Leap Day Caching

St. Vital Park

Diane and I set out to gather our Leap Day caches about 10:30ish, it was -13C with a windchill of -21, we weren't sure if it would be a bit chilly!  But we were going into wooded areas with protection from the wind.  We headed out!  There was one point on our map that we were not going to visit, as it was a distance away and it was rated at difficult.  What do I do? Mistakenly put that point into the GPS!  So we head out, the walk didn't seem so bad but when we got there we were doing the drunken bumble bee dance!  The GPS would not give me an accurate reading, going this way and that way...so we did an honest to goodness search and then decided to give it up.  But we did discover this tobbogan ramp that kids have a ball on I am sure.

The walls along the trail were made of ice to keep the tobbogans on the straight and narrow coming off the ramp.  I am very sure that this area is very well used.  It was deserted today.  Off down more trails to get to our next destination.  The park has a loop of road ways with a large network of groomed trails for hiking or skiing.  It's a very nice place to go for whatever activity that a person chooses to do. 

 

We are now heading to our second search! We are hoping that we will have better luck then we did with our first one.  The hides here seem more difficult to us!  We get to the spot and again we walk around and expand our search and come back to the area where the GPS tells us that GZ is, it is starting to look like we are going to be beat again, when Diane comes up with the find, it was on the ground which we were not expecting by reading the information, but there is was in a hole in a tree!  This is our 60th cache, yeah PartnerS!

We have been waiting for a little while to log our 60th.  Now upward and onward!  On to our next destination which was a mico, by the description it should not have been hard to find, as it was near a tree with 2 limbs coming out of one stump! But which one?  There were tracks near such a tree, the GPS was telling me that was the general area!  There was a nice hole in the tree, but sure no cache in that hole!  So we did a very wide search of this area and gave it up as a DNF. Diane was ready to call it a day as well and so that is what we did!  Better luck in St. Vial Park next time!

A forest guard



Just going about his business



There was also a real nice duck pond, which was perfect for skating!  By the time we left the temperatures were nearing 0c.  I was able to walk around without mitts at that point, there was a fair amount of melting going on, the sun is starting to have some good warmth already.  I finished the day by coming into my area and grabbing 2 caches within .5 km of my house.  I had been wanting to look for these for awhile now.  So we logged 3 for our Leap Day caches, we discovered Regina travel bug as well.

Some History of the Park

Have fun caching

GeoPartnerS

Caching since 2011

Hello Forest Our Old Friend

Another Day In The Forest

Saturday turned into a beautiful sunny day, when we started out there was a very light breeze blowing and the temperature was -9.  Facing into the wind was a little chilly, but we knew that we would soon be in the protective cover of the forest and the breeze would no longer bother us.  But first we had to grab our first cache! 



Click on the pictures to
see a larger view.

 This geocache found by "moi" was at this little building which is a water station.  Most of the homes south of Wilkes are not hooked up to the city water and so they need to get their cisterns filled. This is one of the filling stations where the pumper trucks fill up with water to deliver to those homes.

On the edge of the forest, behind the Tuxedo Golf Course, Gerry dug this one up very quickly.  We signed the log and left our ladybug magnet and sig card and continued on, deeper into the forest!



Fallen dead trees in the forest




Some Oak trees along the bike trail
leading into the forest

  

We thought that we would never reach
some of these caches!

Gerry spotted this cache as well! He did have his super geocaching eyes wide open today.  This cache was in two parts, the log was in the cache with the gnome so we signed it! Then we figured out where the treasure was!  This was a neat cache made us think and read! I like to just skim the text, in some cases that is not a good idea!

Gnorman's Diamond Mine found
by Gerry, we liked this one.





The diamond mine workers!



We like what we found!

This is the outer container, very neat and a lot of work to make. It was quite far from where the GPS was telling us that GZ was, but I noticed it and was going to investigate, I thought that the stump looked out of place.  Gerry mentioned later that there is no birch in the forest!  But it was just the bottom part of the stump that didn't look right to me!  Just as I got there Diane noticed a giant spider hanging from a tree above my head, so we knew that the cache was very near by!  This cache is another in the "Remember Series"  This one is Remember #30.  The information on the service man is at the end of this post.



Another cache! Neat tradeables in this one, a little porcelain doll!
amoung other nice items.




Our first room in the game cache.
We will have to get the others another day!



This was the last one of the day for us.  This cache is part of a game, called "Clue Jr" The mystery is "The Case of the missing Chocolate Cake"  There are 5 rooms, each room has a set of clues and suspects.  When you find a cache you need to cross off the clues, when you have visted all five caches, the remaining clues will help you find the grand final.  A very neat concept for a different type of cache.

  The excerpt below is taken off the website advertising the university.  The University borders on the Golf Course and Assiniboine Forest.

Canadian Mennonite University



Canadian Mennonite University is a Christian University in the Anabaptist tradition, offering challenging programs and recognized degrees in undergraduate and graduate studies. CMU is a member of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada.

CMU values strong academics, excellent teaching, and rigorous thinking. We do this within a framework shaped by Christian faith and with the conviction that faith makes a difference in how people understand the world, how they live, and how they relate to others.


Three tired cachers back at the car

This is the information in the cache, the date of death is different then the documented date on the net.

Richard plunkett Baker

Pilot SPAD

AF706 Lt. 19 Squadron

11 Canadian Mounted Rifles

Born October 18, 1888

Cheated death march 24, 1919

Died April 1954.

This information is off the internet

Lt. Richard Plunkett Baker

30 3-24-1917 He cheated death on this day.

11:55am
At Givenchy in France

Died in April of 1956. He was 66 years old.
 Spad S7

№ A6706
 Halberstadt DII
 19th Squadron

Royal Flying Corps.

The common factor in the 2 caches in this series that we have found is a German pilot Manfred von Richthofen or better known as the Red Baron.  We will have to find more in this series to find our answers.

Have fun caching

GeoPartnerS

Caching since 2011

Fisher Branch Job

With A Little Caching
Monday turned into a day with clear blue sunny skies!  The drive into Manitobas Interlake Region was certainly pleasant.  The job of the day was ground truthing for some forest blow down that happened in this area in the summer of 2010.  High winds touched down in small swathes in a small area of forested, mostly private land.

This is a picture of some of the treed areas, the trees are very small and stunted in some areas.  The land is rocky and not too fertile.

Some areas have White Spruce growing amoungst the poplar trees.



An old barn that has collapsed



Sharpe Tailed Grouse

Sharpe Tailed Grouse Courtship dance video 

We did manage to grab one cache in Fisher Branch, by the little red caboose.  We went north on the highway to grab one more, but this one eluded us.  The terrain was a little rough, with a lot of rock and fallen trees, with huge tree roots sticking out of the ground.  The snow was a little deep, we rooted around for maybe 20 minutes or so and still came up empty and so decided to call it a day as far as caching went. Our boots were full of snow and our hands were cold!! We didn't prepare with our warm clothing when we left the vehicle.

Have fun caching

GeoPartnerS

Caching since 2011