Geocaching (A Rocky Day at the Beach)

May 14, 2007

This was the "ptowferret hates rocks" day. She had tried several rocky places, several times each for two geocaches at Ashbridge's Bay to no avail, and wanted to have new eyes look for them.

Of course, ptowferret was stuck at work until 5 pm, so I went down to the area with Anne to get two geocaches that were in nearby Woodbine Park. The first was by the "Woodbine Park" sign, and took Anne seconds to find. We stopped at a nearby bench to sign the log and pose it with John.

The next one was nearby and we started towards it. When we got close, the GPS signal got all weird. It was showing that the cache was on the other side of the street, and I was about to jay walk over there, but Anne had found it by the pond, as its name implies. Again, we posed it with John, and just in time too, as ptowferret had just called to say that she was nearby and had brought reinforcements.

She then gave clear instructions on how to reach her, including following the boardwalk at the bench. Of course, Frank would have none of that. We were looking for rocks and there were rocks over there, across the sand, past the beach volleyball tournament about to start. Luckily, ptowferret spotted my blue backpack from her vantage point and directed me away from those rocks over there. We finally met up with her and went over to the right set of rocks, where FerretUncle and Good Harpy were already waiting, garbage bags and gardening gloves in hand, ready to geocache and CITO (Cache In, Trash Out).

We started climbing all over the rocks, with the GPS signal sending us back and forth, and a clue that (still to this day) makes absolutely no sense. We each got a grocery bag worth of garbage though. Then Good Harpy announces that she's found the cache, and in the cache was a travel bug, which she gives to Anne. (This bug would eventually travel to Halifax with me).

Cool. On to our next set of rocks. Again, we were all climbing over the rocks, looking for a container and finding lots of garbage. The garbage was a distraction because you'd spot something that didn't look like a rock, only to find out it was a empty bottle. Anne was smart enough to stay on dry land and root around with John. She eventually made the find, and no one was upset about it because we all wanted this thing found and taken off our list.

We had defeated the nemesises (nemesi?) for ptowferret, and as a reward, we got to go to the final cache in this area. It too was rocky. We were doing CITO so it didn't look that strange to the couple making out, but it was strange to us when it started raining and they didn't leave. Well, eventually they did, but by then the rocks were slippery, and FerretUncle was sure that I was in the wrong spot. After a while, everyone agreed with FerretUncle, and we headed across the trail to another group of rocks. I was glad to be off those rain-soaked rocks, but not as glad to be on another group of rain-soaked rocks.

Anne and I looked and looked and looked. No one else could remember exactly where they had found them. We were ready to give up when we heard that another geocacher had come by to check on ptowferret and her progress on the other two caches. Anne went to ask him for help, but just then, I spotted a blue lid, and viola, it was the cache. (Of course when Anne took the picture of me with the cache, the hand with the cache in it was hidden behind a huge boulder). I wasn't completely happy though. This was truly the first time geocaching that we had gotten wet and grimey, and frustrated. So, after signing the log, I put the cache back with the lid facing away, so that all you could see is the black duct tape that was wrapped around the bottom of the container, which is really hard to do in a dark crevice. After all, the clue said, "You'll need something to turn your arms into serpents because the cache is NOT in the obvious place", and you don't need serpent arms if you have working eyes to catch the blue lid.

After this, Anne and I celebrated by seeking out dinner at the only resturant licensed to serve food on the bench. The others decided to seek out the Eager Beaver.

Geocaching (More Famous Last Words)

May 13, 2007

There are a lot of parks near the Ontario Science Centre, and there are several caches in those parks, all "close" together. Before we got there, we decided to tie up a loose end at the Oriole GO Station. This time, we were prepared, having looked at satellite pictures of the area, and realizing that we were way off the first time.

We drove into the deserted parking lot, and parked closer to the pedistrian bridge. Then we let the GPS go wild. We got to within 5 meters and Anne was able to spot the container. "Yay! Let's hope the rest of the day is this easy!"

Famous last words.

We parked at Edward Gardens and headed south on the path through Wilket Creek Park. The GPS signal was good, and we were making good progress. The distance to the cache was dropping steadily ... until .. suddenly .. with about 70 metres to go, the numbers started going up.

"Ok, ok. That just means I have to change direction."

