Saturday, April 28, 2012

Geocaching In Headingley Manitoba


Saturday In Headlingley

We decided to get out and about early this morning because we were going to cache on the Headingley Grand Trunk Trail and that would be a lot of walking.  We got to our destination about 9:30, the sun was shining very nicely but the wind was rather cold!  We started off walking at a brisk pace to warm up! Here is some of the scenery along the way.  Some of the crop land has been seeded and some has not been worked yet. This series of caches are called the HGGT series as they are along The Headingley Grand Trunk Trail, which  is the abandoned CNR rail line that traverses the municipalities of Headingley and Cartier. The railroad bed, originally built by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad, was used from 1894 to 1972. The trail covers approximately 15 kilometers from the Perimeter Highway to Beaudry Park.


We arrived at the first cache and had it in hand very quickly!  By eagle eyes "moi"
This was a shot looking across a field towards a farm, there were a row of grainerys in the distance.
This road certainly looks bad! But it was dry, not something that I would want to drive on!This was a little bit of fun on the way to our second cache.
These bales look bigger when you are up close to them. 

The next cache was a very small bison tube that was disguised very well on a tree branch.  It was hard to see but Gerry had it in hand rather quickly. This one will be extremely hard to find with leaves on the trees!
This is what the trail looks like, it is graveled and well kept.  I am not sure about this part of the trail but the Harte Trail which is within the Perimeter of Winnipeg seems to be very well maintained summer and winter.  This trail is a bikers or a walker or runners dream!
This is the last cache that we got for the morning, we decided to head back to the car and go into Beaudry Park to eat the yummy picnic lunch that we brought along.  We had worked up a heffy appetite.  The park has several picnic sites with tables and fire pits.  I would  imagine on a warm summer day we would not be so fortunate to get the nice spot that we did. 
This is the scenery from the picnic table.  It is a really nice park to have a picnic or a person can hike the many trails in summer or ski in winter.
Our first cache after lunch was Called Deere John this is a fun idea for a cache! Here is the info.

Cache is called Deere John for 3 reasons:
  1. The surrounding farmland and the busy farm equipment (John Deere) that is persistently present throughout the year.
  2. The families of deer that gather in this area to have bush parties throughout the year. Quite beautiful watching deer prance and play on the fields.
  3. The classic Dear John letters, the TV show from the 80's starring Judd Hirsch and, most importantly, the suggestion for logging this cache below ....

This is your chance. When you log your find, write up a Deere John letter to release some stress and let it out in a healthy way. Have fun with it if you want ... or be totally serious and use it as cathartic relief. Either Way, so long as it is family friendly ;-)

 Here was our log

My Dear John Song!
Dear John, oh how I love to write,
Dear John, I must let you know tonite
We have fou.. nnnd the cache
We move on to another stash
Oooohhh.......we thank you, Dear John


This was an ammo box a little ways into the forest! We dropped off  Dalecarlia horse Eat-Sleep-Cache to rest in this new home awhile, and we picked up Mr. Changey Face, we will bring him along with us on our next adventures.
This one was by the Pheonix Community Center, easy find but not so easy to get out of its home!  This is a very nice Center and well kept.  It has several play structures as well as an outdoor ice rink.
This was just behind the Community Center which was our next find!  There was garbage and old cars and crap in the forest!  I wonder what people think when they dump their garbage like this!  We ran into a lot of wood and stuff along the HGTT as well! 
I am so happy, I found it!!  The GPS was here and there with this one!  But patience and persistance pays off big time.
Another very easy find, we are just moving right along here!  For the caches that we found after lunch we were driving and finding!  This was all in a residential area.  This area was very nice, the homes were all large new homes on big lots and very well looked after.  We liked the area a lot.   It was quiet but not isolated. It is so nice when the loudest noise you hear is the birds singing, or the train whistle blowing!
This find was our last find! We did look for 1 more, but it eluded us, we looked and looked!  Every tree up and down and around and again but we still came up empty!  So we decided to call it a day, but it was time!  We hopefully are starting to learn to say enough before we are "done for".   Next week will be another week and we shall see if we get into the adventurous spirit!
The CPR Rail Line Bridge in Headlingley MB 
     
Taken on our way back into Winnipeg.

Have fun caching
GeoPartnerS
Caching since 2011

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Caching at Living Prairie Museum

Latest Adventures At The Living Prairie Museum

We have spent a few days geocaching at the Living Prairie Museum, it is a nice place to walk around to cache in and to visit.  Our Prairie grass lands are all but gone!  This is something that we don't even think about until we visit a place such as this and realize what a shame it is that we have invaded every corner of our earth, the only planet we have to live on.  We appreciate these little wilderness spaces, and it would be nice to have more of them.  Below are some of the pictures of the caches we found and the area we found them in.  We picked up a travelbug at the cache by the rock..The Dalecarlia horse who wants to wants to travel back home to Falun, Dalarna in Sweden.Dalecarlia horse

This is a picture of what the
Living Prairie looks like in the whole area that we were in, the forested area is larger then it looks in this picture.

