to clean the cache of them, what with the whole ‘no food in cache containers’ thing. The next finder may find the inside a bit sweet smelling still, but at least you won’t have a sticky hand that only a moist towelette took care of in the car.

So with the cleaning done, I dropped in a chainmail ball and signed the logbook. I was able to replace everything (minus the jube-jubes) back from whence it came without being seen (in fact, the streets were downright empty aside from the handful of people who hadn’t moved from outside the Opera House doors... out of sight of us through all of this).

Thanks for the cache that I was able to find in my travels. I’ve let my nieces know of the caches existence (they geocache under the name ‘Blagden’), so hopefully they should be finding it sometime around their next play. In fact, their next performance of this play is on Friday or Saturday, so perhaps then. At the bare minimum, if anyone’s in the area then, check out the play... it’s quite entertaining BigSmile .

Took: Large handful of black jube-jubes
Left: Logbook entry and chainmail ball