It has been some time since we have updated the blog. We have had discussions about just taking it offline. Life has gotten in the way, with summer weather and being the low man on the totem pole I found myself working long weeks and many hours of the day. This left no time to go caching. I completed my black badge certification for IPSC (a pistol competition), this took a few months for training, practicing, and a few competitions.
Now that winter is setting in, more time will be available for caching. Working a late shift leave only dark hours for caching at night. I have recently attempted two night caches. Not as bad as I thought but it seems i still have a lot to learn about attempting night caches.
With only five months left in the challenge I (Laerok) still must find another 850 caches and put out 10 more caches. I have taken note of a few series that we can discover to pick up some of the caches needed.
We recently took a trip to Narmada near Penticton BC. Sarah-Bellum has family up there. We did several caches on highway 5 and highway 3 during the drive up. We brought a few travel bugs back and introduced them to Vancouver island.
Recently I have started logging a couple of caches before work. I start work at 10:45am, and since I am looking at a career change, I need something to get me up earlier so it wont be such a strain when the change comes about. I have logged 20 caches in the last week, not major accomplishment for some I know.
This blog will live on, for now.
-Laerok
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Sunday, 26 June 2011
Sidney Spit
Two weeks ago Laerok and I attended our first event cache, hosted by Parks Canada and Landsharkz, to launch the Gulf Islands National Park’s geocaching program. This program celebrates the centennial of the world’s first national park service. There are two challenge ‘passports’; one is a family friendly multi-cache series, the other a more adventurous 10 part traditional cache series. Both challenges will take you to the beautiful islands of Saturna, Pender, and Sidney (aka Sidney Spit), as well as one in Sidney itself. More information and ‘passports’ can be found here:
We decided to start with Sidney Spit, being that we had a prior engagement to attend on Sunday evening, we went with the closest island to home. We caught the tiny ferry over to Sidney Island first thing on Sunday morning. Not many people were on the boat, and none of them looked like fellow cachersFTF. No such luck! Someone had been there the day before. Oh well, there were still two more islands. We started off easy with the multi-cache. Laerok must have some sort of homing device when it comes cache containers, because he found both stages of the multi while I was walking around. The last stage of the multi was located close to a cliff with a beautiful view over the town of Sidney. While walking to the tree which we thought the cache was in, Laerok froze with fear after spying a garter snake in the grass. We have known each other for a long time, but I didn't know he had such a depilating fear of snakes. He isn't afraid of bear or cougars, but snakes, no dice! It turned out that the cache was located in the stump just behind us. I (for fear of more snakes) reached in the stump for the cache. I was rummaging through my daypack for a pen when Laerok just about threw the cache and all it's contents to the ground; inside was snake skin!
We made our way along the trails to the 'Top Ten' portion of caches. Along the path were some informative signs describing the brick production that took place on Sidney Island during WWII. Amazing to think over 2 million bricks were produced! Not too far from these signs is a beach that is made almost entirely made up of some of these leftover bricks! This beach was the location of our next cache. This one had us going for a few minutes, mostly due to our snake encounter, but we did find it in the end. There are a few camping spot right on the beach that we hope to come stay at for a night or two this summer. Along the way to the next one, in a meadow there are a few more camp sites. We cut across the meadow in what we could only determine to be a deer path, and right we were! I looked up to see a herd of about a dozen deer running off into the woods.
In a large pasture at the park boundary we made the find. We had a bit of a break in this tranquil space. There was no one but the two of us, a few deer, and the wind blowing through the tall grasses. It's too bad there aren't more places like this. After a rest and some water we were off again. The last one we had to get was at the very end of the spit! We made it back to the main part of the island where we refuelled with some lunch. It's quite the walk out to the spit made even longer that you can see the lighthouse in the distance, but no matter how far you walk it doesn't seem like you have made any progress! After a half hour walk we had the cache in hand. The sand at the lighthouse was so inviting. Had it not been for the hum of planes at the airport you could have imagined it was your own island paradise. Napping on the warm, fine white sand was a perfect end to our first island. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?u=GINPR_geocache. On display at the event were the limited edition geocoins that will be given when the ‘passports’ are complete. Neither Laerok or I have any geocoins of TB’s travelling around, so we were on a mission to get our hands on one.
We decided to start with Sidney Spit, being that we had a prior engagement to attend on Sunday evening, we went with the closest island to home. We caught the tiny ferry over to Sidney Island first thing on Sunday morning. Not many people were on the boat, and none of them looked like fellow cachersFTF. No such luck! Someone had been there the day before. Oh well, there were still two more islands. We started off easy with the multi-cache. Laerok must have some sort of homing device when it comes cache containers, because he found both stages of the multi while I was walking around. The last stage of the multi was located close to a cliff with a beautiful view over the town of Sidney. While walking to the tree which we thought the cache was in, Laerok froze with fear after spying a garter snake in the grass. We have known each other for a long time, but I didn't know he had such a depilating fear of snakes. He isn't afraid of bear or cougars, but snakes, no dice! It turned out that the cache was located in the stump just behind us. I (for fear of more snakes) reached in the stump for the cache. I was rummaging through my daypack for a pen when Laerok just about threw the cache and all it's contents to the ground; inside was snake skin!