This is the cache that had eluded us earlier in the week and Mr. GPS was about to say that we were not leaving without finding it, but his geoeyes were peeled and it was a walk up and find for him!  So we were able to carry on in short order, but first we stopped to talk pictures of this fantastic old tree.



Then onwards to the next.  We realized how large this forested area was while going to this next cache!  We came upon some young boys building a fort to play in....we saw a camp where someone spent the night or had a party!
Our next cache took us out of the Living Prairie Museum and across a busy road, in a space by Community Center!   Was a nice little area with some evergreen trees.
We found all of the caches today quite easily, except 1 that was a DNF for us.







We thought this one was a good one, a little birdfeeder hung in a micro park in a residental area.  This was the end of our day, it's now time to walk back to the car...this is the worse part! when there are no caches and we are tired! But we make it and reflect on the day and always think "what a good day" it was.  We do enjoy getting out and discovering areas and parks that we did not know existed.
Here are some pictures of our adventures in the Park earlier in the week.This was in the park at the entrance to the Living Prairie Museum.

Boys just wanna have fun!
Happy adventures to you!


Have fun caching
GeoPartnerS
Caching since 2011

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Number 100 On The Hart Trail In Headingley MB

Our 100th Find

We have been waiting for saturday to come so we could go and claim our 100th cache.  We were prepared with caches along a part of the Grand Trunk Trail, which is part of the Hart Trail in Headingley .  Headingley is just west of Winnipeg.  The weather was not very nice, it was 12 degrees C but a cold wind was blowing very strongly.  But we were going anyway!  We were getting that milestone today.  We got to our first cache site and poked around for longer then we should have and came up empty, and so onto the next.  We walked down the trail at a brisk pace to get some heat going within our bodies.  We got to the next location and had the cache in hand quite quickly....Yeahhhhhhh!
So we are happy cachers! We have been talking about this milestone for awhile now and regardless of wind and cold, nothing but excitement was noticed right then.  So here we are with our badge of achievement.

On to the next cache, which was a short walk down the trail.  We really like this kind of caching where we can walk from one to the other!  This one was in hand real quick, we signed the log and did our ritual picture taking and then back on the trail to the next one.  So we are trying to get our next waypoint up on the GPS to see how far down the trail it is, and the GPS is doing nothing, can't turn it off or anything!  So we changed batteries and nothing worked!  That was the end of our great day of geocaching!  It sure seems like the GPS is broken.   So we will need to get a new one, and better caching next time!

Have fun caching
GeoPartnerS
Caching since 2011

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Geocaching This Week April 3 & 5

Tuesday Daytime and Evening Geocaching

This week I have geocached on my own during the daytime and Gerry and I have cached after work a couple of evenings.  The first day that I went out I got one cache and was going after another one in an area that I had not seen before.  As it happens I did not find the cache but I sure did find and interesting park.  Air Force Heritage Museum and Air Park  I walked around the outside part of this park, that I did not know was here.  Below are some of the pictures that I took, I will come back to the park and spend more time reading the plaques and walking around.
There are more planes that I did not get pictures of!  This is such a wonderful thing about Geocaching, I would never have turned down this street if I were not looking for something in particular.  I had been to the St. James Civic Center to a craft show when we were selling jewelry, but did not know that this place existed.





This monument was placed to honor the Support Personnel here is a close up of the writeup. 
There were plaques along the sidewalks with names and towns of people who have served.  Here is some info explaining the "Garden Of Memories"

We went out on Tuesday evening, to Assiniboine Park to work at a puzzle cache, we found the cache alrite but could not crack the code to get inside the treasure.  Neither of us are familiar with the keylock that the treasure is in!  So we decided we would have to try to learn a thing or two about locks and then try again.  So we moved on to our next, which was the final to "Junior Clue" game.  We found it without any problem.  We have been playing this game for a couple months are we are a little sorry to put it to rest!  But we must!  We then went into the park and we tryed for one by the Conservatory that I have tryed for a few times, no luck this time again!  We did see a lot of deer in the bush and we saw a bunny! 
Our next one was close to this train!  We found it in short order!
We saw this beautiful sunset on our way out of the park.

Thursday Evening Caching In Assiniboine Park

We were going back to the puzzle cache thinking that we were wiser then the last time, NOT! Either we have the code wrong or we just don't know how to operate the lock?  So we played with it trying a bunch of different things and decided to go back to the drawing board.  We did see a lot of deer though and that made the second trek through the bush worth the while.  This one was not afraid at all, she just stood there and watched us and listened very closely!  She was so curious and so pretty! We left the bush and had a few within the park targeted.  When we were walking back to the car I said to Ger that we should go and look for the one by the Conservatory again for a minute or two, so we did.  I did not expect to find it!  But Gerry did! Holy Moly! a smilie on this one...it was a micro to be sure, it's as small as the eraser end on a pencil!  No wonder it was so hard to find, not what you expect hanging from a tree.  Good One!
Here is Gerry with another of his finds!  He found one other that we don't have a picture of and I found one with a missing pic as well....The next one will be NUMBER 100.......A MILE STONE FOR US! Now it's time to head home to left over stirfry! Until next time,
Have fun caching
GeoPartnerS
Caching since 2011