And so we did, and we walked in circles for a little bit until the dread hit us, and I was having the following conversation .. mainly with myself:

"It's over there ... We just have to cross the creek .."
"It looks really shallow."
" .. and scale that cliff."
"Oh."

We ended up back tracking almost to the beginning of the trail to find the stairs and try again. (I can't quite remember, but I think we ended up leaving the park and roaming around slightly aimlessly until we found another entrance, but at least we were on the right side of the creek and cliff now).

We finally got to the general area, already tired, and climbed around up and down a steep slope, but to no avail. The GPS had us within a few meters, but absolutely nothing. The clue didn't make sense either. Frustrated, we sat down to have a snack of Chinese pancakes that my parents had given us the night before. I ate, but I was still on edge. We were so close, so I left Anne with the remaining pancakes.

I had a purpose, a mission to find that cache, and I would go about it by roaming aimlessly in an area not that close to where the GPS signal said it was. Then I saw something not quite right. There was a clump of leaves and bark at the bottom of a tree. Being on the side of a hill, I wasn't surprised to see that, but there was this huge piece of birch bark, like a white beacon. Beneath this clump was indeed the cache.

I'm glad that we found it. It was the size of a small suitcase, and we would have felt like idiots for missing it. Of course, after all that hard work, I was feeling like a dick, and discarded the birch bark when re-covering it.

Great. Off to the next cache. I didn't think it at the time, but this is probably where ptowferret would be making remarks about how great her topo maps are. The next cache required us to go back to where we had back tracked from (and then some), so that we could climb more hills again. (Or was it the cache after this one?)

Anyways, it wasn't a easy hike to this cache either. We eventually got to the general area, and were thinking, "This'll be an easy find. There aren't that many hiding places here."

Famous last words.

We found .. nothing. Well, we found a great hiding place, but no cache. Then we found a blue tupperware lip out in the open, but still no cache. The tupperware lid had "www.geocaching.com" written on it. It even had "Spiderkid and Granny's cache" written on it, but no cache. We eventually decide that this was indeed the cache, at least what was left of it. We threw the lid into the hole where it would have gone, covered it up, and took a picture of it.

Now, onto one of our first "Unknown" caches, where we had to solve a puzzle to get the co-ordinates. Anne solved this puzzle in 10 seconds and then just as quickly decided that it couldn't be right.

Frank - Of course, it's right.
Anne - But the difficulty level seems too high for such an easy solution.
Frank - It's by IBM. How could it be wrong?

Famous last words.

The next day, I am told by ptowferret that "The difficulty level is too high for such an easy solution". Well, it saved me a trip to IBM. The clue? It's within 5km of the original co-ordinates, and this is just over that distance. The right answer is the only answer that is within 5km.

We ended up spending an evening with the calculator tools on www.gpsvisualizer.com, on two different computers, with an Excel spreadsheet, and lots of skepticism from Anne, before we finally got an answer that looked right. Now, we finally had a chance to look for it. How hard could it be? It's on a train bridge. Probably a magnetic box painted the same colour as the bridge.

Famous last words.

First, at this point, we weren't even in the right park. The parks only looked connected, but there was Leslie Street in between. We ended up having to trek out of the park we were in, and across Leslie, then down a steep, giant flight of stairs. "We'll find another way back" are the famous last words uttered by Anne. (We find out later that the parks indeed are connected, and it wasn't necessary to climb down and, yes, up those stairs).

Second, while we didn't know it at the time, the train bridge was playing havoc with the GPS signal. It was bouncing everywhere, so we weren't getting any readings that would put us close to the actual location of the container.

Third, which we find out later as well, it wasn't a magnetic box at all. It was just plain ol' tupperware.

Anne and I ended up climbing all over the bridge for what seemed like forever, but was probably close to about 30 - 45 minutes. Absolutely no luck. We don't even see anything that resembles a container, except for the plastic pop bottles all over the ground.

We finally give up, and head for the next cache. Suddenly, my GPS starts to complain that it's low on batteries. Suddenly, I am power walking towards the next cache. I am walking so fast that I go right by the cache, and keep going, and turn around, cursing, because any moment now, the battery would be dead.

I meet up with Anne, who was calmly walking and checking out possible hiding spots. We finally do find the container behind a log, but decide that we were done for the day.

No more famous last words. At least not for that day.