We made our way along the trails to the 'Top Ten' portion of caches. Along the path were some informative signs describing the brick production that took place on Sidney Island during WWII. Amazing to think over 2 million bricks were produced! Not too far from these signs is a beach that is made almost entirely made up of some of these leftover bricks! This beach was the location of our next cache. This one had us going for a few minutes, mostly due to our snake encounter, but we did find it in the end. There are a few camping spot right on the beach that we hope to come stay at for a night or two this summer. Along the way to the next one, in a meadow there are a few more camp sites. We cut across the meadow in what we could only determine to be a deer path, and right we were! I looked up to see a herd of about a dozen deer running off into the woods.
In a large pasture at the park boundary we made the find. We had a bit of a break in this tranquil space. There was no one but the two of us, a few deer, and the wind blowing through the tall grasses. It's too bad there aren't more places like this. After a rest and some water we were off again. The last one we had to get was at the very end of the spit! We made it back to the main part of the island where we refuelled with some lunch. It's quite the walk out to the spit made even longer that you can see the lighthouse in the distance, but no matter how far you walk it doesn't seem like you have made any progress! After a half hour walk we had the cache in hand. The sand at the lighthouse was so inviting. Had it not been for the hum of planes at the airport you could have imagined it was your own island paradise. Napping on the warm, fine white sand was a perfect end to our first island. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?u=GINPR_geocache. On display at the event were the limited edition geocoins that will be given when the ‘passports’ are complete. Neither Laerok or I have any geocoins of TB’s travelling around, so we were on a mission to get our hands on one.
Thursday, 2 June 2011
Robbed!!!!
This past weekend I had purchased the full geocaching application and a push Gmail app. THE_GEOKNIGHTS, showed me how to set up notifications for when caches are just published. I got my first notification yesterday that "Muchachos y Muchachas" (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=e74f4aef-321f-4b5f-aaa7-e8eea33c7e60&log=y&decrypt=) was published. The cache was eight kilometres away (according to geocaching.com) on Willis point road. Being that Willis point was our road of choice for drag racing in high school, I was extremely familiar with the area. I paced for about five minutes wondering if I should ask my boss to leave early for lunch to log this cache hopefully as FTF. I got the OK from the boss and dashed to my truck to head to the cache site. With traffic it took me about twenty five minute minutes to get there.
During the drive I changed my goal from FTF to just beating THE_GEOKNIGHTS to the cache. I rounded the last bend to the pull off, and guess what I saw.... THE_GEOKNIGHTS getting into his truck.
"You have got to be shitting me...." I got schooled by the master...
I got some razzing from him for trying to beat him. I asked how long he had been here, he responded with maybe three minutes. If only i had not hesitated on whether or not i should go, I would have beaten him. He gave me some help finding the cache, even though their footprints through the long grass gave me a general direction. All in all it was a nice cache, very well tucked away but visible. The co-ordinates were a bit off but the clues help in locating it.
Today I vowed to him that I would indeed beat him to a cache for the FTF. He obviously laughed and informed me it would not happen.
So for the record........ ITS ON!!
-Laerok
During the drive I changed my goal from FTF to just beating THE_GEOKNIGHTS to the cache. I rounded the last bend to the pull off, and guess what I saw.... THE_GEOKNIGHTS getting into his truck.
"You have got to be shitting me...." I got schooled by the master...
I got some razzing from him for trying to beat him. I asked how long he had been here, he responded with maybe three minutes. If only i had not hesitated on whether or not i should go, I would have beaten him. He gave me some help finding the cache, even though their footprints through the long grass gave me a general direction. All in all it was a nice cache, very well tucked away but visible. The co-ordinates were a bit off but the clues help in locating it.
Today I vowed to him that I would indeed beat him to a cache for the FTF. He obviously laughed and informed me it would not happen.
So for the record........ ITS ON!!
-Laerok
One Less Muggle to Worry About.
It has been a while since our last blog post, but it has been a busy few weeks. As previously mentioned, we had been away on a camping trip over the May long weekend. We had planned on finding ‘Waterfalls of Rain’, but with so much to get organized and packed it was an after thought. The week before we left I had looked to see if there were any caches out near where we would be camping, but it is remote and the closest was about an hours drive away. There are lots of caches along the Cowichan River that we hope to get to one day this summer.
