THE MISSING Link

24/05/2010 By Kabutroid
N49° 50.464 W97° 05.861
The last cache of the day for me, ending with 599 caches found! At first, I was debating whether to go after this cache, or leave it for another day. Having spent most of the day a) biking 6+ kilometers to my inlaws place to b) shovel sand for 4 hours to help them with some yardwork, followed by c) biking home after all of that... I was pretty tired out by this point. My legs were killing me, I could start to feel drizzle hitting my back, it was somewhat cold and windy (the wind of course going AGAINST me), and after having found 4 geocaches so far, I was pretty beat.

I had actually outright decided after the previous cache that I'd leave it. But then, when I passed some back-road and saw a park a bit away, I looked at the GPS and saw that the cache was pretty much right over there. One instantaneous change of heart later, and I swung the bike around and headed down said back road. A few seconds later, I found myself coming up to a large park, with a... baseball diamond I think, a hockey rink (no clue what they use that for in summer... the shape of it is pretty specific), and something else to the North... didn't really look all that hard. The sand on the baseball diamond (assuming it's that) looked pretty wet, so I avoided biking over it to make deep ruts and went around, working my way to the coordinates.

Once I started to get near, I came to the conclusion... that the coordinates were a bit peculiar. Much like 1Queenand4Jokers, the posted coordinates put me... in the middle of the hockey rink. Now I thought to myself "man, if one could somehow place a cache right in the middle of something like this, that'd be pretty cool". However, as much as I looked around right where the coordinates were taking me, I couldn't find the slightest thing. However, thinking that this might be an 'offset' cache or something, I thought about the name of the cache (which still perplexes me, by the way). Thinking that it might somehow be referring to 'chain-link fence', I went off to investigate the big hole in the fence at the West side of the rink. Nnnope, nada.

Walking my bike with me, I gave the outside of the entire West side of the rink a quick skimming, hoping to spot something. Nnnope. Hmm... quite the hide indeed. At this point, I decided to check the cache description (I typically don't pre-plan nearly enough to read cache descriptions or logs before actually being at the location). Unfortunately, the description didn't help me at all... however the hint did quite a bit. That at least eliminated about half of the spots that I had been skimming, so I focused my attention on the other half. Looking around to see if any kids were nearby (it IS a day off, and this IS a park), I was pleased to see that the area was still completely deserted as it had been when I entered.

Gotta say... I've been ridiculously lucky with that today. Any other day, I imagine this place has SOME form of event happening, so I'm glad I managed to find a day when it was free and clear Smile .

Doing a slower search of the area, I eventually worked my way over to finding the cache itself BigSmile . Indeed, the hint was quite useful. Although, the coordinates that I have for the cache itself was a bit off from the posted coordinates. I've added waypoint coords to this log for where my GPS put the cache location at. That aside, I was also quite amused with the cache container itself. I'm not sure how well it'll hold up for dryness when winter comes around, but I guess time will tell. One logbook signing, later, and the cache got the very last of my micromail ball signature items. Time for me to make up another batch, apparently.

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and micromail ball (and I think a nanomail ball may have accidentally fallen somewhere within 2 feet of the cache... but good luck finding it. It's not called a nanomail ball for nothing ToungeOut )