Good morning everyone. This week we'll look at the top number of cache types found in one day. In Manitoba, that honor goes to Kurt B, 4elements5senses, Bike4Me, and V.A. with 11 different types. The most by any Canadian is 12 held by CanadianRockies, uboff, Safari Cachers, and scavengermonkeys. In North Dakota, N0SND has 11. Twelve is also tops across the United States, with no less than 43 different geocachers having done that.
One look at the title of this blog, you might think it has something to do with the college basketball tournament that's on right now. Nope. Although I do like the bracket format of the tournament, I don't follow basketball at all, including the NBA. At the end of my blogs, I have been updating everyone on my monthly challenge. This is a recap (including pictures) of the adventures I had during the month of March.
I'm finding that I'm not going out to find geocaches that often. What was once an every day ritual, has slowly become an every second weekend event. I don't have the desire to go out after work. With Spring here and more daylight in the evenings, that could change. So far, my adventures have been limited to the weekends when I don't have my youngest, Mewtwo with me. Add in to that is the fact that I have my end of the city 99% cached out. I have most of Winnipeg cached out for that matter, so I'm somewhat dependant on newer caches being published. So far, 17 out of 28 caches I have found this month are caches that have been published in 2019. Another 8 are from 2018. Even these newer caches are not in my end of the city.
The first weekend of March saw me find seven caches over the two days. I rely on the recently found pocket query that I run every day. At least I know I'm going for something that is there and findable, instead of searching for something that might be buried in snow or missing. After spending the afternoon with a group of people doing Pokémon Go raids (Dialga for those that do play), I went in search of a few caches that were recently found according to the pocket query. The very first one I decided to go for, I did what I usually do first, check previous logs. This one was "found" two days prior, so a fresh geo-trail should take me to where I need to go. But when I saw the log and it was nothing more than a smiley face, no words, red flags went up. I made my way to where GZ should be and sure enough, no footprints in the snow. I did find the cache and sure enough, the last signature on the log sheet is from November 19th. Over three months ago. Someone was armchair caching. I sent a message to the CO, but nothing has been done about it. I did my part, nothing more for me to do.
A couple more that I did that day: one was on a hydro tower. Getting to the tower was the fun part. It's just off from a parking lot, but when they cleaned the parking lot of snow, it was piled up at the edge of the lot, between where you park and the host. I almost gave up on that one, but sometimes it helps to take a step back and get a look at the bigger picture. Spotted the cache. There was also a recently published puzzle cache that was fun to solve. It was based on the game of curling. The find was a little tricky and I almost gave up on this one. One last check and I found this awesome final. This was put out by local cacher GG&J. I gave it a favorite point.
There was no caching for me for two weeks. Once again, on my weekend where I don't have my youngest (my oldest, d-2002 doesn't come over anymore. He's 17 and wants to hang out with his friends. I expected that. It's all good). I set off to find more recently published caches. These are just North of Winnipeg at Oak Hammock Marsh Interpretive Centre. Every year, there is an event held at Oak Hammock Marsh, hosted by a geocacher that works there and goes by the name of OHMIC. His caches are based on the wildlife and plant life you will find around the centre. A little background on what Oak Hammock Marsh is: it's a wildlife management area consisting of 20 square kilometers of marsh and about 16 square kilometers of grasslands and woods. It's also home to many geocaches. I do have majority of the caches there found, but there are some newer ones from a recent "Cache the Marsh" event that I didn't attend.
One look at the title of this blog, you might think it has something to do with the college basketball tournament that's on right now. Nope. Although I do like the bracket format of the tournament, I don't follow basketball at all, including the NBA. At the end of my blogs, I have been updating everyone on my monthly challenge. This is a recap (including pictures) of the adventures I had during the month of March.
I'm finding that I'm not going out to find geocaches that often. What was once an every day ritual, has slowly become an every second weekend event. I don't have the desire to go out after work. With Spring here and more daylight in the evenings, that could change. So far, my adventures have been limited to the weekends when I don't have my youngest, Mewtwo with me. Add in to that is the fact that I have my end of the city 99% cached out. I have most of Winnipeg cached out for that matter, so I'm somewhat dependant on newer caches being published. So far, 17 out of 28 caches I have found this month are caches that have been published in 2019. Another 8 are from 2018. Even these newer caches are not in my end of the city.