For a while now I have wanted to take my Dad out so he could try his hand at some caches. Due to circumstances this is quite hard to do. I finally had the opportunity to do so! I had some caches loaded on the GPS, but we ended up using our phones for most of them. We were able to accomplish about a dozen. My Dad has an Android and I have an iPhone. We found out that the iPhone is much more accurate than the Android. I would be within a few meters of a cache, while the Android was telling my dad that he still had quite a distance to go. In one instance, he had found the cache and his phone told him to go another 55 meters to the south. This would have put him in the building!
Now that I have converted another ‘muggle’, we are planning to go out again on Saturday. My Dad will now be referred to as ‘ScreaminBeaver’.
-Sarah-Bellum
-Sarah-Bellum
Monday, 16 May 2011
Mother's Day
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| Starting point of the world's longest national highway, the Trans Canada. It streches 7,821 km (4,860 mi) from Victoria, BC to St. John's, NFLD. |
On the starting date of our challenge (April 1st) Laerok and I took his Mom (a 'muggle' a the time) out to try caching. She liked it so much that on Mother's Day she signed up as an official Geocacher! She will now be refered to as 'Spirit_Shadow'.
Early Mother's Day morning Laerok and I picked up Spirit_Shadow for a day of caching. Caching supplies and a working GPS in hand we set out to tackle some of the caches along Dallas Rd. We started again at Mile '0'. It was nice for Laerok and I to finally find this one. On our first date just over a year ago we did some caches in this area and this one must have been moved or 'muggled' because we tried for about half an hour with no luck.
We continued East to Beacon Hill Park. This park is generally busy on any given day, but being Mother's Day and a sunny one at that, the park was extremely busy. Stealth would have to be of utmost importance as to not draw attention to ourselves. I'm not sure if it was because it was an early morning, or in Laeork's case, being up for 31 hours, or we were still waiting for the coffee to kick in, but 'Marilyn Bell' gave us a few minutes of difficulity. We had to think about the hint a little harder, but we got it in the end.
We back tracked a little bit to the cruise ship terminal. Unfortunately, there weren't any in port today. 'Cruisin into Victoria - Take 2' has a wonderful view of The Land and Sea mural by Darlene Gait (http://www.onemoon.ca/). Darlene is a local Coast Salish artist, and Spirit_Shadow's cousin!
We worked our way back into Beacon Hill Park where there were a few caches in walking distance. My Grandmother lives a few blocks away and as a kid I spent many weekends here, so it is always nice to come back and explore, as I don't get much of a chance now to get this far into town.
From Beacon Hill we traveled away from the water to 'Olive Street Common'. This QEF (quick, easy find) was located in a neat little park, complete with a sitting area and swings. From there we tried our hand at 'BOB1 (Beast of Burden 1)'. The terrain rating on this one is a bit off. It is rated as 2/1.5. My cache for 'She sells seashells by the sea shore' has a higher terrain rating! Unless you are some kind of mountain goat, this should be more around a 3/3.5. We searched for quite some time before we had the cache in hand. Beautiful views of the Olympic Mountains in Washington State and downtown Victoria from the top, so I can't complain too much.
We finished our day back at the water with a few more caches along at various beaches on Dallas Rd. The weather started to turn a bit crappy (not that is usually stops us) and Laerok had been up for almost 30 hours at this point. Overall we managed to find 16. Tied our best for the day. A little disappointed in ourselves with being so far behind on the challenge. The unofficial start to camping season starts this week! Laerok, my self and a group of friends are heading up to the Nitnat area for a few days of camping. We hope to get out and do some caches in the area. Along our way is the oldest active geocache on Vancouver Island (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=1690595f-680c-4d16-ae63-6271cae1498e)! We are really hoping to get this one.
Special thanks to Spirit_Shadow for coming out with us!
Remember, CITO
-Sarah-Bellum
We back tracked a little bit to the cruise ship terminal. Unfortunately, there weren't any in port today. 'Cruisin into Victoria - Take 2' has a wonderful view of The Land and Sea mural by Darlene Gait (http://www.onemoon.ca/). Darlene is a local Coast Salish artist, and Spirit_Shadow's cousin!
We worked our way back into Beacon Hill Park where there were a few caches in walking distance. My Grandmother lives a few blocks away and as a kid I spent many weekends here, so it is always nice to come back and explore, as I don't get much of a chance now to get this far into town.
From Beacon Hill we traveled away from the water to 'Olive Street Common'. This QEF (quick, easy find) was located in a neat little park, complete with a sitting area and swings. From there we tried our hand at 'BOB1 (Beast of Burden 1)'. The terrain rating on this one is a bit off. It is rated as 2/1.5. My cache for 'She sells seashells by the sea shore' has a higher terrain rating! Unless you are some kind of mountain goat, this should be more around a 3/3.5. We searched for quite some time before we had the cache in hand. Beautiful views of the Olympic Mountains in Washington State and downtown Victoria from the top, so I can't complain too much.
