Good morning everyone. Continuing down the Westcoast, we look at California for the oldest and most favorited caches. The oldest cache was 'LAX' (GC1C). Hidden in May, 2000. This cache was found 15 times before going missing in 2001. It has been archived. The oldest active cache is 'Phil's Memorial Cache (Oldest CA Cache)' (GC5B). Hidden in September, 2000. It has been found 1,127times and has been given 500 favorite points so far. The most favorited cache in California is 'Laughing Sal's' (GCBD0A). This virtual was placed in January, 2003 and can be found in the San Francisco area. It has 4,363 logged finds and 891 favorite points.
A couple of weekends ago, I was sitting with sm66 in her backyard. A local caching couple, O'Keefek, had posted on FB that they were on a geocaching date. I asked where their adventure was taking them. While I waited for a reply, I mentioned to sm66 how the O'Keefeks go on these geocaching dates, picking a particular location in the province, finding geocaches of course, but also exploring the area as well. One particular trip, Mrs O'Keefek raved about some Dam restaurant that's located in Seven Sisters Falls, about an hour East/Northeast of Winnipeg. sm66 had heard of this Dam restaurant and suggested the idea of us spending the afternoon exploring the area of Seven Sisters Falls.
Seven Sisters Falls is the location of one of six hydroelectric dams located on the Winnipeg River, inside of Manitoba. There are a couple more dams in Northwest Ontario. Construction of the Seven Sisters dam started in 1929, with the first power generated in 1931, producing 75 megawatts from three vertical turbine-generator units. Construction of the next three units began in 1948 and completed in 1952. The present capacity is 165 megawatts per year. To put that in perspective, the Delorean in the Back to the Future movie required 1.21 gigawatts of power. This generating station produces 0.165 gigawatts. Not enough to get Marty back to the future where he belongs.
Off we go for an afternoon of exploring and a couple of geocaches. Seven Sisters Falls is also the starting point of the original geocaching power trail in Manitoba. Placed by Muz and Girlie in 2012, the 'Winnipeg River Power Trail' runs North along highway #11, along the Winnipeg River, finally ending with #263, just East of Pinefalls. The trail is approximately 66 kilometers, or 46 miles long. I have done portions of the power trail, including the beginning in Seven Sisters Falls a few years ago. Fortunately, there are a few newer caches in town for us to find. On arrival to the town of Seven Sisters Falls, we pull over to see where we need to go and what caches will we search for. Once that was determined, we headed over to the generating station and parked in the Dam parking lot.
I do recall going on a school field trip when I was in grade 10, going to the different generating stations that are along the Winnipeg River, and Seven Sisters was one of the stops. That was over 40 years ago (I'm dating myself when I do that). sm66 and myself head up the the generating station to look around and get a few pictures.
Once on the other side of the station, there is a hiking trail that will take us to the town of Pinawa, which is home to many, many more geocaches. Both sm66 and myself have found a couple of geocaches on the trail closer to Pinawa a couple of summers ago. Hiking to Pinawa today wasn't part of our plans, so we turned around and headed back to where we parked.
We had to stop for a couple picture.
I couldn't resist the play on the word. I did take a couple of pics though.
Now it's time to find a couple of geocaches. We know we passed a couple on the way to the generating station. The first one is a more recent publication. We began our search, but wasn't coming up with anything. Reading past logs, I noted that a few said the coordinates were slightly off. Taking a step back to see the bigger picture, I was able to locate the container.
That's one. Off to our second cache which is just down the road. Cell service is spotty in the area. Not sure why. Maybe it's our cell provider? Anyway, I couldn't pull up the cache page to our next search. We checked the obvious hosts but gave up after awhile as we didn't want to spend a great deal of time looking for something that may not exist anymore. We are now one for two. Off to the third cache location. I managed to get enough cell service to see that the third one has a string of DNFs. A quick look didn't generate anything. I took the opportunity to look at the cache page of our previous search while I still had a signal. A string of DNFs on that one too. One for three. Our last cache did have a recent find, so that was very promising. When we arrived, we spotted some sort of mechanism on a tree that could possibly hold a geocache. sm66 spotted the birdhouse on the ground. We signed it and placed it back on the tree where it should be.
Two caches found, two DNFs. Not bad. It's time for a bite to eat so we headed off to that Dam restaurant that I kept hearing about.
I ordered the Dam special, which consists of a Dam burger, fries, and a Dam desert. The desert on this day was a rhubarb pie. It was Dam good. Looking back, I'd say we had a Dam good day. I'm looking forward to more adventures like this. Exploring the area, finding a few geocaches, checking out a local restaurant, and possibly learning about the area we are in.
That was our Dam Sunday. Until next week, be happy, be safe, wash your hands, wear a mask when out in public (but not when you're driving alone in your car), try to enjoy life, and most of all, have fun. Peace out.
(Tinkers. She has become more brave than her sister)
(Sassy. She is quick and very affectionate)
Comments
Post a Comment