The first weekend of March saw me find seven caches over the two days. I rely on the recently found pocket query that I run every day. At least I know I'm going for something that is there and findable, instead of searching for something that might be buried in snow or missing. After spending the afternoon with a group of people doing Pokémon Go raids (Dialga for those that do play), I went in search of a few caches that were recently found according to the pocket query. The very first one I decided to go for, I did what I usually do first, check previous logs. This one was "found" two days prior, so a fresh geo-trail should take me to where I need to go. But when I saw the log and it was nothing more than a smiley face, no words, red flags went up. I made my way to where GZ should be and sure enough, no footprints in the snow. I did find the cache and sure enough, the last signature on the log sheet is from November 19th. Over three months ago. Someone was armchair caching. I sent a message to the CO, but nothing has been done about it. I did my part, nothing more for me to do.
(armchair geocaching; when someone claims to have found a cache without actually being there)
A couple more that I did that day: one was on a hydro tower. Getting to the tower was the fun part. It's just off from a parking lot, but when they cleaned the parking lot of snow, it was piled up at the edge of the lot, between where you park and the host. I almost gave up on that one, but sometimes it helps to take a step back and get a look at the bigger picture. Spotted the cache. There was also a recently published puzzle cache that was fun to solve. It was based on the game of curling. The find was a little tricky and I almost gave up on this one. One last check and I found this awesome final. This was put out by local cacher GG&J. I gave it a favorite point.
(only fitting that a curling puzzle should have a curling rock as a container)
There was no caching for me for two weeks. Once again, on my weekend where I don't have my youngest (my oldest, d-2002 doesn't come over anymore. He's 17 and wants to hang out with his friends. I expected that. It's all good). I set off to find more recently published caches. These are just North of Winnipeg at Oak Hammock Marsh Interpretive Centre. Every year, there is an event held at Oak Hammock Marsh, hosted by a geocacher that works there and goes by the name of OHMIC. His caches are based on the wildlife and plant life you will find around the centre. A little background on what Oak Hammock Marsh is: it's a wildlife management area consisting of 20 square kilometers of marsh and about 16 square kilometers of grasslands and woods. It's also home to many geocaches. I do have majority of the caches there found, but there are some newer ones from a recent "Cache the Marsh" event that I didn't attend.
(I'm going to miss the geo-trails in the snow that takes me directly to the cache, unless they're evil like me and make extra trails to throw people off)
Two of the caches are located right in the marsh. Not sure how anyone will get these ones in the summer. Canoe maybe? The marsh was still frozen enough for me to walk on and get to GZ.
Another area I had plans on getting to was Selkirk Park, located in Selkirk, Manitoba. This is about a 20 minute drive North of Winnipeg. There are four newer caches located here. I went after the furthest one first from where I can park. That was over one kilometer away. The walk started off good as I followed the dike. It wasn't going to be that easy all the way. I had to leave the dike and follow one of the other hiking trails. I would leave that in favor of deer trails and ski trails to get to GZ. On the way, I spotted something that was a staple on the Winnipeg waterways for five decades, sitting in dry dock, rusting away.
The Paddlewheel Queen, along with other riverboats, ruled the Red River in Winnipeg since the 1960's. Today, none of the boats sail the waters. Some have been cut up for scrap, while others have either been sold or just sit like the Paddlewheel Queen in the above picture. The cache wasn't too far away from where I was able to take the picture.
Still needing to find caches to meet my goal, I set out to find a few more on the final weekend of March. I was successful in finding eight. One short of my goal of 29 for the month. Today is the last day of March, so one last chance to find that one cache. I don't have any plans on geocaching today. I want to be a homebody and veg.
(My very first 3D geocache container. It's made using a 3D printer. Very cool)
(My last find of the day. The RM of St. Clements put out caches near historical spots in the rural municipality of St. Clements. They also include a post card of the historical significance of that area)
I also figured out what my April challenge will be. To reach my 5,300th find. I'm currently at 5,284 as of this morning. Basically find 16 geocaches in the month of April. Easy peasy right? As already mentioned, I have my end of the city basically cached out. Add in to the fact that I could be on the move again and packing could take precedence over geocaching. We shall see.
Until next week, be happy, be safe, have fun, and enjoy. Peace out.
Comments
Post a Comment