We finished our day back at the water with a few more caches along at various beaches on Dallas Rd. The weather started to turn a bit crappy (not that is usually stops us) and Laerok had been up for almost 30 hours at this point. Overall we managed to find 16. Tied our best for the day. A little disappointed in ourselves with being so far behind on the challenge. The unofficial start to camping season starts this week! Laerok, my self and a group of friends are heading up to the Nitnat area for a few days of camping. We hope to get out and do some caches in the area. Along our way is the oldest active geocache on Vancouver Island (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=1690595f-680c-4d16-ae63-6271cae1498e)! We are really hoping to get this one.
Special thanks to Spirit_Shadow for coming out with us!
Remember, CITO
-Sarah-Bellum
Sunday, 8 May 2011
Here's Hoping
In seven hours we will embark on setting a new personal goal. Being Mother's Day, we have invited my mother to join us. She joined us on April first, our first day of our challenge, and did extremely well. We are going to start the day off registering her as a new cacher. Then attack Mile Zero and the surrounding area of Beacon Hill Park.
Last weekend we found sixteen caches in about three and a half hours. We will push to find forty, mostly to try and catch up.
We are continuing to have problems loading GPX files onto our GPS. I have a feeling its due to being close to out of memory. I have tried saving the files to the added SD card where I have maps loaded, but still no luck. I will spend the next few hours hunting through google to locate an answer to why this is happening. Worst case scenario I'm sure I can contact THE GEOKNIGHTS for assistance, as I know they have the same model GPS.
Here's hoping for a solution.
-Laerok
Last weekend we found sixteen caches in about three and a half hours. We will push to find forty, mostly to try and catch up.
We are continuing to have problems loading GPX files onto our GPS. I have a feeling its due to being close to out of memory. I have tried saving the files to the added SD card where I have maps loaded, but still no luck. I will spend the next few hours hunting through google to locate an answer to why this is happening. Worst case scenario I'm sure I can contact THE GEOKNIGHTS for assistance, as I know they have the same model GPS.
Here's hoping for a solution.
-Laerok
Thursday, 5 May 2011
The Light at the End of the Tunnel Seemed Brighter.
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| Caching in Brentwood Bay, BC |
I met the cacher Sole Seeker at work on Wednesday April 27th/11. I asked him how many caches he can get done in a day. He told me he once found 630 caches in 24 hours. WOW. He assured me that the more caching I do, the easier it will be to find a cache once at the cache location. After viewing his profile he has logged over 17,000 caches in six years. I cannot imagine ever logging that many caches in the same amount of time. All in all, he was a very nice guy and I actually felt honoured to meet him. Sort of like meeting some one famous.
We have had a few accomplishments. We had visited RACE10: The Bone Yard (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=4644a8dd-a274-4cca-9d66-b751b6ff4f64) two previous times before finally making the find! Okay we cheated, I called THE GEOKNIGHTS for help, and with those tips we found the cache. We had looked right at the cache container so many times, that I became instantly furious upon discovery. As well as finding SSS (Sidney Spin String) (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=5ccf43dd-e58f-4e98-bf8c-4d79af423fe9), we had to really stop and think about how the name came into play with the the cache location.
On Sunday May 1st, we had set out around eleven am to log some caches. We had started our day off heading toward down town Victoria. Once at Mile Zero in Beacon Hill Park, we turned on our GPS to discover none of the GPX files had actually downloaded. We had turned around to log some caches near home. We had to leave our first cache un found as we spent over twenty minutes trying to locate it. We have noticed our procedure in locating a cache has changed since we have first started. Instead of searching for ground zero, we get close and then start searching for possible locations for the cache to be or going to what the hint describes. I'm sure that these are standard actions for most, we had to learn them the hard way.
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| "Tying our shoe laces" for several minutes |
Even with a rough start we had a rather fruitful day in comparison to previous days spent caching. We had managed to log 16 caches. Yes I know some may find that on their drive home from work, but I am proud to find an increase in my one day find totals.
We began our challenge on April first, accompanied by my mother. It was her first time caching. We are going to return to the Beacon Hill Park with my mother for another full day of logging caches. Hopefully she does not check in on this blog as I had completely forgotten it was mothers day this coming Sunday (May 8th 2011). I guess things panned out...
Every May long weekend we head out into the bush for a 5 day long camping trip. I have recently learned that on our drive up past Youbou, we will pass the oldest active cache placed on Vancouver Island. I am counting the days until we can log Waterfalls of Rain (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=1690595f-680c-4d16-ae63-6271cae1498e).
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| Butterfields Farm Cache Location |
Any tips any experienced cachers can pass on to two cahcers just starting out?
-Laerok
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