Geocaching and Leap Day pt 2.

Good morning everyone.  Have you seen the new 360 from home stat on Project-gc?  Basically it shows how many degrees around your home location that you have or haven't found a cache.  I have found in all degrees around my home location except for one.  Bearing 15-16.  I see two caches that fit in that bearing.  Looks like I'll be trying to fill that in, in the near future.  The bearing with the most finds is 220-221.  I have 75 caches found in that section.  Most of my big numbers come from that general bearing as there are plenty of caches to be found to the Southwest of my home location.

Last week was the first part of my Leap Day activity and the nine icon challenge that I presented to myself.  I ended the blog with five icons found, needing only four more.  This week we find out if I was successful in my quest.  We left off having attended an event, found a traditional, a wherigo, puzzle (mystery) final, and a multi-stage cache.  Now I'm headed for a section of the city known as old St. Boniface.  There is plenty of history in this area that dates back before the city of Winnipeg was established, and before Manitoba became a province.

Icon number six on my list is an Earthcache.  I like Earthcaches and I also don't like Earthcaches.  I like them for the interesting places they can take you to and the potential to learn.  I, like many other geocachers, don't like some of the questions that can be asked.  I know this particular owner of the Earthcache (Stonagal), so I know the questions won't be too difficult and he's not too sticky about the answers.  This Earthcache takes you around to a couple of waypoints within old St. Boniface, observing what was an oxbow lake but is now a meander scar.  I gathered the necessary information for icon #6 and proceeded to my next icon, the Virtual.

(This church has nothing to do with the Earthcache, but you do go past here.  I've always been fascinated by the architecture of this building since I was quite young)

 The Virtual brings you to the St. Boniface Cathedral.  What you see here is a church that was built in 1906, but destroyed by fire in 1968.  The façade is all that remains.  Some notable people buried on the grounds are Louis Riel, the founder of Manitoba.  Jean-Baptiste Lagimodiere, one of the first settlers in the Red River Colony in 1812, along with his wife, Marie-Anne Gaboury, the first female of European decent to travel to Western Canada.  There are questions to answer and for the most part, easy to do.  One part of a question had me stumped.  While searching for that, I noticed someone else come along and was looking at the headstones.  I paid no attention to them and kept up my search.  After a short time, that person asked if I was geocaching.  Together, we were able to locate the last part of the answer we needed.  Once that was done, we introduced ourselves.  I was with Queen of the geocaching family 1Queen&4Jokers.  I have found many of their caches but have never met them.  We chatted for awhile before going our separate ways.  She was slowly making her way to an event nearby that I wasn't really planning on attending.  Answers were sent for the Virtual.  Icon #7 is complete.

(my view of the cathedral)

(Louis Riel's burial spot looking towards the cathedral)

Now for the eighth icon, an Adventure Lab cache.  It just so happens that the start of this adventure lab is right here at the cathedral.  As I was inputting the first answer (which I had wrong), I heard someone say hi.  I look over and there's Dani_Carriere, the owner of the very Adventure Lab cache I'm starting to do.  She was there to do the virtual that myself and Queen of 1Queen&4Jokers just completed.  Dani gave me a tip on the first answer to her lab cache and I helped her out with the part of the virtual we were stumped on.  Now she's heading to the same vent that Queen is going to, but I'm not.  This Adventure Lab cache takes you around to some prominent places in old St. Boniface.  Five stages in all and very easy to do.

This was one of the stops of the Adventure Lab.  Old St. Boniface city hall.  The shovels had nothing to do with the lab cache but I thought it was a fairly cool thing to see.  Now I know what to do with my old shovels.  The final of the Adventure Lab brings me to Fort Gibraltar.   The original fort was built in 1809 by the North West Company.  What stands today is a replica that was built in the late 1970's for the Festival du Voyageur, the largest Winter festival in Western Canada.  

(Fort Gibraltar and the last stage to the Adventure Lab)

With the final answer submitted, I had icon #8 complete.  One more to go.  This would be a Letterbox.  Fortunately, there is a series of Letterbox hides just a short drive outside of the city.  I made my way out to get just one of the Letterbox's.  It's basically part of a powertrail, so I had my pick of which one I was going to sign.  With that done, I now have my ninth icon for the day.  Success!  

On my way back to the city, I swung by to find the challenge cache for the nine icons in a single day.  My only DNF.  It's not that important to find right now.  It could be buried under the snow.  I'll come back in a month or two when the snow has melted.  At the end of the day, I had thirteen caches count towards my grand total.  Since the Adventure Lab was a five part series, it counts as five finds, plus the other eight that I found.  Now when I look at my caches found by date calendar, it shows I have 24 finds for Leap Day.  What will I do for the next Leap Day in four years?  Who knows.  If I don't go geocaching on that day in four years, I'm ok with that.  

A few days after I did all this (including the writing), I see the updated stats on Project-gc.  The one thing that stood out to me was the most cache types in a day stat.  Project-gc is only crediting me with eight.  They don't count the Adventure Lab.  Why not?  WheriGos count.  Both WhereiGo and Adventure Lab are cache types that Geocaching HQ recognizes, both need to be done using an outside app from Geocaching, and Adventure Lab caches are given out by Geocaching HQ.  Why doesn't Project-gc recognize Adventure Labs?  I know I did nine types in a single day and that's all that really matters.

That concludes my Leap Day, 2020.  How was your Leap Day?  Did you make any goals for yourself?  Did you accomplish those goals?  Until next week, be safe, be happy, be kind, hug your geo-pets, enjoy life, and most of all, have fun.  Peace out.

(I'll just lay here and wait for you to come back up and give me some scratches)